The Ethics and Impact of Digital Immortality

The concept of digital immortality has emerged over the past decade and is defined here as the continuation of an active or passive digital presence after death. Advances in knowledge management, machine to machine communication, data mining and artificial intelligence are now making a more active presence after death possible. This paper examines the research and literature around active digital immortality and explores the emotional, social, financial, and business impact of active digital immortality on relations, friends, colleagues and institutions. The issue of digital immortality also raises issues about the legal implications of a possible autonomous presence that reaches beyond mortal existence, and this will also be investigated. The final section of the paper questions whether digital immortality is really a concern and reflects on the assumptions about it in relation to neoliberal capitalism. It suggests that digital immortality may in fact merely be a clever ruse which in fact is likely to have little, if any legal impact despite media assumptions and hyperbole

Towards a postmortal society of virtualised ancestors? : The Virtual Deceased Person and the preservation of the social bond

Research about digital immortality has grown in recent years, predominantly focusing on either the social effects of forms of digital immortalisation or on the available technologies. Few studies, however, adopt a clear sociological focus that remains attentive to the ontological dimension of digital immortality. Adopting a future-oriented perspective, this article contributes to the sociological study of digital immortality by introducing the concept of the Virtual Deceased Person (VDP), a speculative artefact that convincingly simulates the mannerisms and character traits of a deceased person, allowing them to operate as social actors posthumously and preserve the human social bond. The article draws on anthropological and microsocial theory to characterise the VDP as a persona of the dead given agency and embodiment by future thanatechnologies. By positioning the concept within the digital immortality discourse and expanding the scope of the social bond to the study of digital immortality, I portray the VDP as a manifestation of posthumous personhood, arguing that it might facilitate preserving the social bond between the living and the dead throughout its creation process and its reintegration into the world of the living. I further discuss its implications for the emergence of a postmortal society of socially active, virtualised ancestors.Peer reviewe

Book review: Online afterlives: immortality, memory and grief in digital culture by Davide Sisto

In Online Afterlives: Immortality, Memory and Grief in Digital Culture, Davide Sisto explores how digital technologies have come to impact our relationship with death, traversing the numerous digital devices and practices that are shaping mourning and grief today. Illustrated by multiple real-world examples and supported by relevant literature, this book offers an excellent introduction to death and digital culture, finds Mona Oikarinen. Online Afterlives: Immortality, Memory and Grief in Digital Culture. Davide Sisto (translated by Bonnie McClellan-Broussard). MIT Press. 2020

Digital Theology: Is the Resurrection Virtual?

Many recent writers have developed a rich system of theological concepts inspired by computers. This is digital theology. Digital theology shares many elements of its eschatology with Christian post-millenarianism. It promises a utopian perfection via technological progress. Modifying Christian soteriology, digital theology makes reference to four types of immortality. I look critically at each type. The first involves transferring our minds from our natural bodies to superior computerized bodies. The second and third types involve bringing into being a previously living person, or person who has never existed, within an artificial digital environment. The fourth involves promotion of our lives into some higher level computational reality

Digital Immortality

The idea of digital immortality is not new. The word digital has remained the moniker for “the latest technology” for three decades. We are technophiliacs because, as Freud might tell us – besides our own shit – technology is the one thing we make ourselves. Human kind – men in particular – have always tended to fall in love with their creations. This has been the case from the Greek myth of Pygmalion’s most beautiful ivory statue, to the marvel – again scatological – of Jacques de Vaucanson’s defecating mechanical duck of 1739. This perhaps was the inspiration for Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s bold proposition of Man a Machine published in 1748. The philosophical claim that we are ourselves actually only machines was of course made by Rene Descartes almost exactly a century earlier, in 1637

Science trends and Digital immortality: AI accelerates movement towards an unattainable goal

The development of AI, social networks, digital technologies, and in particular Big Data, has brought humanity closer to digital immortality. Despite the risks of psychological, social and technological adaptation to using the possibilities of digital immortality, it is confidently introduced into various spheres of social life. However, currently it is mainly about simulating immortality, since decision-making is still beyond the reach of this technology

