The Question Relay: Digital Death

8/8/2019 The Question Relay: Digital Death

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-question-relay-digital-death 1/89

DIGITALDEATH

\\QUESTIONRELAY\\

Introducing:The Participants

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11. Ahmet Sekercioglu 93relays to Death Reference Desk 95

12. Richard Banks 99relays to Death Reference Desk 101

13. Peregrine Andrews 105

relays to Antonis Tryphonos 107

14. Janis Jefferies 111relays to Death Reference Desk 113

15. Rob Walker 119relays to Richard Banks 121

16. Britta Rensing 127relays to Yolanda Kading 129

17. Esther Makaay 133relays to Rob Walker 135

18. John Wood 139relays to Ahmet Sekercioglu 141

19. Niels De Jong 145relays to Michela Magas 147

20. Duncan Fairfax 153relays to Stacey Pitsillides 155

21. Judi Clark 159relays to Roland Van Rijswijk 161

22. Antonis Tryphonos 165relays to Nathan Lustig 167

RELAYS:

1. Stacey Pitsillides 1relays to Esther Makkay 3relays to Britta Rensing 9

2. Toni Sant 15

relays to Peregrine Andrews 17

3. Niki Lambropoulos 21relays to Duncan Fairfax 23

4. Nathan Lustig 29

relays to Anonymous 31relays to Janis Jefferies 35

5. Roland Van Rijswijk 39

relays to Janis Jefferies 41

6. Michela Magas 45relays to Judi Clark 47

7. Death Reference Desk 53relays to Toni Sant 55relays to Niels De Jong 59relays to Elaine Kasket 63

8. Elaine Kasket 71relays to Niki Lambropoulos 73

9. Anonymous 77relays to Nathan Lustig 79

10. Yolanda Kading 83relays to Elaine Kasket 85



WHAT IS DIGITAL DEATH?

Digital Death is defined as the deathof a living being and the way itaffects the digital world or the deathof a digital object and the way itaffects a living being.

SO WHAT IS A‘QUESTION RELAY?’

Basically, one person (in this caseme) starts the relay by simply asking

a question. This question is thenpassed on to the most relevant person,who answers it. Then this person hastheir chance to pose a question. Thisquestion is then passed on and thecycle continues.

WHAT KIND OF QUESTIONS?

The question may be asked from a rangeof disciplines and frameworks, theymay be academic, economic, personal,professional or simply questions ofcuriosity about the wide areaof ‘death and the digital.’



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STACEY PITSILLIDESMRes Goldsmiths Design Student!Research focuses on Digital Death,Digital Afterlife and DigitalHeritage.

LINKSwww.digitaldeathandbeyond.blogspt.comwww.vimeo.com/album/102363www.digitaldeath.eu/

CONTACT ME @RestInPixels

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http://www.vimeo.com/album/102363

http://www.digitaldeath.eu/

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QUESTION:

Do you think we need to begin to makeprovisions for what happens to you and

your loved ones digital informationand identity(s) after death, do youthink the simple existence of a‘digital self’ affects the ‘way’ weas a society remember and mourn lovedones?

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ESTHER MAKAAY {A:

Well that’s actually quite a fewquestions included in one, youcheated. Ok I think this question has,two specific fragments and one is, doyou think we need to make provisions

for what happens to you and you lovedones digital information and perhapsidentities after death because to methat also has to do with the way weportray ourselves digitally and onlineand it can be aspects of ourselvesthat could live on separately. I couldimagine even people with a blog orsome alter ego to allow others to eventake over their identity and carry on

in honor, if you want, or in spiritsand to enhance that or elaborate onthat with their own aspects. So maybethe second part the simple existenceof a digital affects the way we asa society remember and mourn lovedones is not as separate as I firstthought about it. Because I havedigital contacts that only existin virtual worlds. I have people Ihardly ever see in real life but Italk to them quite regularly and sothey will probably feel more connectedto me digitally then in real life.No that is a different aspect of it,because that is about mourning andremembering. So yeah, absolutely butI’m also very curious about what isgoing to happen to these pseudonyms

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ESTHER MAKAAY

or partial identities that we havebecause they’re not with us as a realperson but there is a very importantaspect of us that is very distinctsometimes or very important to some

groups. Maybe its also similar to theway that if a pubic figure dies, thenhis family will love him and the workrelations will mourn in their own waybut also the public has its own rightto a piece of whoever is deceased andI think that is sort of similar towhat will happen digitally becausesomehow these digital aspects of usseem to be an enlargement of the way

we compartmentalize our identity inreal life as well. Yea it’s a complexquestion coz one of the things I waspondering when coming up with my ownquestion was how acceptable will it beto us in, well probably not right nowbut in a few years time or in futureto really see our digital alter egosas sort of a semi-detached part ofourselves. Like if you have a rockband and you know one of the membersdies and the others can continue butthere’s only so much you can changeuntil you really have to change thename of the band because its not thesame group any more and I have seenthis sort of going on online wherethere is this digital alter ego whichis somewhat separate from the peoples…



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ESTHER MAKAAY

like the discussion going on with theStig, is it like actually one guydriving the car or is it different F1drivers just filling in the role andyou know playing this guy, so maybe

it’s more to theatre and acting aswell, although there is more real lifetruth in it of course. I’m not sure.

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QUESTION:

What is the place of religion andspirituality within Digital Death,

to expand this slightly, what is theritual transfer of death ceremoniesin the virtual space and what do theyprovide which is different from aphysical ritual?

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BRITTA RENSING {A:

Well I would say that one of theimportant things of the digital realmis that people can be different ifthey want to be but they can alsobe themselves. Just a couple days

ago I came across an example wheresomebody was different. I had a veryinteresting conversation on SecondLife recently where one ritualparticipant said that he loved to beyoung in Second Life, meaning hisavatar being young while in real lifehe was already old and judging fromhis small profile picture he was maybesay sixty or so, the virtual world

suggests that someone is not as closeto death as he might be in bodilyreality, so this may be an exampleof consciously not having ritualtransfer, as I think the personalcomponent of the person belongs to theritual as well because without personsritual would not take place.

On the other side you of course havestrong ritual transfer in virtualspace from my field of studies, whichis neo-paganism and wicca I cansee that the wheel of the year iscelebrated with many transfer elementsin the virtual space. The celebrationof the wheel of the year focuses onthe topics of being born, growing up,fulfilling personal tasks, growing

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BRITTA RENSING

old and then dying and especiallythe celebrations on Mabon, which isthe autumn equinox on the 21st ofSeptember which is coming quite soonand the Samhain celebrated on the

31st of October broach the issue oflooking back on ones life and focusingon death and also the awareness thatdeath is coming nearer each day oflife, the interconnectedness of lifeand death are an important topic forneo-paganism and when you look atritual transfer to the virtual worldyou especially find the transferof lets says acts and symbols. For

example the establishing of the ritualcircle, the calling of the fourdirections, then the symbols like:grain being reaped and wine beingdrunk, the door between the worldsbeing opened and so on, so actuallyI think it is a vivid combination ofactually transferring some elementsand not transferring other elementswhich is the interesting part of itwhen somebody chooses not to transferelements and do other things andchange them. I think the key word forpagan rituals and especially paganrituals in the virtual space dealingwith death is energy and raisingenergy. They explain it: the energycrosses all borders and it is sent toheal people mentally

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BRITTA RENSING

and physically and it is meant tostrengthen participants and otherpeople for daily life as well as forcoping with mortality. Energy is seenas keeping the person alive as well

as being given back to the universewhen someone dies, this energy is seenas going from the bodily life to thevirtual world and back and for neopagans the energy concept strengthensthe validity of celebrating ritualsonline because of the raised energyuses the electronic channels whichbuild up the virtual world so thisis basically what I was thinking

about the question and how to combinereligious items and spiritualityissues with the digital death topic.

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DR TONI SANTDr Toni Sant is Director of Researchat the University of Hull’sScarborough School of Arts and New

Media, where he also lectures onPerformance & Creative Technologies.

He is the founder and creativedirector of the MaltaMedia OnlineNetwork, executive editor of theApplied and Interactive Theatre Guide,and book reviews editor for theInternational Journal of PerformanceArts & Digital Media.

His research interests include the useof the Internet in/for performance,live art, applied theatre, interactivemultimedia, podcasting, and thesocio-cultural aspects of newmedia, particularly in marginalisedcommunities.

LINKSwww.tonisant.com

CONTACT ME @tonisant

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QUESTION:

Inscribing elements of our

consciousness in digital formats wouldseem to make for longevity of presencebeyond our physical death, but is thisan illusion rather than a fact?

