[MUSIC PLAYING] EMY DECKER (VOICEOVER): Now, Mandi, I understand that at Lily Dale there is a pet cemetery, and I have many departed small creatures that I've known throughout my life. So I was wondering if you could give an overview of what the pet cemetery there is like. MANDI SHEPP (VOICEOVER): Oh, yes. So the pet cemetery is one of my favorite little stops on tours of the town. It is set into the woods on the way to a place in Lily Dale that we call Inspiration Stump, which is where they do a lot of medium services in the summer. In this old-growth forest, there's a lot of these beautiful old hemlocks and these ancient primordial trees that are growing there, and a variety of headstones, homemade, professionally-made, large granite monuments, little tiny painted wooden things for all sorts of animals. There's a ton of cats, a few dogs. We have two horses in there. EMY DECKER (VOICEOVER): Do you have any rabbits? [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: You are listening to WREK Atlanta and this is Lost in the Stacks, the Research Library Rock'n'Roll Radio Show. I am Charlie in the studio with Wendy, Fred, and Abby, a guest to be named later. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you are here for, we hope you dig it. FRED RASCOE: (SPOOKILY) Today's show is called "Metadata of the Dead." [SPOOKY MUSIC PLAYING] Ooh. CHARLIE BENNETT: You are so corny, Fred. [LAUGHTER] FRED RASCOE: In the creeping shadow of Halloween, we want to consider what happens to the "you" on social media when the "you" in real life dies. CHARLIE BENNETT: Turns out there's an actual ghost in the machine. WENDY HAGENMAIER: The more we build a store of data and automated processes in our social media, the more we establish a web presence that can continue even when our material self has been, well, deleted. FRED RASCOE: [SIGHS] Zombie metadata. WENDY HAGENMAIER: If you want to join the conversation-- if you dare-- the hashtag for this show is LITS443 for Lost in the Stacks, episode 443. Feel free to tweet your thoughts, questions, or links to your future zombie with that hashtag. FRED RASCOE: And our songs today are about dying, death, being dead, staying dead. CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, this is a happy, jaunty, like da-da-dada-da-da kind of show, huh, Fred? FRED RASCOE: (VOCALIZING CIRCUS-LIKE MUSIC) Ya-da da-da da-da da-da da. WENDY HAGENMAIER: So much of the technology that we rely on and that we give our data to is relatively new and young, so it's hard to imagine it representing the dead. But one day, we'll have to reckon with the fact that we might not last as long as our Facebook accounts. So let's kick off with You're Dead by Norma Tanega, right here on Lost In The Stacks. [NORMA TANEGA, "YOU'RE DEAD"] You just heard "You're Dead" by Norma Tanega. Today's show is called "Metadata of the Dead," and our guest is Robin Fay aka Georgiawebgurl on the internet. Robin has experience with libraries and the corporate world, and her mission is to help people use technology to make their lives better. Robin, welcome back to the show. ROBIN FAY: Thank you. Thanks for having me. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Can you tell us to a technologist like yourself, trying to make technology something that makes people's lives better, what to you, in your view, is social media? ROBIN FAY: Well, I think one of the great things about social media is it allows people to interact with each other, regardless of where they may be in terms of physical space, geographically located, and even time zones. At one time, one of my friends was working overnight shifts, and so the only time we could really communicate was really through social media because she could send me a message, and then I could contact her. And messaging and social media really worked well for us because that was really the only time we had where we could connect with each other. And so-- CHARLIE BENNETT: I'm delighted to point out that sometimes that's known as a graveyard shift. ROBIN FAY: Yes, the graveyard shift. That was-- [LAUGHS] CHARLIE BENNETT: [LAUGHS] ROBIN FAY: That was what I was thinking of there. But I think the other thing too is it can allow family members to connect with each other. It can also be a way of sharing information. My mom does a lot of genealogy, and so she shares a lot of family information through social media. And so there's that aspect. And of course, we socialize, all of the fun jokes that we share and cats riding on vacuum cleaners that go around the social media. There's the entertainment aspect of it, the social aspect of it. People create events and organize people, so it serves more of a serious purpose in that way too. And then just really connecting us. So it's really just being social and being human but in that digital media space. CHARLIE BENNETT: So the thing that you didn't talk about that, for me, is almost the first thing that happens in social media is that creation of a self that's sort of separate. So where does that fall in? Like you're