The Creation and Inheritance of Digital Afterlives

You Only Live Twice
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-030-91686-2
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 192 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 286 g

Reihe: Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and its Successors

This book explores how social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp ‘accidentally’ enable and nurture the creation of digital afterlives, and, importantly, the effect this digital inheritance has on the bereaved. Debra J. Bassett offers a holistic exploration of this phenomenon and presents qualitative data from three groups of participants: service providers, digital creators, and digital inheritors.

For the bereaved, loss of data, lack of control, or digital obsolescence can lead to a second loss, and this book introduces the theory of ‘the fear of second loss’. Bassett argues that digital afterlives challenge and disrupt existing grief theories, suggesting how these theories might be expanded to accommodate digital inheritance.

This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to sociologists, cyber psychologists, philosophers, death scholars, and grief counsellors. But Bassett’s book can also be seen as a canary in the coal mine for the‘intentional’ Digital Afterlife Industry (DAI) and their race to monetise the dead. This book provides an understanding of the profound effects uncontrollable timed posthumous messages and the creation of thanabots could have on the bereaved, and Bassett’s conception of a Digital Do Not Reanimate (DDNR) order and a voluntary code of conduct could provide a useful addition to the DAI.

Even in the digital societies of the West, we are far from immortal, but perhaps the question we really need to ask is: who wants to live forever?

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bassett, Debra J.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophie der Technik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Tod, Sterbehilfe: Soziale und Ethische Themen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wissenssoziologie, Wissenschaftssoziologie, Techniksoziologie
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Angewandte Informatik Computeranwendungen in Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: Contextualising Digital Afterlives.- 2. The Service Providers – Both Intentional and Accidental.- 3. A Philosophical Detour.- 4. From Digital Footprints to the Ultimate Selfie: The Experiences and Motivations of Digital Creators.- 5. Why Do Digital Afterlives Matter? The Experiences and Motivations of Digital Inheritors.- 6. Losing the Data of the Dead and Expanding Existing Models of Bereavement.- 7. The Future of Digital Death.- 8. Final Thoughts and Reflection.

Über Autor(innen)

Debra J. Bassett received her PhD from the University of Warwick and is a visiting fellow at the University of Bath. Her qualitative research focuses on how, through avatar creation, blogs, vlogs and social network sites, people are creating and nurturing bonds with the dead, and how this human-computer interaction may affect how people grieve.