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PEREGRINE ANDREWS {A:

Well, I suppose it depends how youdefine presence really. I mean, Theexample that I am thinking about mostobviously would be facebook wherepeople post into facebook and even if

we arnt doing it often we are stillputting things up that are about thepeople that we are, the things thatwe are doing, the thoughts that weare having so those are elements ofour consciousness and as far as I amaware with facebook all contributionsremain in theory forever, I meanforever is a big word but as far aswe understand forever with a system

like facebook it is forever, theydon’t delete things. People are ableto go onto facebook page and look atthings that person may have said rightat the beginning of the creation ofthat account. So if someone has hada facebook account for many yearsthat could be many many thousandsof contributions. Many thousands oflittle slithers of consciousness, ifyou like, and yes if that account is

not deleted in death than all of thoselittle moments will continue to exist.Does that constitute a presence, Ithink in a way it does, especially ifyour experience of a person is onlyvia their facebook page. In many caseswhen you look at people’s facebookcontributions you don’t necessarily

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interact with them. So its this kindof one ended thing. Well… in someways, looking at those things aftera persons death is no different fromlooking at them when they are alive,

especially if you are not going to tryand contribute back. So… its not anillusion… it is a fact.

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NIKI LAMBROPOULOS(INTELLIGENESIS)Dr. Niki Lambropoulos is a researcher,

consultant, e-learning expert, HCIdesigner, and online communities’manager. Her interests fall in thefield of Collective Intelligence,translated into CollaborativeE-Learning in Computer SupportedCollaborative Learning; Idea and GroupManagement in Distributed Leadership;and User Innovation Networks inInnovation and Open Innovation.

She currenlty works as the Director ofIntelligenesis and as a Human-ComputerInteraction Education research fellowfor the EU funded project EuroCAT inLSBU.

LINKSwww.nikilambropoulos.com

CONTACT ME @nikilambro

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QUESTION:

The job of the mirror neurons in ourbrain is to create the presence of theSelf as well as the co-presence of

the Other(s) in both real, digital orany other world via empathy. If thereis such an analogy, then in what waysthe absence of one element i.e. theabsence of the Other is affecting ourview of us and our worlds?

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DUNCAN FAIRFAX {A:

This is a very interesting questionand without being too pedanticallyacademically about it, I think thereare some aspects of the questionthat need to be substantially

considered because as is the casewith an enormous amount of academicdiscourse, the overly metaphoricalcross appropriation of one ideain one domain to another in manyinstances kind of leads to aninappropriate understanding. In someinstances possible trivializationor misappropriation of one idea inone domain to another. The actualscientific research on mirror neuronshas not been emphatically linked toany psychological conceptualization ofself or identity, in many instancesthey are probably most consequentiallythought of as being a mechanism ofenvironmental adaptation, they are alearning thing so that we can mimicour adaptive relationships to ourenvironment, the sort of epiphenomenalconstruction or conceptualization of

self in relationship to that doesn’thave any relationship to that kind ofmirror neuronal capacity if we weregoing to look at Churchland’s work ina kind of really strict eliminativematerialist conceptualization ofneurophysiological process, whateverother psychosocial embellishment

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we make of that idea, it is reallyjust that, they are core materialistphysical kind of processes. Sothere’s some underlying presumptionsand problems in the question in some

capacity. Then there is also theproblem with the fact that that other,however it’s construed or constitutedin this idea being constructedas a digital ‘other’ becauseevolutionarily, neurophysiologically,developmentally, that actual processis constructed prier to any overttechnological mediatization of thatrelationship so the mirror neuronalrelationship is constructed inrelationship to a care giver, nowthere may well be some kind of processof mediation in that relationshipgiven that then is kind of relevantto, appropriated by, some form oftechnological meditation but Ithink that kind of intracorporealintrasocial relationship is somethingthat precedes strict technologicalmediation so given all of that I’m

not quite sure how exactly to answerthe question but if I was to answerit kind of quite generally I thinkobviously the lack of the other inany form of mediation makes theconstitution of the self incrediblyproblematic and difficult I think themore fundamental question underlying

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DUNCAN FAIRFAX

all of this is something that I knowis essential to Stacey’s researchis what are the intrinsic questionsand problems in the technologicalmediatization of these relationships

and then how would we think thatquestion specifically in relationshipto technology I think is the more kindof significant or appropriate questionat stake.

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NATHAN LUSTIG(ENTRUSTET.COM)Nathan Lustig is the cofounder ofEntrustet.com, a website that helpspeople make last wishes for theirdigital assets. Founded in 2008,Entrustet is a free service that letsyou create a list of all of yourdigital assets (online accounts andcomputer files) and then decide which

accounts you’d like deleted and whichyou’d like transferred to heirs.

LINKSwww.entrustet.com

CONTACT ME @nathanlustig @entrustet

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QUESTION:

Currently websites are taking a ‘handsoff’ approach toward digital death, ifthey have any approach at all. Whatrole should companies be taking in thefuture and what should their policiestoward digital death look like?

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ANONYMOUS {A:

Even here in Switzerland we have hadevidence recently there is a largenumber of cases coming up as the usersof facebook grow older and at somepoint there will be a lot of users or

the survivors of those users causingtrouble for sites because so much datais unavailable to the survivors. Itis easy for them to put in the termsand conditions that they don’t bareany responsibility because peopledon’t read terms and conditions verycarefully so that this matter mightbe building up behind the scenes andthere would be many legal cases beingsolved in court. So perhaps individualcompanies like facebook will have tofind their own individual solutionsa second possibility is companieslike that who inherit, they pass ontheir access data to survivors sothat the controversy never arises,with companies like facebook, theirsurvivors can merely log on usingthe password data and no controversyarises, except then of course the

survivors have to deal with thedata and whether the data is in anyunderstandable format, is then anotherquestion.

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QUESTION:

Will online memorials replace

cemeteries? Will they augmentcemeteries? Or will we always wanta physical place to memorialize thedead?

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JANIS JEFFERIES {A:

I am not sure its an either or, itreminds me of course of Inyong’swonderful project ‘Scanned Memories,’he’s no longer with us, but he wasa PhD student from Korea and why he

was interested in online memorialswas the fact that they have run outof space in South Korea and accordingto culture and also the Shahidcommunity there, it very importanton the name day to go every year tovisit the cemetery now this causedenormous issues with traffic jams,with the lay of the land and the factthat in the end people couldn’t getthere and the burial grounds were

getting full. So he was particularlyinterested in online memorials becauseat least it would fulfill that senseof being present on the name day, insome way or another, so you couldsay that they augment cemeteries,in a virtual sense. I am sure thatsome people would prefer a physicalplace, again that would depend on aperson’s culture, location, rights

of passage. I think this might beintergenerational, I think it willlead to the physical context of deathbut the point about the online, thevirtual memorial is the way in whichthe social media should add a greatdeal to the life of that person and tothe memory of that person

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JANIS JEFFERIES

through all sorts of other multimediacontributions which you will not beable to access, I think, in a physicalcemetery unless of course you have,trees of talking posts, so in some

way, some kind of sensor activation,as you approach the cemetery whichwould begin to give you some kind ofmultimedia content.

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ROLAND VAN RIJSWIJKRoland Van Rijswijk works for SURFnet,the National Research and Education

Network in The Netherlands.

He has been active in the digitalarena since he was six years old atthe start of the 80s and has beenonline since the early 90s. He has aMaster’s Degree in Computer Science.

Roland’s professional researchinterests include digital securityand identity management. His personalinterests include digital photography,modern art and making music.

LINKSwww.surfnet.nl/enhttps://dnssec.surfnet.nl/ http://www.jumpfrog.nl/Jumpfrog/Start.html

CONTACT ME @reseauxsansfil

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http://api.twitter.com/reseauxsansfil

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https://dnssec.surfnet.nl/

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QUESTION:

Recently there have been mentions inthe news about faked online suicides(see for instance http://www.rhizome.org/discuss/view/45942). People havealso been reported as having diedwhile they were still alive (thisfamously happened to Steve Jobsof Apple and even had an impact onApple’s share prices). This raisessome interesting questions. Firstlyshould you take online announcementsof a death or of a suicide seriously?How can you prove or disprove suchannouncements? And is there such athing as digital suicide? If so, howwould you define it?

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JANIS JEFFERIES {A:

Well I think I am of a generationthat might slightly distrust onlineannouncements but on the otherhand if we think about fakes andthe whole issue of fakes, whetherthat’s to do with people writingbiographies or whatever. There aresome famous examples about some peoplewriting about their war experiencesparticularly and holocaust survivorsand some of these have proved to befakes. The British museum is full offakes and there is the question ofhow material gets authenticated andby whom. So that also brings in thequestion of an expert, but if there

is a question of a suicide then theother thing you have to think aboutis that this is still consideredillegal in some cultures particularlythose that are, how can I say heavilyCatholic orientated because it isconsidered a mortal sin to take yourown life under that high religiousobjection. So there are all sorts ofissues about what suicide is in any

context, and if it is in abilitousreign then I suppose it depends on howthose portals are managed, so that isa kind of management material issue asto how it gets authenticated unlessit becomes like wikapedia where youcan add in material but somehow thecommunity does take responsibility

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JANIS JEFFERIES

for having some degree of accuracythe thing that’s really interestinghere is what happens if this isficticious, to answer that questionabout Steve Jobs having an impacton apple share prices, you can onlyspeculate that that was a deliberateact to affect the stock market. Thatthen raises other things about thosekind of hacking interventions thatcan play havoc of course, in both thecommercial and the private world.