very much on the good-- ROBIN FAY: [LAUGHS] CHARLIE BENNETT: --and the human and connective. But then there's also this internal, like who am I? And so where does that fit in your schema of how you think of social media? ROBIN FAY: Well, I think there's two things that happen. There are the people who are very deliberate in deciding like how am I going to craft my social media. They're very savvy in terms of exactly what they want to present to themselves. And then there's the others that just throw it all out there. And by the default of doing that, they have-- CHARLIE BENNETT: [LAUGHS] ROBIN FAY: --crafted a view of themselves that sometimes may not be that realistic either because by showing everything, the bad and the good, it may get weighted towards one side or the other on social media. At one point, there was some studies done to see what people respond to the most on social media. And it was anger was the first emotion, and then happiness was the second. So if everything you post is sort of ranting or angry, that may show up to more people versus the good. So even then, you may get sort of a weighted view of yourself. But I think we always have crafted our personalities. When we go out the door in the morning, how we dress, the time we take to put ourselves together or not, that tells people something. And when I was a student a long time ago, I worked in retail and I would have to get very dressed up. And then I'd go shopping and people would be very nice to me. And then I would come in some other days in jeans and-- CHARLIE BENNETT: [LAUGHS] ROBIN FAY: --ratty t-shirt, and I couldn't get anybody to help me if I needed it. So there's always that perception, I think, that happens of us and how we craft that. And then the other part of it is what you choose to share. I've always said if my mom or my boss can't read it, I'm not going to put it on social media. But somebody else would say, well, that's not being authentic, you should share everything. And you know, TMI, so-- [LAUGHTER] FRED RASCOE: Is everything that we share online, is that a form of social media? I'm thinking like if we read a news story and we make a comment or I mean, you mentioned genealogy, something like ancestry.com. Is everything that we share online social media? ROBIN FAY: I think as long as we're sharing it and we're interacting with it and, in some way, it's connecting to our story, then I think that is part of our social media. That's part of our social story that we're developing. So if you're a scientist and you're publishing a lot of research and you're very active in some of those scholarly platforms, you're building that identity that way. So I think all of that really comes into that social aspect. It can be a little more professional and scholarly, or it can be a little bit more, you know, I post photos of my cat. [LAUGHS] CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah. So when we talked about this show idea, one of the things that came to my mind was social media sort of acts like the metadata of a person's life. If your actual living is an object, then social media is the metadata. And you've said, yeah, that sounds right. Can you talk a little more like how that maybe does actually apply? ROBIN FAY: Well, one of the things that I've been reading a little bit about is how that when a Facebook page is memorialized and so it's sort of turned into a page in memory of that person, how that then becomes a living will. And so I think this idea that everything that we create is part of our story and that is part of our life, I mean, it's a digital reflection of it. And it's certainly, for some people, very curated in terms of what they choose to share. But each one of those things is a little bit of data that we've created. There's the data we share that we're creating, and what we choose to share. If you choose to share a lot of things about the rainforest, then someone would assume that you're very interested in the rainforest, or maybe you are a biologist or someone who has that interest. CHARLIE BENNETT: That's one of your subject headings. ROBIN FAY: [LAUGHS] So that would be how-- Exactly, what your tag or your subject heading would be. And so the more those tags or subject headings are used, so the more you talk about a particular subject or share a particular subject, that's going to show that you value that more, and it's going to have more relevance ranking in terms of a search engine. CHARLIE BENNETT: So we have 30 seconds left. Can you sum up how you-- you, Robin Fay-- use social media? ROBIN FAY: Well, I've used it a lot of different ways, and, certainly, I use it to connect with other people who are interested in technology. I also use it for help. Anytime I need help, sometimes it's much quicker to go to social media, especially Twitter, versus the Help Desk. I also ask for advice on social media. And I just connect with people and share dog photos. [LAUGHTER] CHARLIE BENNETT: This is Lost in the Stacks. And we'll be back with more about "Metadata of the Dead," and