Classification of Approaches to Technological Resurrection

Abstract. Death seems to be a permanent event, but there is no actual proof of its irreversibility. Here we list all known ways to resurrect the dead that do not contradict our current scientific understanding of the world. While no method is currently possible, many of those listed here may become feasible with future technological development, and it may even be possible to act now to increase their probability. The most well-known such approach to technological resurrection is cryonics. Another method is indirect mind uploading, or digital immortality, namely the preservation of data about a person to allow for future reconstruction by powerful AI. More speculative ways to immortality include combinations of future superintelligence on a galactic scale, which could use simulation to resurrect all possible people, and new physical laws, which may include time-travel or obtaining information from the past. Acausal trade with parallel worlds could help combine random resurrection and reconstruction based on known data without loss of share of worlds where I exist (known as existence measure). Quantum immortality could help to increase the probability of success for cryonics and digital immortality. There many possible approaches to technological resurrection and thus if large-scale future technological development occurs, some form of resurrection is inevitable

Brave New Worlds: Transcending the Humanities/STEM Divide through Creative Writing

Creative writing offers a critical and innovative form of inquiry promoting integrative learning that transcends disciplinary barriers. Authors first provide an overview of the scholarship on creative writing pedagogy, its unique capacity to engage a range of knowledge domains, and its significance for honors education. They then offer primary examples of incorporating creative writing projects into two honors classes that bridge STEM fields and the humanities. Analyses of student reflections (n = 35) in relation to learning outcomes strongly suggest that creative writing helps students explore course concepts through several ways of knowing—critical, situational, and affective—while fostering new perspectives on these concepts, their interconnections, and their implications. The value of creative writing as a platform for self-directed and interdisciplinary learning within the transdisciplinary context of honors is discussed

Gods of Transhumanism

Purpose of the article is to identify the religious factor in the teaching of transhumanism, to determine its role in the ideology of this flow of thought and to identify the possible limits of technology interference in human nature. Theoretical basis. The methodological basis of the article is the idea of transhumanism. Originality. In the foreseeable future, robots will be able to pass the Turing test, become “electronic personalities” and gain political rights, although the question of the possibility of machine consciousness and self-awareness remains open. In the face of robots, people create their assistants, evolutionary competition with which they will almost certainly lose with the initial data. For successful competition with robots, people will have to change, ceasing to be people in the classical sense. Changing the nature of man will require the emergence of a new – posthuman – anthropology. Conclusions. Against the background of scientific discoveries, technical breakthroughs and everyday improvements of the last decades, an anthropological revolution has taken shape, which made it possible to set the task of creating inhumanly intelligent creatures, as well as changing human nature, up to discussing options for artificial immortality. The history of man ends and the history of the posthuman begins. We can no longer turn off this path, however, in our power to preserve our human qualities in the posthuman future. The theme of the soul again reminded of itself, but from a different perspective – as the theme of consciousness and self-awareness. It became again relevant in connection with the development of computer and cloud technologies, artificial intelligence technologies, etc. If a machine ever becomes a "man", then can a man become a "machine"? However, even if such a hypothetical probability would turn into reality, we cannot talk about any form of individual immortality or about the continuation of existence in a different physical form. A digital copy of the soul will still remain a copy, and I see no fundamental possibility of isolating a substrate-independent mind from the human body. Immortality itself is necessary not so much for stopping someone’s fears or encouraging someone’s hopes, but for the final solution of a religious issue. However, the gods hold the keys to heaven hard and are unlikely to admit our modified descendants there

Lestat, C\u27est Moi : Anne Rice\u27s Revelation of Self Through The Vampire Chronicles

In lieu of an abstract, below is the article\u27s first paragraph. To most, the word vampire conjures visions of Halloween, of old black and white horror movies, of Bela Lugosi whispering I vant to suck your blood. Yet for Anne Rice, this view of the vampire is much too limiting; true, her series of five Vampire Chronicles does focus mainly around the dark hero, Lestat, who is indeed, a blood-sucking monster. However, The Vampire Chronicles are far more than a collection of murderous escapades; they are, symbolically, a chronicle of the author\u27s spiritual journey - from her concern with commenting on social dynamics in the first installment, Interview with the Vampire, to her own personal confrontation with the religious experience and redemption in the last, Memnoch the Devil