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MICHELA MAGASMichela Magas graduated from the RoyalCollege of Art in London with an MA

in Communication Art & Design andnow juggles design consulting withPhD research. She is co-founder ofthe Stromatolite Design Lab where herclients include Apple, Nike and Nokia.

Since 1995 Michela has been developingideas and innovation for product andmedia, conceptual design, systemsarchitecture, iconography and neweducation methodologies.

LINKShttp://stromatolite.com/http://www.mhashup.com/http://tinyurl.com/ydux73shttp://openproduct.blogspot.com/http://www.decibel151.com/http://www.criticalpractice.org/

CONTACT ME @elasticengine

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http://stromatolite.com/

http://www.mhashup.com/

http://tinyurl.com/ydux73s

http://openproduct.blogspot.com/

http://www.decibel151.com/

http://www.criticalpractice.org/

http://http//api.twitter.com/elasticengine

http://http//api.twitter.com/elasticengine


http://www.criticalpractice.org/



http://openproduct.blogspot.com/

http://tinyurl.com/ydux73s

http://www.mhashup.com/

http://stromatolite.com/



QUESTION:

On ghanaweb.com it states: “Funerals[for the Ga tribe in coastal Ghana]are a time of mourning, but also ofcelebration. The Ga people believethat when their loved ones die,they move on into another life …They honor their dead with brightlycolored coffins that celebrate the waythey lived. The coffins are designed

to represent an aspect of the deadperson’s life -- such as a car ifthey were a driver, a fish if theirlivelihood was the sea -- or a sewingmachine for a seamstress. They mightalso symbolize a vice -- such as abottle of beer or a cigarette.” Baringthis in mind, can digital death be theequivalent of Ghanaian Ga coffins?(see: http://www.ghanaweb.com/

GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/photo.day.php?ID=52081)

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JUDI CLARK {A: JUDI CLARK



JUDI CLARK {A:

The question that comes to me is aboutthe Ga tribe in coastal Ghana thatcelebrate their death through physicalmanifestations and beautifullydecorated coffins. So the questionbeing asked is can digital death bethe equivalent of these coffins and Ithink it certainly can and should.

There’s a lot of options in thedigital domain to represent yourselfin a visual way, and in a lot ofdifferent spiritual ways and a lotof different expressive ways. Thelimitation is that there is not aphysical thing that you actually can

hang on to. It really is somethingyou can explore and that can be moreinteractive. So, here’s a websitethat has a number of pictures of thedifferent coffins that are beingrepresented and as some of the coffinsare like a dead man’s love for smokingand his cigarette business. There isno end of expressiveness that peoplecan have about their lives and I think

that you can really be quite creative,and ways to express and to explore.

I think this could be a very healingprocess because not everybody has thesame life. Similarly there’s a lot ofplaces where the love of things, thelove of something can be expressed in

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JUDI CLARK

a lot of different ways so, I thinkit is incumbent on us to give this abit of thought and exploration, seewhat we want to communicate, or whatmetaphors there are for expressingthings that we love online. There’scertainly a lot of opportunity toexplore whatever we want.

Yea, that’s a very interesting thing,cultural bias about death. You know,if we have this, this reverent statewhere you know the funeral home andthe process of how we treat our deadpeople here is the only way we aregoing to see the world then that

really closes off a lot of expression.I think the world is a very colourfulplace and we should be curious abouthow we deal with death in the US. Thedeveloped world’s way of dealing withdeath isn’t really the only way ofhealing, anymore than it’s the onlyway of celebrating.

I think the Ga tribe is a very

interesting perspective: they put alot of time and energy into thesethings. You should see these pictures.You know for them to say theirs is theonly way is just as ludicrous as forus. You know we could have a hard timecoming up with these coffins that areso unique and so individualistic,

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JUDI CLARK

everyone should, could benefit bybeing curious about how other peopleheal.

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DEATH REFERENCE DESKWe are two librarians [Meg Holle andKim Anderson] and one professor ofdeath and dying practices [Dr. JohnTroyer], geographically dispersed butunified with dark inside. We combineour expertise to inform the casuallyinterested and morbidly curious alikeabout All Things Death: the bizarre,the batty and the beautiful, frominteresting blogs and recommended

books to commentary and analysis ofdeath in the news.

LINKSwww.deathreferencedesk.orgwww.facebook.com/pages/Death-Reference-Desk/116246178416445?ref=ts

CONTACT ME @DeathRef

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QUESTION:

Is there a distinction between thephysical self and the digital self?

Or, have we and technology advancedto the point where these distinctionsare no longer relevant? What, if any,implications are there for NOT makingthe distinction? Especially in death.

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TONI SANT {A: TONI SANT



TONI SANT {A:

Well to begin with I am very pleasedthat the question doesn’t make adifference between a physical selfand a virtual self or a real self anda virtual self. That is to say forme the physical self and the digital

self are both real. So with death whatchanges is reality, reality changesbut it doesn’t cease to be, so in thatway I think the distinction betweenthe physical self and the digital selfis a different one then one betweensomething that’s living and somethingthat’s not necessarily living. In asense that both the physical self andthe digital self are living selves

and also because they are both realselves, now also at the same time theycan also be not necessarily real ina sense that the digital self can bea made up self and the physical selfcan be a self that is performed eventhough one could argue that every selfis performed in some sense or other.

So, I think to really unpack this idea

of the physical self and the digitalself we have to take them in relationto life and death but also in relationto what’s real and what’s not real andwhat’s virtual and what’s physical,in relation also to the idea that thephysical self is made of atoms whereasthe digital self is made

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TONI SANT

of electrons. So I think in as muchas atoms can decay I am not sure ifthat’s scientifically accurate though,electrons are harder, I don’t know youcan split an atom but can you splitan electron, I mean I don’t know, I

should look that up probably…

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QUESTION:

Facebook allows the family of deceasedusers to put these profiles intomemorial mode. Given Facebook’s

potential longevity, at some pointthe population of the dead will exceedthat of the living. Does Facebook havea moral obligation to maintain theseprofiles?

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NIELS DE JONG {A: NIELS DE JONG



NIELS DE JONG {A:

So… well that interesting, I’m notsure if there is a moral obligation todo that because … There’s not reallya morel obligation to maintain any ofthose profiles. You are not actuallypaying for it, you sign on and then

make a profile and if you are notmaintaining it yourself why shouldyou have them kept up just because youput it in memorial mode. I am not surethey have any responsibility for that.

I mean, if people would pay for itor if people have like an actualgraveyard or a cremation centre youpay those people to maintain the grave

and you don’t do that with Facebookyou make a profile and then if you dieyou put it on to memorial mode.

I mean there are actual memorialwebsites which you have to pay forlike for a real grave and as long asyou pay for it they have to keep thememorial on. I mean, I am not surewhere the moral part is?

But there has to be some kind ofcontact person that they could send ane-mail or some kind of notificationthat they want to remove that memorialsite because no one is visiting it formaybe a year and then that contactperson could say ‘yes that ok’ or

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NIELS DE JONG

maybe its not so I mean there has tobe some kind of way or system to dothat or some kind of argument why youwant to keep it there? If you providethe option to create a memorial theremust be some kind of protocol that you

can follow or some rule… I don’t know?

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QUESTION:

If you die and the Internet doesn’tnotice, do you have die again andagain?

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ELAINE KASKET {A: ELAINE KASKET



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ELAINE KASKET {A

Oh my gosh, if you die and theinternet doesn’t know, this is sointeresting, if you die and theinternet doesn’t notice do you haveto die again and again. I will justtell you right off the bat what my

mind goes with it. It was from themovie ‘When Harry met Sally’ that filmfrom the 80s and they are talkingin the car, and he’s saying “whatif you go to New York and you don’tdo anything and nothing happens toyou and then you die one of thoseNew York deaths where nobody noticesuntil the smell drifts into thehallway’ and I was thinking what is

the internet equivalent of the smelldrifting into the hallway. You candraw that analogy, ok so a New Yorkdeath how do they figure it out, it’snot just the smell drifting throughthe hallway it might be the newspaperspiling up outside the door, the postpiling up outside the door or thefact that someone says oh so and sohasn’t come out, or gone down to the

corner lately. Or when was the lasttime you saw them open their door,so that those more tangible kinds ofthings that might alert somebody inthe actual kind of physical worldthat actually somebody isn’t aroundanymore. What are the digital,internet correlates of that?

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ELAINE KASKET

Part of it is like a negative, so andso hasn’t shown up on whatever theyhaven’t shown up on you know, Skype,msn messenger, twitter, facebookor whatever there is a removal ofsomething, something stops, somebody

doesn’t show their digital face. Butthe positive side if someone is deadthe obituary or notification getsposted in the newspaper, then somebodyfinds that and it kind of goes viralin terms of the persons friends andfamily from there but I am sure thereare instances in which, I think inthese days if the internet doesn’tnotice, then that’s a different

question than if the people that youcommunicate with on the internet don’tnotice.