dog pictures after a music set. ABBY OSER: File this set under GR581.H36. LOUD SPEAKER VOICE (VOICEOVER): Attention all shoppers. Attention, all shoppers. [DROPKICK MURPHYS, "THE WALKING DEAD"] ABBY: You just heard "The Walking Dead" by the Dropkick Murphys. Before that was "George Romero" by the Sprites. Those were songs about being not quite dead. [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: This is Lost in the Stacks. And our guest today is the metadata and technology librarian, Robin Fay, also known as Georgiawebgurl. Robin, you have brought us a couple of anecdotes about death and social media. Will you tell us your stories now? ROBIN FAY: Sure. So a few years ago on Twitter when Twitter was first starting, there were a lot of the early people on Twitter that I followed and they followed me. And we would sometimes talk on Twitter about various social media things or food sometimes, just anything. And there was one of my followers or one of the people I followed-- we followed-- that we had chatted back and forth quite a bit, and they lived out in California. And every once in a while, they were not posting as much as they had been on Twitter. And a couple of times I had even messaged this person and said, like hey, how's it going? You've gone from posting four or five times a day to once a week or something, and I didn't hear anything back. One time I got an automated reply that said they would be back in touch with me later-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh boy. ROBIN FAY: --which was kind of interesting. And you know, I didn't think too much about it because life. I kept living my life and going on and stuff. And it was about a year after that that there was a post on this person's Twitter page and it was from his wife. And she said, I'm sorry to let you all know, but I felt like this couldn't keep going on. So it had been going on for about a year. And so that during that whole time, this person was posting because they had set up an automated process to post all of this stuff. And so this person was posting and would occasionally like, retweet things because they had a trigger set up that if they saw a certain topic, they would retweet it. And so it was almost like this person was kind of living after the fact. It was a very strange feeling to know that I had been interacting with this automated process for a year. And just every once in a while, there would be something that I'd be like, oh, that's a great thing, and I would retweet it or something like that. And then it would say thank you. And [LAUGHS] it was just a very, very strange sort of thing. CHARLIE BENNETT: Did this person know he was going to die? ROBIN FAY: No, he had-- and as she told us before she shut down the Twitter account-- he had had a sudden heart attack. And so there had just been no one to actually go in and manage his social media until that time that she decided that he still had-- he was one of those people with like 20,000 followers because he was so early in the Twitter landscape. So I think she really hadn't thought too much about it until, at some point, she was like, I really need to shut this down because I don't want people to not know about this. CHARLIE BENNETT: Right. So those automated processes were sort of like branding, right? ROBIN FAY: Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: Like finding news stories or other tweets that were connected to the professional life or interests, and not the whole Twitter account, but a substantial part of what that social media was for. ROBIN FAY: Right. So a lot of things about social media, about blogging, some things about privacy, design, a lot of stuff about design and marketing and things like that. And so there would be intermixed things like, oh, this is what I had to eat for dinner kind of stuff. But yeah, it was very interesting to see how that all happened and the fact that you know, I had no clue until I saw that message. And I would assume the rest of his Twitter followers were in that same category. CHARLIE BENNETT: So you said it made you feel weird. Can we pull that apart just a little bit? Like, were you angry or-- ROBIN FAY: Oh no. CHARLIE BENNETT: Sad or-- ROBIN FAY: --it just felt like, to me, it felt a little bit like someone should have at least stopped his account from continuing onward sooner than a year-- [LAUGHTER] --or maybe made an announcement. I mean, I can understand when someone dies suddenly like that. He was relatively young, so I can understand someone not thinking like the next day they need to do something about it. But a year seemed like that was an awfully long time to just let it go. CHARLIE BENNETT: I think of the joke when people say I live very online. I'm a very online person. What that, I think, usually means is that I consider what happens on the web to have some reality, to have some heft in my life. As opposed to some people who I think imagine that it's like I don't need to go get rid of everyone's DVDs if they die, or I don't have to shut down their stereo