Everyone on the web will die. What about their data?

THE INTERNET IS AGING. AS SOON AS THE 2060S, THERE may be more dead than alive users on Facebook.

- CARL OHMAN

Many of the platforms that are now part of society's basic infrastructure face a similar prospect. What happens when they-and their users-die will be a critical battleground for the internet's future. We have done virtually zero preparation for it.

Back in 1997, when John Perry Barlow published his now legendary "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace," he boldly stated that the governments of the world-the "giants of flesh and steel," as he called themhad no dominion over cyberspace. The internet was a "new home of Mind" beyond the flesh, where its young and tech-savvy citizens would never age or decay. We still tend to see the internet that way. We also tend to think of it as something that has largely to do with youth. In short, we see cyberspace as a space without time.