What does it mean when they saythe internet doesn’t notice? Doesthat mean the internet community,does that mean the information thatcomes up when you Google yourself orwhen you Google a particular person

because that’s different. Becauseif somebody has died, their internetcommunity knowing about it, or findingout about it, or figuring it out orcommunicating about it, that feelsdifferent than Googling that person’sname and being able to find out thatthey are dead. Ones presence is

ELAINE KASKET ELAINE KASKET



expected ones presence as constitutedby ones responsiveness. This is theinternet equivalent, ok, this isthe digital equivalent of like ‘youhold the mirror up to somebody’smouth and if you see there is fog

on it you know they are breathingand they are still alive’ and so yousend an email to somebody, you senda message on facebook your kind ofholding that mirror up and seeing ifyou get the fog back and if you don’tget the fog back. So its so funnybecause that absence, that tele-absence is not acceptable. Even onholiday, here I am I’m technically

on holiday and I’m chatting to youand its expected that I am tele-present still and I feel obligatedto be tele-present to a number ofpeople in a number of different ways.There’s a vague feeling amongst somepeople these days that tele-absenceisn’t acceptable and if you are tele-absent then somebody’s going to thinkthat something’s wrong, I mean my

God where are they?! There they areholding up the mirror to see if youare breathing. People always talkabout being too busy or too bombardedor too connected all the time andthere is something fundamentally wrongwith that or worrying about that orwhatever. But I think that what we

67 68

are talking about now is a little bitdifferent then that, it’s not justabout what we are doing its about whatwe are, its what we are becoming itsabout this digital side of ourselvesbeing so much an integral part, that

there’s a feeling of wrongness if youare not tele-present all the time ifyou are not available in that way allthe time, and so it’s not just aboutwhat we are doing, we are doing toomuch of this we are involved to muchwith that. I get that feeling like Ihad when I signed on to my twittertoday (I am on holiday) and I thoughtdo I really want to be doing this?

But I have no doubt that probably in ayear or two from now that twitter bitof me might be so integrated into mylife, into my presence into the worldit’s no longer what I’m doing what I’mchoosing to do, its just envelopedinto how I’m being or how I am, youknow?

I read an essay the other day called

‘a hundred fears of solitude’ it wasin the last issue of Granta and thisguy was leading into it by talkingabout how when he was at universitywhich wasn’t a long time ago twentyyears or so he talked about how itswas possible to be silent, how it waspossible to be disconnected if you




wanted to talk to somebody you had towalk across campus and hope youfound them in and as you walked toyour friends door there was the greatpotential for solitude, contemplationand great silence. These days if you

go to the university campus everybodyis wired up to the teeth and they arein contact all the time and he wasthinking about this and how solitudewasn’t possible anymore and I thinkits a human given its an existentialgiven that we are always being withothers in the world and Heideggertalks about this ‘being with others inthe world’ and this is not a condition

you can check in and out of and youcan say oh I am just not going tobe with other people in the worldnow or now yes I am going to be withother people in the world that’s nota choice it’s an existential giventhat is the case all the time butof course Heidegger didn’t have anyinkling of this level of technologyhe was concerned about television and

he thought television had “abolishedevery possibility of remoteness”which is a quote of his and this isa hundred, a thousand times that nowand I often wonder what a philosopherlike Martin Heidegger would think ofthis level of being with others in theworld and how he would characterise

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it, because it’s becoming more andmore part of our being it’s not whatwe are doing it’s what we are.

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DR. ELAINE KASKET

(LONDON METROPOLITANUNIVERSITY)I am a senior lecturer in CounsellingPsychology and a psychotherapist inprivate practice. My main researchinterests have to do with death anddying; I have investigated physicians’emotional responses to theirpatients’ deaths and am currentlyresearching mourning and continuing

communication on Facebook with peoplewho have died.

LINKShttp://londonmet.academia.edu/ElaineKaskethttp://www.drelainekasket.com/

CONTACT ME @dreprk

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http://londonmet.academia.edu/ElaineKasket


http://www.drelainekasket.com/

http://api.twitter.com/dreprk

http://api.twitter.com/dreprk



http://www.londonmet.academia.edu/ElaineKasket





QUESTION:

When I talk about my Facebookresearch, many people are unsettled- they seem to feel that when someonecontinues to interact with a person’sdigital persona after the actualperson has died, it’s pathological

in some way - it says somethingconcerning about the person (they’rein denial), or something worryingabout our technologically-mediatedsociety (that people are carrying ona relationship or a communicationvia the person’s digital persona). Istheir concern well founded?

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NIKI LAMBROPOULOS {A: NIKI LAMBROPOULOS



One of my uncles died recently, adearest one, like in June and I’venever experienced this thing in myfamily before so I’m quite close towhat this person says about being indenial because a lot of people in my

family were in denial of accepting hisdeath and looking, you know, towardsthe door to see whether he would bein, coming in or having the photoaround or everything and I think, yestheir concern is well founded becauseit’s quite similar to what happensin real life … so … people, I thinkpeople create attachments in a waythis is how the world is created,

we are related to each other, we areconnected to each other, so when aperson dies, either digitally orreally, or just hangs up the phoneand moves somewhere else or whatever,its absence as well. So I think thatthere is loss in our world anyway, akind of feeling of loss and absencein one of our connections in a way. Soperhaps we will keep trying to keep

this connection, this link we have butperhaps its not possible, however wedon’t realize that. I’m just thinkingthat, that’s how I see it but perhapsmy mum would see it differently like,I dunno, probably she get some angeras well, so perhaps if a person doesnot communicate although its digitally

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dead, then the one who wants thecommunication back might get angryas well as trying to communicate andbeing in denial, so its probablysimilar and its probably more then onefeeling. There may be many feelings

all together, coming and going, orsimultaneously. I don’t think itspathological because I checked for thereal death, right? Psychologicallyspeaking its completely justified andif we keep the analogy for digitaldeath, then in my opinion I don’tthink its pathological. Perhaps itsnormal to a certain extent, likeeverything in life I suppose. So it

might be ok to communicate, to keeptrying to communicate but if thisperson keeps trying to communicateafter a year or after you know sometime that’s not logical then perhapsit gets pathological rather thennormal. So perhaps there is kind ofa thin line between the two, a limitor something, but I’m not the one, Idon’t know there may be more work or

research about it I don’t know.

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ANONYMOUS

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QUESTION:The future of cloud computing ishazy. Younger generations will beputting lots of personal infomationon online “safes”, and will needto work out how to transfer it toalternative providers if and when thefirst provider proves inadequate.Considering this, what provisions

are made by providers of DigitalDeath Websites for preservation ofclients’ data and continuation ofthe fulfillment of clients’ wishesin case of the original provider’snon-performance due to bankruptcy,for instance? What about setting upa providers’ association to ensurecompatibility and continuity?

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NATHAN LUSTIG {A: NATHAN LUSTIG



Its actually a pretty good question.We get that all the time, so, I knowwhat we are doing but I don’t knowwhat other people are doing. We getthis question a lot what happens ifyour site goes out of business, we get

questions about whether were goingto be around when someone needs tohave access to the data. What we havecome up with is we have put in placea portion of our investors money intoa separate account and because oursite is so cheap to actually run wehave a two year runway to have all theservers and keep all the data secureso that if we do go out of business

we will have access to be able togive all the data back to the peoplewho had put it in and would deleteit after the two year period. Withinthat two year period we would havetaken all that data out and put it inanother secure place if we were notgoing to be around anymore. There area lot of different companies that areapproaching the ideas of what happensto you digital stuff when you die,from all sorts of different angles.There are companies like us who areletting you put your user names andpasswords in and say what you wantwith your stuff when you die, thereare also companies allowing you to setup your last tweet or your last

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Facebook message, all these differentsorts of things. There is even anotherone out there that will attempt tohack into a dead person’s onlineaccount if a survivor wants you todo it. So that’s why I think if you

get all the different providers ofservices, it might be tough to makesure that compatibility would actuallywork because everyone’s approaching itfrom a different angle and no one’sgoing with it in the exact same way.The idea of a providers associationto ensure compatibility sounds reallyinteresting. It would be tough to getall the providers to do it, but if you

could do it, it would make sense.

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YOLANDA KADING RGNYolanda is a Palliative Home Care

Nurse at The Cyprus Association ofCancer Patients and Friends.

The Cyprus Association of CancerPatients and Friends was foundedin 1986, at a time when cancer wasstill considered to be a curse, anincurable and frightening diseaseamong the Cypriot population. Theassociation was set up by a small but

pioneering group of women, all of whomhad already experienced cancer in oneway or another. The associations aimwas and continues to be: to dispersethe taboo and fear surrounding cancerand thus provide quality care tocancer sufferers within the Cypriotcommunity.

LINKSwww.cancercare.org.cy/EN/index.html

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http://www.cancercare.org.cy/EN/index.html

http://www.cancercare.org.cy/EN/index.html



QUESTION:Following the death of a teenager atmy sons’ school. His freinds puttogether a Facebook page entitled“RIP + his name.” Although part ofme felt that it was a good way tohonour his memory, allowing peopleto post comments and thoughts,I wasvery concerned about the effect thatsome of the comments may have had on

his family. I guess that it’s a wayof paying tribute to someone but itbothered me that he wasn’t around togive his permission for what seemedlike a very public free for all. Allin all it was very distressing foreveryone. My question is who controlssuch postings and do the next of kinhave to give permission to allow sucha page to be opened.