or anything. Like I don't have to think about these just objects, these insignificant pieces of technology that float around a person. And that might have been the reason why no one considered the Twitter. ROBIN FAY: Yeah. And I think too that it was early in that social media landscape. So I don't think, at that time, there really wasn't a way to deal with it on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and stuff like that. So I think there hadn't been a lot of decisions made about it. And I really did appreciate that she came on and made that announcement and let us all know. But then it felt kind of weird to say, oh, I'm so sorry for your loss when it was, you know? [LAUGHS] CHARLIE BENNETT: She'd already handled it. ROBIN FAY: She'd already handled it. But it was a really interesting situation. And I think one of the things it made me think a little bit more about is that we just never know exactly who's behind these accounts. We assume that it's a real person. And in that case, it was a real person until it wasn't. And then all of those automated things that he set up to run. CHARLIE BENNETT: Half person, half bot in a way. ROBIN FAY: Half person, half bot, yes. FRED RASCOE: But that brings a little conundrum to mind for me. So when this person was healthy and tweeting, presumably, at that time, it was also a bot that this person set up. So did that change how you perceived the information that this bot was retweeting? So you were interested in these things that it was retweeting because you understood who you thought was tweeting it live and appreciated that kind of curation. Did that change how you thought about what content you consumed when he was alive? ROBIN FAY: Not really because the content was still things that he had picked out. And most of the content he picked out, I have no idea how far ahead he had scheduled content. So that, to me, was really interesting to think about. Like could you just schedule your account to tweet for the next 100 years [LAUGHS] and live on into eternity that way? CHARLIE BENNETT: I'm sure someone has done that. I mean, there has to-- ROBIN FAY: Yeah, and then how do you explain to someone what you've done? Or do you need to explain to someone? But he was a person who had been very active in doing like meetups and really connecting in terms of community. So I think it made it a little bit different because he had been so active in terms of talking to his followers and things like that, and like organizing meetups and real-life events to go along with it. So I think if he had not been that kind of person, if he had just been a person who just retweeted a few times a day, then it would feel a little differently. CHARLIE BENNETT: So you've got a complementary story to that that has to do with Facebook, not a taking down, but a keeping up story. ROBIN FAY: Yes. So I recently had an extended member of my family who died. And it was someone that I only really knew through Facebook, but we talked a little bit about genealogy and some other family things. And her daughter posted that she had died and everything. And then within a couple of days, she said I'm going to shut down this account. I'm just going to delete it. And it was really interesting to see the community really step forward and say like, oh, no, no, no. We love being able to see photos of her. And we love seeing her writings and things like that and seeing what she shared and stuff. And I thought that was really interesting to see how as a community, we do still want those sort of a living will or a place that we can have that memorium for people. CHARLIE BENNETT: And one of the automated processes in Facebook is going back and pulling moments or interactions and reposting them into your timeline. So if that Facebook account exists, then that's going to happen. ROBIN FAY: Right. And so I think one of the things that I was reading more about how they do memorial pages. And they're just now working out a lot of this, but they're looking at shutting it down in terms of it won't be suggested as a friend to you anymore. So if that person would come up and you had some connection, they just won't suggest that page for you. And as I think as more people who are on social media start to die, then that's a big thing to think about is you don't want somebody coming up as active or alive in your feed if they're not that. [LAUGHTER] FRED RASCOE: Well, we will be back with more about social media and death and undeath on the left side of the hour. [MUSIC PLAYING] JAD ABUMRAD (VOICEOVER): Hey, this is Jad Abumrad from Radiolab, and you are listening to Lost in the Stacks, the one and only Research Library Rock'n'Roll Radio Show here on WREK in Atlanta. [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: Today's Lost In The Stacks is called "Metadata of the Dead," which is making me think of the life and death of my own web presence. By my count, in the last 20 years, I've had 19 social media accounts on 16 different platforms under eight different names, and only three of those