Ah, the halcyon days of youth, when we pledged eternal loyalty to our current best friend, frequently sealing the bargain with the exchange of tokens or blood! But, fortunately, we grew up, and learned the folly of making long-term contracts without an escape clause.

Our wisdom was even continued into the realm of technology. As you know (or should know) entities with whom you communicate on Facebook are called “friends.” (Personally, your interlocutor, The Happy Pessimist, considers this term inapt. There are many people with whom I communicate whom I do NOT consider friends, e.g., the traffic cop handing me a citation, the TSA agent who is attempting to goose me, and the NSA spook who is currently reading this post.) But the vast cyborg that is Facebook permits me to unfriend somebody or something (you never know what is hidden behind that screen: Alan Turing’s ghost, Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Terminator suit, the Blob, me.)

But there is a new threat on the horizon.

Israeli entrepreneur Shelly Furman Asa has now developed a website which is a particularly potent competitor to Facebook – you have to be dead to join the site. Mr. Asa’s site, neshama.org, is populated by pictures of headstones. Putatively, the purpose of this site is to allow folks to memorialize the deceased and spread their memories far and wide.

I predict major problems. Suppose, exempli gratia, that your ex-girlfriend dies in a horrible car accident and is electronically linked to your most recent wife, whom you bumped off. Do you think they will be happy? Do you think that they will haunt you? More to the point, how can they unlink? Failing a Ouija board, how can the connection be modified?

I do not believe that this concept is ready for prime time.