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R.I.P R.I.PR.I.P

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ELAINE KASKET {A: ELAINE KASKET



This is a really interesting questionand I am going to take the last bitof it first. The person who controlsthose postings on a memory site isthe person or the people who havedecided to set the site up, ie the

administrators of the site and theseare actually the people I interviewedin my research, my facebook researchabout their experience of beingadministrators of in memory sites.The next of kin do not have to havepermission for that page to be openedin fact what sometimes happens isdifferent groups of friends almostlike rival factions will set up of in

memory sites and sometimes that causesproblems because one group of friendssays ‘oh I’m really upset becauseeverybody’s going to her memory siteand going away from our memory sitethat we set up for our friend’ and sothe relatives next of kin don’t haveto give any permission what so ever.You can be a complete stranger and setup an in memory of site on facebookfor somebody who has died.

In my experience the administrators ofthose sites, were more often than notclose friends or relatives, cousin’s,siblings, they will remove or takeaway comments they don’t think areappropriate so they tend to police

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the sites very carefully I think. Iam not sure that it is that commonfor older generation members of thefamily, parents, aunts, uncles,grandparents etc to get access tothose pages unless somebody alerts

them to the presence of them. Peoplearen’t quite recognizing that whatis happening on facebook in digitalwriting is the same thing that hasalways happened. People have alwaysshown up at funeral homes and funeralsand said inappropriate things, peoplehave always competed for the role ofchief mourner and like ‘oh no shewas really important to me’ and ‘how

dare you’, all that kind of stuff. Ithasn’t been as public and as easilyavailable and accessible to everyone.You know somebody might make a commentat a funeral and people hear it andthey say oh my gosh you know that’sreally inappropriate and then its goneinto the either whereas on facebook ifsomebody doesn’t take it down - thereit is. So it has a little bit morepermanence. But in some ways I feelit is not much different from what hasalways happened its just a little bitmore permanent and visible or it hasmore potential to make an impact thansome passing comment that somebodymight make at a funeral or wake orsomething of course anytime

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anybody dies they are not aroundto give permission and this is theyounger generation who often at timesthe in memory sites get posted onfacebook for younger people, oftenpeople who weren’t expecting to die

and they weren’t in a place in theirlives to say this is what I want tohappen after my death this is how Iwant to be memorialised they haven’tgot to that place yet they don’t dothat, but nobody ever has any controlor is around to give permission forwhat happens after their deaths and alot of times some relatives or somefriends are around saying he wouldn’t

have wanted this or she wouldn’t havewanted this or this isn’t appropriateor whatever it is, but the wholefacebook thing for one it opens it upto a much wider segment of the publicas these in memory groups are almostalways free to anybody who wishesto join so somebody might have hadthree hundred friends in life on theirprofile itself and “one thousand”friends in death on their in memorypage that somebody sets up. So it isvery public. So but “all in all it wasvery distressing for everyone” I’mwondering who the everyone was, I’mwondering what the comments were, itdepends so much on…. Im not sure if itwas the comments themselves or this

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was the form they were being made thefacebook form or what in particular itis that was especially problematic,especially distressing because a lotof people who I interviewed for myfacebook research said that the family

found it really, really comfortingand found it really lovely to see allthe sentiments and the thoughts andcomments and memories that everybodyposted on, this in memory group andthis is actually the first time I’veencountered this description of thiskind of memory site being “distressing“ for everyone, I haven’t comeacross this yet. I think one of the

fascinating, mysterious or noteworthythings about this phenomenon offacebook in general. Not just asregards death but as regards societyas a whole is that more and more weare interacting with these virtualothers and telepresent people, yea wemight know them in real life but wemight ‘see’ or ‘hear’ a lot more fromthem via facebook or Skype or whateverelse rather than actually physicallybeing there with them and that initself is unsettling for some people,that this is the way we are going asa society and as individuals and whenthat phenomenon caries through intodeath and we carry on interacting withthat digital person or telepresent

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ELAINE KASKET



person rather than necessarily showingup. I can see in a way the people whoare uneasy with what is happening withthe facebook phenomena about death andeverything might possibly be the samepeople who are unsettled by the impact

such phenomena, such technology ishaving in life.

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AHMET SEKERCIOGLUDr. Ahmet Sekercioglu is a member ofthe academic staff at the Departmentof Electrical and Computer SystemsEngineering of Monash University,

Melbourne, Australia. He was theleader of the Applications Programof Australian Telecommunications CRCuntil the completion of the centre’sresearch activities (December 2007).

Prior to his academic career, he heldnumerous positions as a researchengineer in private industry. He haspublished 14 journal articles, 2 book

chapters, 56 conference papers and hasfiled 2 patents.

His recent research is in distributedalgorithms for self-organization inwireless networks. He is also workingin the application of intelligentcontrol techniques for multiservicenetworks as complex, distributedsystems.

LINKS http://titania.ctie.monash.edu.au

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http://titania.ctie.monash.edu.au/

http://titania.ctie.monash.edu.au/



QUESTION:

Why do we exist?

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DEATH REFERENCE DESK{A:

The easiest answer to ‘why do we

DEATH REFERENCE DESK

The other reason we exist is we exist



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The easiest answer to ‘why do weexist’ is because we humans havedecided to and why we exist right nowhinges upon what this ‘we’ is? whois this ‘we’? There was an Americancomedy programme called the Lone

Ranger, there is a cowboy and he wasalmost killed by a group of banditsand then he was saved by this NativeAmerican figure named Tanto and hegoes on to do good and justice andhe shoots bad people with silverbullets. So he and Tanto where ontheir horses one time and there wasthis large group of Indians comingtowards them on horses and they knowthey are going to die and they arewondering and he turns to Tanto andsays “Well Tanto, it’s been goodknowing you but looks like we’re gonnadie” and Tonto goes “What do you meanwe white man” and I think its thatquestion who is the we? That becomeskey because humans have decided that‘we’ are the ‘we’, if you will in allof this and that the reason we existis because we have decided that we do

and that once another new definitionof what constitutes the human comesabout I think the current form we arein right now will no longer exist wewill become something else. That’sinevitable but its also beyond ourcomprehension of when that will occur.

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The other reason we exist is we existto die oddly if it makes any sensebecause of course the reason we havean existence is because it ends and ifthere is an end to the existence thanits something else different to what

we think of it as being.



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RICHARD BANKSRichard Banks is a senior interactiondesigner for Microsoft Research inCambridge, UK. He’s part of a team

that spends most of its time lookingat family life, trying to understandthe complexities of home, in order tofigure out how the digital should fitin appropriately. He has a particularinterest in how digital artifactschange hands when people pass away.Richard joined Microsoft aftergraduating from the Royal College ofArt in London. Since then he’s worked

as a design manager in Seattle onMicrosoft’s Office, Windows and MSNproducts before moving home and intoresearch a number of years ago.

LINKSwww.richardbanks.com/?page_id=1350 www.richardbanks.com/?p=1987

CONTACT ME @rbanks

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http://www.richardbanks.com/?p=1987

http://www.richardbanks.com/?page_id=1350


http://api.twitter.com/rbanks

http://api.twitter.com/rbanks


http://www.richardbanks.com/?page_id=1350



QUESTION:

How are digital and physical heirlooms

different and the same when it comesto sentimentality and reminiscing?

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The key between the digital and


of touch or tactility however what I



The key between the digital andphysical heirloom idea, whichin a sense means you can havethe same object in two differentrepresentational forms is this: thatthe physical heirloom as regard

sentimentality and reminiscing stillhas a tactical quality to it so youcan still touch it, you can still feelit, you can still handle it and thatactually is something that we humansfor a long time actually have enjoyedin terms of remembering somebody whohas died or actually even a pastexperience, that object that we canlook at sometimes even smell to havea kind of sensory experience of whathas occurred in the past where as nowin terms of the digital object forboth sentimentality and reminiscing itexists right now at least, purely inthe realm of the represented objectusually in the form of a photo but itcould also be a song, this is anotherthing too, which you could have a kindlistening experience. But we will goback to just the photo, so the photo

itself as an object is somethingwe can look at and have a visualexperience with that triggers in ourbrain memories of what has gone on butit is not a tactile experience per sayand there are people who will arguewith this as to what is the nature

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of touch or tactility however what Iwould say is that becomes in the nextstep where the digital object is notjust a photo but you are actuallyable to reproduce it, in a way thatdoesn’t take any real time or money or

even work so that you can have thatobject wherever you go, you can carrythe object with you on your phone asone example or keep then online andlook whenever you want to, of a kindof object experience of a person whohas died and we actually already havethese kinds of technology, in terms of3D printing, where you can actuallyput the photo in the printer and the3D object is printed, now its not anexact replica because things are alittle different but never the less,this becomes the first generation ofwhat those objects will become. Wherewe are right now is in a transitionperiod between the two and the digitalheirloom needs the entire past humanhistory of the physical heirloom toknow where to go or give, peopleworking in these fields an idea of

what to try and create or produce,because people will use it they willwant it once it is there, especiallyfor funerals.