accounts still exist. I've been deleted or disappeared off DiaryLand, LiveJournal, Friendster, MySpace, Vine, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Delicious, Blogger, Flickr, and polonoid. And come to think of it, I guess I should have included Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, Pinterest, and LibraryThing. [LAUGHTER] Next year, I'm getting rid of my Twitter and my Instagram. What will be left of me on the web after that? Oh, right, roughly 1,000 episodes of Lost In The Stacks, Consilience with Pete and Charlie, the North Avenue Lounge, Library 20/20, and Supercontext. My web presence won't be gone or dead. It'll just be different. File this set under B3148.S54. [DEADBOY AND THE ELEPHANTMEN, "STOP. I'M ALREADY DEAD"] I'm already dead ABBY: You just heard. "Stop, I'm Already Dead" By Deadboy and the Elephantmen. Before that was "Graveyard" by Dead Moon. And before that was "Dead Billy" by Big Black. Those were songs about what leads to death and what happens next. FRED RASCOE: Our show today is called "Metadata of the Dead." And our guest is Robin Fay aka Georgiawebgurl on the internet, that's Georgiawebgurl, all one word, and G-U-R-L. So to find your social media online, that's what we need to do. CHARLIE BENNETT: To find the stuff she wants you to find, right? ROBIN FAY: Exactly. [LAUGHS] FRED RASCOE: Exactly, yeah. So we're talking about, like this zombie, like our social media is our metadata and it lives on after we die. But interesting concept that we're getting to and we haven't talked about yet is how artificial intelligence could be crafted to enhance, create, further a social media presence online after one is gone. Like if you were so inclined, I guess, Georgiawebgurl could continue to create content based on content that you've already posted in the past. ROBIN FAY: Yeah, and I think too when you look at the ability of artificial intelligence to start making some contextual analysis, you could go through my 20,000 or so tweets and figure out what topics I've covered the most. And you could really just go out there and find similar things, so really looking at what's the subject for that and find similar things to that. So I think that's one of the things that it's going to be interesting to see if we're doing more of that in the future. I know there's been some early attempts at robots actually having conversations with people. And of course, we're starting to see some AI communication in terms of Help Desk stuff. So you ask for help, and the robot kind of comes back to you and says, like, well, what do you need help with? And you tell them a topic. CHARLIE BENNETT: Doesn't the robot also tell you its name? ROBIN FAY: It does. CHARLIE BENNETT: Hi, I'm Chris. ROBIN FAY: It does. CHARLIE BENNETT: What can I help you with today? Please use a keyword that I am programmed to respond to. ROBIN FAY: Yeah, so they're trying to build that this is a human connection even when it's not. CHARLIE BENNETT: [LAUGHS] ROBIN FAY: So, you know, it's probably not that far from being able to take what we've crafted online and actually create an online presence that feels like an authentic person. CHARLIE BENNETT: I do want to have fun with this joke though because we're talking about connection and social media being this way to connect with other humans, in a compassionate and useful way. But then there's this sort of zombie way-- ROBIN FAY: [LAUGHS] CHARLIE BENNETT: --of connecting where you're just pushing out content that's not really thought through. It's automated. And if someone tries to connect, there's no connection, and then they eat your brain. ROBIN FAY: [LAUGHS] CHARLIE BENNETT: Right? So zombie metadata has been kind of your conception of data that's out of control-- out of our control. Talk a little bit about that. ROBIN FAY: Well, I mean, I think it can be when you think about how our information is used. For one thing, maybe you sign up to try a new software, or you sign up for something and suddenly you start getting a bunch of mail, or you're shopping someplace, you're shopping online, and then you look in Facebook and suddenly you're getting all these ads that you're like, well, gosh, I just looked at shoes, and now they're all in my feed, exactly what I was looking at. So that sometimes seems like it's OK. Like, oh, yeah, I was looking for that. But a lot of times it is feeling a little bit intrusive, like, well, gosh, they knew what I was looking at over here on this completely different website. And it's in control of somebody to a certain extent. But there are times when we get ads that are completely unrelated to something we may be looking at. And especially if you're using a computer that's not yours, then you're just going to suddenly start getting ads for what somebody else may be looking at. Or if you're in a library, you may be getting ads for who knows what. [LAUGHS] CHARLIE BENNETT: For the whole day of searches, oh yeah. ROBIN FAY: For the whole-- so I think we are starting to see that that information, that data is getting