overview

memorials

spirits

scams

estates
























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Profiles:

Social
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Community

Blogging

Cyber-
Suicide

     Overview

This note considers online 'afterlives'.

It covers -

• this overview
• memorials - the 'cyber memorial' (aka cyber cemetery or virtual cemetery) phenomenon.
• spirits - faith and fantasy in the age of the telegraph, radio and net
• scams - online psychics and other scams
• estates - questions about ownership of blogs, personal sites and email after the death of the author.

It supplements discussion elsewhere on this site regarding social software, communities, blogging and cybersuicide.

     introduction

Canadian billionaire Roy Thomson - famously described as "an animated cash register" - was once asked by Nikita Khrushchev what good all the loot would do him, since he couldn't take it with him. Thomson replied "Then I'm not going".

We can sympathise with his reluctance to depart for realms unknown but in practice people do not have a choice, contrary to visions by transhumanists and others of uploading consciousness to a server or surviving in perpetuity (without incontinence aids or walking frames) through use of nanotechnology.

The emergence of the web has seen appearance of 'cybermemorials' as virtual spaces for commemoration of the dead (human and otherwise) and companionship among the bereaved.

It has seen colonisation by enthusiasts for 'alternative realities', including people offering to predict the future by email (who needs a crystal ball or the lines of fate on a human hand when mediums can take payments over the net?).

It has also posed questions for people wondering what happens to their blogs, personal sites and webmail accounts when they join Roy and Nikita.

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