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PEREGRINE ANDREWSPeregrine Andrews is a radioproducer and sound designer. He wasrecently involved in the productionof i-shrine (BBC Radio 4), a radiodocumentery which discussed issues ofdeath and morning in the online space:broadcast on the 21st May 2010.

LINKShttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8691238.stmwww.moving-air.com

CONTACT ME @pezzatronic

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http://www.moving-air.com/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8691238.stm


http://api.twitter.com/pezzatronic

http://api.twitter.com/pezzatronic


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8691238.stm



QUESTION:

In an age where so much of whatwe do is recorded in some way,

possibly forever, what placedoes forgetting have? (I.e.when is it better to forget?)

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ANTONIS TRYPHONOS {A:

There is this school in psychology

ANTONIS TRYPHONOS

the unconscious level. The mind I feel



called Jung, Jung spoke about twotypes of memory. The present memoryand the memory of our ancestors andthat’s the archetypes its kind of likewe carry within our genes images and

dreams that maybe they don’t reallybelong to us but they belong to ourancestors and that’s what we callsocial consciousness and it is withthis information that we have thatis being recorded in some way and allof it is recorded, it will be muchmore difficult to escape from thesubconscious level of having thisinformation coming up again and again.So, its like an automatic reminder ofour past that maybe we would like toforget but we are not able to.

So forgetting, it depends on how weuse the cues of the information wehave but its much easier to retaininformation as I feel it and to bringup from the subconscious level to theconscious level using the informationas cues to bring us back to those

memories. Its like dreams, when we seedreams we exactly don’t remember thewhole situation we might take it fromdifferent stimulators we remember fromthe dream and that stimulator will getus into the more conscious level ofthe memories that we have instead of

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its gonna peak at the end it doesn’tmatter how much information we haveit will the select the information itwould like to remember and forgettingagain or remembering again it’s a

part of what information you wouldreally like to retain althoughthe information will be just thereavailable at the end I feel it willbalance.

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PROF. JANIS JEFFERIESJanis Jefferies is is an artist,writer and curator, Professor ofVisual Arts in the Department ofComputing, Goldsmiths University ofLondon,Director of thte ConstanceHoward Resource and Research Centrein Textiles and Artistic Director ofGoldsmiths Digital Studios.

GDS is dedicated to collaborationsamong practicing artists, cultural andmedia theorists, and innovators incomputational media,who together areexpanding the boundaries of artisticpractice, forging the future ofdigital technologies and developingnew understanding of the interactionsbetween technology and society

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QUESTION:

What do we choose to remember--and toforget? How are collective memories

formed? How are memories revised andshaped by the media used to presentthem?

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1984 1984

1984

1984 1984

1984

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Well the first question what do wechose to remember and forget that is


concern and this isn’t a new one isthe dependence that some people are



115

chose to remember and forget, that isreally interesting because I thinkthat there’s a bit of a problem somepeople are having now individuals say,in the first world North America,Europe and the UK is that there is aproblem in which they don’t know anylonger what to choose to remember andwhat to forget or they are havinga problem actually remembering thethings they should remember andan inability to forget the thingsthat probably don’t really matter.There’s become such an overload ofinformation and so many people havebecome dependent on continually

using whatever device they use forinformation for email or looking atthe news that they are going througheverything and reading everything butthey are not remembering any of it, Ihave a hunch I don’t know but I havea hunch this is spilling over intopeople’s everyday lives, it’s not likethey are forgetting say appointmentswhere they have to meet someone, but

I think they are forgetting eventsthings that have occurred.The last part of the question, that’sbeen asked is how memories are revisedand shaped by the media used topresent them. are and immediate waysto present them. I think the growing

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the dependence that some people arebeginning to have on whatever thedevice they use in order to rememberevents they think they should kindof remember without a backup devicefor example being able to always pullup a video of an event say somethingimportant like your kids talkingfor the first time or walking, or afuneral eulogy. An individual becomesdependant on that device to feel likehe or she can actually remember whatit was about, as opposed to feelingcomfortable with their memory eventhough everyone knows memories are ofcourse fallible and things change and

things happen over time and it becomessomething else and you may actuallybelieve something to be actually truebut if you go back and look it’s notthis at all. So I think there is agrowing insecurity on the authenticityof the memory that is growingdependant on the actual recording ofit through whatever device is beingused. Even then I am not sure in

fact its going to assist memory, inpart because of course, what you arelooking at is some device re-showingsome event that occurred in say videoform, which may not be what actuallyhappened either and those kinds ofrepresentations themselves can come


with a certain certainty.And that gets to the last part which


representing what we are seeing invisual form that could be reproducible



And that gets to the last part whichis how are collective memories formed,well I that’s the big question now.What is the collective memory; Iwill give you one classic example ofthis in the American context whichthere has always been since September11 2001 a big push to discuss thecollective memory of 9/11 for Americaand there is no collective memory of9/11 for America, people had verydifferent kinds of reactions at thattime and continued to have differentreactions and in fact the reactionsand attitudes and concepts of whatoccurred on that day have continued

to striate and have become polarisedthan they were initially. I think thevery idea of the collective memory isnow is formed zero kind of oppositionbetween what it is and what it is notwhich exists simultaneously so itis both this and not this. In partbecause you find people who have bothconflicting ideas all the time andthat has a lot to do with politics

and what goes on with the idea of thenation. Memory is a big ongoing issueand humans have been tinkering withthis for at least well before the 19thcentury but certainly we came up withearly forms of photography and thegeriotypes and the idea of

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visual form that could be reproducibleand made more quickly into a painting,this has altered the very idea of whathuman memory is capable of and in factthere are a lot of people who wouldargue that in fact human memory beganits great descent, when finally thingswere put in visual form as opposedto having to understand it and thinkit through it terms of its narrativeform.



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ROB WALKERRob Walker is a journalist who writesabout consumer behaviour, Internetculture, and other subjects. He writesa popular article for the New YorkTimes Magazine called ”Consumed” andhis recently published works include:“Buying In” a book which is an

overview of branding and the evolvingrelationship between brands and theconsumer.

LINKSwww.robwalker.net

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http://www.robwalker.net/





QUESTION:

One thing that motivated me toget interested in the subjectin the first place was the ideaof “too much evidence” -- is it

possible that we leave behind suchoverwhelming amounts of minutiathat it may actually be harder forthe historical researchers of thefuture to understand who we were?

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1984

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RICHARD BANKS {A:

My background is basically in productdesign, the design of physical things

RICHARD BANKS

cameras so we can take thousands ofshots and just record as much as we



g g p y gand I moved gradually into interactiondesign which is the design of digitalthings and so one of the things Iam fascinated by is what is thedifference between our experiencewith physical artefacts and the waywe leave them behind and the wayother people inherit them and digitalartifacts all these things we collecton our hard drives we collect on DVDsand we put up in the cloud and howwill those be inherited and I thinkfor me there is no question that oneof the big differentiates betweenthe physical things and the digital

things is the amount of stuff we arecollecting. The physical things, forexample, are constrained in the amountof space we have in our homes, so alot of us have boxes in our basementsand boxes in our lofts that containphysical things that we cant bringourselves to throw away, they arevery precious to us but eventuallywe fill up these spaces and we have

to make these kind of hard decisionsabout what we keep and what we getrid of and we are not forced to dothat with digital things, When we takeshots with a digital camera we are notforced to pay for every single shot aswe used to have to with analogue

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jlike. So this is actually a tremendousopportunity so when my grandfatherdied a few years ago he left behind asuitcase full of analogue photos andthere were only 200, maybe 300 photosin different envelopes, luckily a lotof them had dates and places on themwhich is quite rare for those things,it gave me this very kind of narrowinsight into his life and where hespent his time and who he spent histime with and I would have wished thatthere was an awful lot more about himparticularly what mattered to himin his life before I was born. I was

born the year before he was retiredso I knew him very much as a retiredperson. So, if he was living a lifenow, I think there would be a lot moredigital stuff about him so digitalphotos taken by him or off him and hisdigital life online even his recordsof his services and where he lived etcthat would tell me a lot more aboutthe way he lived than I would have

got in the past. The issue is thenof course, how you manage all thiscontent and I think one of the waysin which our relationship to a lot ofthis content that is left behind whenwe pass away will change is that wecant experience it all, in the way we

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RICHARD BANKS

were able to with analogue content.

RICHARD BANKS

and understand a person’s life andactually I think to some extent



I could sit down with my grandfathersphotos and flip through his 200 photosand really study and think about them.I realize that if I carry on takingphotos at the rate I do my daughterwill inherit about 200 000 digitalphotos from me and I don’t expecther to sit down and go through everysingle one of those and it means thatour relationship with all that contentbecomes more serendipities. The reallyamazing thing about digital contentis you can take 200, 000 photos andput them all on random and have anexperience with that content that

is kind of spontaneous and draws upmemories that are more unexpected sothere are really things you can dowith digital content that makes thatexperience with them quite a rich,and unexpected compared to how wemight have had those experiences withanalogue content.