a little bit out of control. And then in terms of our privacy and how our information is used, there's been so many cases lately of our data being used in different ways, our data being stolen, our identities being stolen. That's all data out of control. CHARLIE BENNETT: So I guess I feel like we've just set up all of these questions or these potential things that will happen to us. Is there anything, is there a recommendation, is there a way to rethink social media so that we can avoid this kind of zombification or this uncontrolled ghost-in-the-machine self that's flowing around? ROBIN FAY: Well, I do think one thing that everybody who is on social media needs to do is make sure that they have a plan for their social media after they die. And that can be something you can put in your will. It can be something that you can send to a friend and say like, hey, I'm going to give you a particular password, or in Facebook, you can actually assign somebody to be that person for you. So starting to think about what happens with that, just like we would think about anything else that's out there. But even someone who doesn't have a lot of possessions and you might think, well, I don't need to really write a will because I don't own anything, you have that social media identity out there, and so being able to at least account for that. And then, of course, just trying to keep track of our identity as much as we can. If you get one of those notices that says your financial information or your password has been compromised, to change that stuff. And I think it's up to us really to be more proactive. And also pay attention when legislation comes up that has to do with identity and privacy and stuff like that. Because it's important for us to know what our legal protections are for this stuff too. So trying to manage it as much as we can, although it feels out of control right now. [LAUGHS] FRED RASCOE: This is Lost in the Stacks. Our guest is the librarian and technologist, Robin Fay aka at Georgiawebgurl, now and forever on the internet. ROBIN FAY: [LAUGHS] FRED RASCOE: Thank you very much for speaking with us, Robin. ROBIN FAY: You're welcome. [MUSIC PLAYING] ABBY: File this set under BD444.M3. [LE PEAU ET LES OS, "FUN TO BE DEAD, BOB FLANAGAN"] ABBY: You just heard "Fun to be Dead, Bob Flanagan" by Le peau et les os. Before that was "Death's Alright With Me" by The Dead Milkmen. Before that was "Everybody Loves You When You're Dead" by The Stranglers. Those were songs about learning to live with death. [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: For Halloween, our show was called "Metadata of the Dead." We talked about how we use social media and the selves we present online. FRED RASCOE: We also talked about some real-life stories from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter that live on after an actual death. WENDY HAGENMAIER: And we talked about zombie metadata, how it tracks us, and how it might create artificially intelligent identities that live on for good or for ill. FRED RASCOE: Muah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. CHARLIE BENNETT: So I hope like any good scary movie, that we are all now a little worried about something that we never thought about before. [LAUGHTER] And with that, let's roll those credits. Got anything spooky? [MUSIC PLAYING] ABBY: Lost in The Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, produced by Charlie Bennett, Ameet Doshi, Wendy Hagenmaier, and Fred Rascoe. FRED RASCOE: Abby was our engineer today, also our French grammar consultant. And the show was brought to you in part by The Library Collective and their social and professional network, League of Awesome Librarians. Find out more about them at thelibrarycollective.org. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Legal counsel and a secret login to the Friendster relaunch-- FRED RASCOE: Whoa. WENDY HAGENMAIER: --were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. CHARLIE BENNETT: Special thanks to Robin for being on the show, to all the folks working to keep us in control of our data, And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Find us online at lostinthestacks.org. And you can subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix. CHARLIE BENNETT: Next week on Lost in the Stacks, Private Interest, Public Space. What's a Library To Do? FRED RASCOE: It is time for our last song today. And I don't know about you, but I've learned a couple of things today. First, I've learned that a lot of songs about death have a healthy dose of humor in them. CHARLIE BENNETT: That's the only way you can do it, Fred. FRED RASCOE: And second, it turns out that death is not the end of our social media and our interaction with the world. So let's close with Bob Dylan's "Death is Not the End," the version as performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, right here on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great weekend, everyone. [NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS, "DEATH IS NOT THE END"]