things to do in the digital afterlife when you're dead

Things to do in the digital afterlife when you’re dead

Dan Buzzodaniel.buzzo@uwe.ac.uk

This is me*

* also available without hair.

this is also me.

So, what is it that makes us, us ?

These are all parts of ‘Us’

What we say and do, the things we make, what we express.

Taking this idea of how we define ourselves.

who we are does not stop at the edge of our skin

‘Consciousness is not restricted to the brain.’ ‘Consciousness is the function of an organism, not an organ.’

Pepperell

The human organism is changing.

For millions of years we have been augmenting our physical abilities

After we started augmenting our physical abilities we started on our mental abilities

Originally we extended our lives by writing & publishing static, analogue data

Now we create active, digital data that is fluid and alive.

Increasingly our lives are being lived and expressed digitally.

What happens next ?

Since before history mankind has asked the question

Ideas and references to it are everywhere around us, in art, language, literature, culture and philosophy

We want and need an afterlife

We can still interact with something of them but their legacy personalities are ‘passive’ like the media they used to extend themselves.

Previous generations have lived on after their deaths though the extensions of their selves they

generated during their lives.

Digital is not by its nature a passive medium

The Digital Afterlife ?

ownership of our data is currently problematic but significant efforts are underway to consolidate and

bring personal data under our own control

focused on semantics and interoperability

“People lie. People are lazy. People are stupid, know thyself is a tall order and people are

notoriously poor at describing themselves and their own behaviour. Schemas aren't neutral.

Metrics influence results. There's more than one way to describe something”

Cory Doctorow

Unfortunately for the semantic web…

We are beginning to externalise preferences in a dynamic way

Simple emergent behaviour is already happening

In the future ideas of a digital afterlife are ever-present.

Take control of your own information

Short term

aggregate and collate personal information in a useful way

Mid term

Long term

‘Digital natives’ are born into this analogue/digital way of being.

The current generation of digital natives have new perceptions…

…of the personal, social, political, economic and even the physical.

Why not also the corporeal ?

Not as continuity…

…but as metamorphosis

Thank you

Dan Buzzodaniel.buzzo@uwe.ac.uk

In memory of Pete FernKing of the Bristol geeks