Now when it comes to actual research

that of course is a kind of apersonal experience of the personthat you know. When it comes to actualresearch I think to some extent thequestion is: what are the tools andtechnologies that researchers of thefuture might use to reassemble

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ycertainly as far as digital things areconcerned, as a researcher I’d ratherhave too much stuff to go throughthat can tell me an awful lot about aperson or give me a lot of ammunitionto reassemble a person’s life than alot less content. So as far as digitalcontent is going for example, we havea team in Cambridge that works onmachine learning so all about how thecomputer itself can be used as a toolto make sense of different contentand reassemble content and bring toa persons attention things that mightmatter to you vs things that might

matter less so I think there are alot of room for digital tools to bebuilt that allow researchers to digin, vertically into content instead ofjust kind of skimming over the top ofthis vast amount of digital data.

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DR. BRITTA RENSINGBritta Rensing was born in Cologne,Germany where she studied EnglishLiterature and Language and ReligiousStudies at the University of Cologne,Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University of Bonn and Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena. PhD inReligious Studies at the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena. Fieldsof study / lectures on neopaganism,

wicca, asian ghost movies.

LINKShttp://www.tectum-verlag.de/9486_Britta_Rensing_Die_Wicca-Religion_Theologie_Rituale_Ethik.html

http://www.db-thueringen.de/servlets/DocumentServlet?id=7577

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QUESTION:

How do you think people

imagine themselves dying,in the modern Digital Age?

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YOLANDA KADING {A:

I would imagine that some peopleperhaps imagine themselves living

i th di it l It b i t

YOLANDA KADING

It gives people a voice I guess, apublic voice but also it gives people

t i f ti hi h h



on, in the digital age. It brings tomind the question of where does itall stop and when do people call it aday, after the death of someone. Withsomething like Facebook in mind whichis very personal to me as a Facebookaddict almost, I wonder when after thedeath of someone when this does thisinformation get taken off Facebook,and who is it that decides when tocall it a day?

I don’t necessarily think that thedigital age. It certainly hasn’taffected my concept of death and

dying and I don’t really think itenters into it. I think the digitalage um has given people the abilityto go through the dying process morepublically and perhaps to feel thatthey are not so alone. In that theycan put postings on the computer forother people all over the world to seeand for their friends to see and evenif they cant get out and cant leave

their bed if they have the ability touse the computer or to get somebodyelse to use it for them then they canshare what they are going through moreeasily and plus I guess they can postphotographs of themselves and feelthat they are not so alone

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access to information which perhaps,well which wasn’t available to peopleyears ago so they are more alert andaware about what might happen tothem, what might be round the corner.There is so much out there for themto access. But what really ringsin my mind is the not feeling thatyou are so alone, but also the waysomebody might be affected once theycant access the computer any more. Umwhilst they are in a position.. ifsomebody is dying and in a position touse the computer I would imagine theywill feel they are not alone, but once

they cant access the computer thenperhaps it’s a premature death forthem a premature morning a morning forthem as well.

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ESTHER MAKAAYCreative by nature, a philosopher atheart and (techno)logic in mind, Ienjoy my front row seat of Internethistory by working on new businessdevelopment at SIDN, the Dutchregistry for the .nl-domain.

CONTACT ME @esthermakaay

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http://api.twitter.com/esthermakaay

http://api.twitter.com/esthermakaay



QUESTION:

The analogy to “if your house burneddown, and there’s one thing (notperson or pet) you could save, whatwould it be?” So the analogy follows,that if the Internet burned down,and there was one specific thing you

could save/rescue, what would thatbe? (Answers might consist of anaccount to a social networking site,the e-mail to a specific address,the digital photo’s you publishsomewhere, your address-book, but noteverything, like ‘my digital backup’.)

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0100011001

Ahhhhhhhh

SAVE ME!

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ROB WALKER {A:

I guess there is two ways of thinkingabout this, one is a less interestingshort term way, you know if, if you

ROB WALKER

also just projects that are not somuch about me as about, well theyare about me but they are work that



short term way, you know if, if youtold me the internet was going to burndown right now I would want to sort ofprotect my email because it’s a lot oflive communication that is still going

on there that I would be in troubleif I lost but… I think that probablythe more interesting thing would be…,I am an unusual case I guess becauseI am a writer I have a lot of finishedpublic published works online like atthe New York Times site and some othersites but in particular probably thefinished work, the published work, onthe Times site I would like that to ah

survive and the personal projects is adifficult one, there is a project thatI am involved in that I am involved inactually called significant objectsthat’s about, its sort of fictionit’s about thrift store objects and Iwould like that probably of the workthat I have done of the stuff that Ihave done that isn’t sort of you knowresiding on a mainstream publication

website that is probably the thingthat I would most like to survivebut it would be a pretty tough call.because there is some other personal,you know but all of this is more workrelated stuff, like and work meaningboth what I do for a living, but

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are about me but they are work thatI’ve done as opposed to just like mypersonal photographs or you know Ihave a Facebook account and all thatkinda stuff but I have very little

there that I would be to terriblyheartbroken to lose, so I guess it’sa kind of a traditional answer, inthat I want work to survive as opposedto, as opposed to personal stuff.Personal stuff I would probably, if Iever get my act together would see toit in fact, that it doesn’t surviveme. I just want the work that I feellike has been, the stuff that I feel

like has been really thought through,vetted and well while it may be lesspersonal, its more important to methat that stuff survive.

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PROF. JOHN WOODJohn’s main focus, at present, isthe development of a new approach todesign practice: ‘metadesign’



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design practice: ‘metadesign’.

John’s first job at Goldsmiths wasDeputy Head of the Fine Art Department(from 1978-1988). After ten years heco-wrote, and ran, an unusually broad,reflective and ethically orientedBA(Hons) degree in design. Thisprogramme helped to launch the currentDepartment of Design.

John has published over 100 papersand articles on ethics and designin the age of over consumption. Hisfirst book, ‘The Virtual Embodied’

(Routledge, 1998) explored the ethicalimplications of different typesof situated practice and his mostrecent book “The Design of Micro-Utopias; thinking beyond the possible”(Ashgate, 2007) suggests that we cangovern ourselves better using ‘designthinking’.

LINKShttp://metadesigners.org/tiki/tiki-index.php

CONTACT ME @metadesigners

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http://api.twitter.com/metadesigners

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QUESTION:(VOICE-ACTOR)

They have just discovered a new star[sun] that is 250 times bigger thanany they thought to be physicallypossible...can a deeper awareness/empathy with the vast universe,through the sharing of oneself and the

virtual embodiment enabled throughthe mass of digital networks, makethe idea of one’s own physical deathseem less like a tragic erasure ofego, and more like a privilegedsubmersion into an ancestral ocean?

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AHMET SEKERCIOGLU {A:

What is that?! I need to thinkcarefully now… I think eh. What Iam thinking is, its definitely... I



g ydon’t agree with that. I, I think thatphysical death is definitely a tragicerasure of ego, I don’t care aboutgetting submerged into an ancestral

ocean because I won’t be aware of itanyway, therefore I disagree. Um,that’s my thought at the moment.

At least theoretically it is possible.Yes I think it is theoreticallypossible that human body will becomeless important in the future thatyou just store your consciousnessinto a medium which will be… wont die

basically and will refresh itselfsomehow through some kind of energysource. Would that be…. would thatbe…. make the physical death redundantor less like a tragic erasure of ego?It is possible Yes Yes it is possible.but we are long long way away fromthat, maybe a thousand years.

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NIELS DE JONGNiels de Jong is a Research Mastersstudent in Groningen, The Netherlands.His main focus is religion andmodernity, specialising inChristianity in Western-Europe.

In his academic future he would liketo write his master thesis on DavidIcke, a conspiracy theorist whospreads his ideas mainly through theInternet but also organizes a lot ofseminars to which all kinds of peopleare drawn.

Furthermore on a personal level, helike to read (currently reading AnnaKarenina by Leo Tolstoy) and listento music (metal, blues, jazz, reggeaetc.) Play the MMOG Travian and play‘real-life’ RISK with friends.

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QUESTION:

Is it possible to draw any parallelsbetween recent developments in themusic industry regarding somethingpeople like to call ‘fusion’, amixture of musical styles whichdoesn’t represent a single genre and

the boom of Internet data that createsmass de-contextualization of personaldata. As with the example of ‘fusion’music is there anything perhaps to begained from engaging in this ‘rich’mix?

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MICHELA MAGAS {A:

The whole of the internet is already adata fusion, I mean that’s the wholeprinciple of the whole thing. In many

I i i i

MICHELA MAGAS

a cliché..) but that’s how it is..so if you collate the lot, you seehow this person sees themselves in

T



ways I think the idea of the fusionin music happened more as a result ofthe data fusion that was enabled bytechnologies as opposed to the other

way round, as fusion always happens atthe crossover of cultures. One ofthe best things that happened inBritain was the integration of secondgeneration Punjabi culture intowestern music and some great stuffhas emerged out of that. So things atthose junctions.. things always end upvery interesting.. but the whole ofthe world wide web concept is that,

intrinsicly. So is there anything tobe gained? Well, everything really -it’s everything that we’ve done andthat we know and that we’ve based ourlives on in recent times really, thathas been a result of the fusion.

There is a fusion of the differentpersonalities that you have leftbehind (famously we do generate

personalities for each type ofapplication: it requires us togenerate a personality) and dependingon what that application is for, youwill be a different person on facebook(famously) then you are on Linkedinfor instance, (I mean - that’s like

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terms of one and not the other. Thereis a personality fusion that happensbetween all those different portals.So from the stuff that you leave

behind there will be bits that applyto different parts of your life, thatare quite different. But that again Ithink is a reflection of this medium -its whatever you try and draw out ofpeople, how it’s installed in thefirst place: the tools kind ofdictate, the tools kind of informyou as to what they want from youas well.. so how is that going to

reflect? There is more of a fusiongoing on than just the few keypointers that some of these availabletools show about a person.. there’smore then that and it would be reallyinteresting to see, if you startedwith this in mind (started creating afusion personality - started creatinga fusion of different tools that willenable a personality to show different

aspects of oneself in one place) howthat would look, because you are solimited by what you are asked to bein different places on the web, youalmost sort of have to conform to bea particular type or... Just think ofthe rubbish interface on LinkedIn

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MICHELA MAGAS

(am I allowed to say rubbish withoutsomeone throwing a libel case at me?:)) I mean its completely hopeless,

h t b th d b h i



you have to be the good boy who isemployed, who has regular jobs fromthis date to that date, otherwise youdon’t fit in.. so even people who

don’t have anything of the sort.. theytend to box themselves into somethingin order to actually be on that site.So you end up with a fusion of stuffthat’s almost like “boxy things”..so what kind of fusion are you goingto get out of that? :) It would bean interesting thing to look at whatwould genuinely create a fusion, adigital fusion. What would that really

look like?.. I think it would be aninteresting thing to look at.. so Imean, its not a rich mix with thetools that we have available at themoment..

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DUNCAN FAIRFAXDuncan lectures on the MA Design



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Critical Practice, and MRes in Designat Goldsmiths. He is also the PhDresearch associate on the “MediatisedView” research project that is part

of the larger Leverhulme fundedGoldsmiths research programme on the“Future of Media.”

His research interests include thelimitations and contraints of the“productivist metaphysics” of designtheory and practice, the significanceof various strains within contemporary“materialist” philosophy to their

possible reconceptualisation, and thequestion of the “ontogenetic” qualityof design in general.

LINKShttp://www.aut.ac.nz/material_thinking/materialthinking2/people/consultingauthors.html

CONTACT ME @duncanfairfax

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QUESTION:

Is there any fundamental differencebetween the so called “technological”and the “natural” or is the naturalalways already intrinsicallysupplemented by the technological –especially in the context of the humancondition – and if this is the case

how do we begin to construct any basisfrom which to critique or evaluate thequestion of the ethical significanceof the technological mediate of ourcondition, whether that is asked inthe context of emotion, bereavement,grief, or identity.

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STACEY PITSILLIDES {A:

I think I am going to break downthis question a little bit slowlyand try and answer each bit a littlebit in turn. So, the first part of

do we begin to evaluate that, whenwe are so intrinsically built intothese systems. And if these systemsare actually having an effect on howour brains work and how our mindswork, than perhaps there really is



bit in turn. So, the first part ofthe question talks about this ideaof whether there is any differencebetween the technological and the

natural, or is the natural is alreadyintrinsically supplemented by thetechnical? Now in my readings thusfar especially looking at the workof Bernard Stiegler. There a co-development of our societies and theway we exist within the world andour technics so the way we developtechnologies and the way we aredeveloping within those systems, so

to think about something like thehuman condition perhaps there isno way of separating out what isintrinsically natural and what isperhaps something we that have createdand thus becomes technological. Sothen, to take it a bit further how dowe begin to construct any basis fromwhich to critique or to evaluate, thequestion of ethical significanceso I guess that means we have to goback and really think about what isit we are really making, if we areas human being in the human conditionmaking the internet than how doesthat actually effect our lives in areally kind of pragmatic way and how

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no way of really stepping back fromthat and beginning to ethicallykind of evaluate it in any kind of

a real way but I guess the questionis maybe we have to try. It talksabout the ethical significance of thetechnological mediate of our conditionand whether that is asked in thecontext of emotion, bereavement. So,perhaps when we are talking aboutsomething as emotionally charged asbereavement, grief and identity wedo need to think about the way we actwithin these systems and how thesesystems are affecting us and perhapsprogression does not always mean goingforward, perhaps there is a way otherthan the technologically mediatedsociety to readdress these issues andto think about how these things likebereavement, grief or identity arebeing augmented or changed within thevirtual space. And that is a questionI think for our futures, that should

be an important part of us going‘forward,’ because perhaps like I saidforward is not forward.

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JUDI CLARK



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JUDI CLARKJudi Clark has been involved withthe subject of identity and identitymanagement for many years. She’s

blogged (on other blogs) about thissince late 2002.

Judi is a personal coach, and a groupcoach. If you want to get personalabout your self (or selves) she isthe person to call on. She is also abusiness coach for companies who wishto understand who they are and whatpath they might take into this new

“social media” world. She is a uniqueinterpreter and trail guide here tosupport your interests.

LINKShttp://digitalIDcoach.com/

CONTACT ME @judico@IDcoach

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QUESTION:

When someone dies, others grieve theloss. The grieving process is healingfor those that continue living. Toaid in the healing process, we mightwish to give advance thought to how wewant to be remembered in the digital

domain. What questions should webe asking to help guide us? Shouldwe and how can we begin to develop“Best Practices” or “Frequently AskedQuestions” about this?

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ROLAND VAN RIJSWIJK {A:

That’s a very hard question to answerbecause to be able to answer thatquestion you need to have alreadythought how you want to be remembered

ROLAND VAN RIJSWIJK

probably also applies to the personfrom the insurance company who visitsthe people that are left behind.Right now, when someone dies the



g yoffline in the real world and thatis in itself a difficult questionto answer, right? Do you want to be

buried, would you like to be cremated,would you like a church service etcand this adds a whole new dimension tothe dilemma and I guess people feeluncomfortable thinking about their owndeath and how they would like to beremembered. So I guess online the samething applies. If you think about thisare you willing to write that downetc. It’s a hard question to answer.

At the moment there are, if forinstance you get an insurance in caseyou die, they usually help you witha questionnaire about what kind ofthings you would want at a funeralum so I guess that could be extendedto include online remembrance forinstance, would you like websites,would you like a register where peoplecan type their condolences for familyand friends, what would you likethis website to look like would youlike pictures on it, of you, or ofthings you enjoyed etc so I think thatcould probably be incorporated into aprocess like that and this

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gowner of the funeral home or whateverorganization is going to arrange thefuneral usually comes by to discuss

options with the families and perhapsthey should include something likean on line page where people couldoffer their condolences or an on linepage, which contains an area wherepeople could leave memories of thedeceased and I think that is somethingthat could be incorporated into someexisting processes.

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ANTONIS TRYPHONOSAntonis Tryphonas has a MA inPsychology as well as an Masters inHealth Administration.

Since 2000 he has worked for TheCyprus Association of Cancer Patientsand Friends, as a psychologist as partof the home care team. His research

interests include bereavement, end oflife care and the burden placed oncare givers.

LINKSwww.pasykaf.org.cy

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QUESTION:

My question is can we make a listof all the people we would like toreceive an emotional response from

us after we are dead? And how wouldwe go about creating this ‘emotionalresponse’ digitally?

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NATHAN LUSTIG {A:

So the question is asking is theresomething we can send almost like ane-card? When you wouldn’t know exactlywhat to say, like “I was thinkingb t ” “ ff t d lif ”

NATHAN LUSTIG

were to die except for my close familyI might find out on line either viaemail or facebook or twitter orsomething like that and its going tob i t ti t h th t h



about you” or “you affected my life”.If I were to die it would get sentout after I was dead to people that

I wasn’t really good friends withbut people that I might’ve connectedwith a little bit or something likethat. I think there is definitely aplace for creating a list of friend’smaybe facebook friends or twitterfollowers people that you just haveonline connections to or even offlineconnections to but are not peopleyou would see every day or even every

week, that you might not have a deepconnection to. I think there isdefinitely a space in this industry,and just in the digital afterlifeto be able to send someone out thatnotifies everyone that everyone thatyou actually have died.

Sort of a little bit of a pivot onthis question is how will we know whenour friends die even 50 years agopeople would look in the newspaper forobituaries to find out when someonehad died but I cant actually rememberthe last time I look at a physicalnewspaper and so if one of my friendswere to die or someone in my family

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be interesting to see how that changesor develops from a former industrythat was all on paper to being digital

and how that effects people gettingnotified about death. Would facebookand twitter be too impersonal or wouldyou rather have a phone or a serviceor something I am not really surewhere it will end up but I definitelydo believe there is going to be aspace for notification and emotionalresponse to those people who are notin your close circle of friends and

family but you still want to letpeople know you have died.

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The Question Relay: Digital Death

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