Survival as a Digital Ghost

New Media & Society, 2023

Contemporary artificial intelligence and algorithmic processes address deep-seated existential challenges and modes of desire. In so doing, they produce computational systems of imagination, an "algorithmic as if" that enables the expression, transformation, and seeming overcoming of existential limitations via technological means. This article elaborates the character of the "algorithmic as if" by focusing on Deep Nostalgia, an online tool that turns personal photographs of the deceased into looped animations which smile, blink, and move, promising to overcome mortality by technologically "resurrecting the dead." Performing a close-reading of Deep Nostalgia's technological processes and the public discourse around its 2021 launch, the article highlights its combination of computational learning, forms of visual representation (photography, video, and animation), and distinctive realignments of temporal experience. Together, these frame the "algorithmic as if" as a magical and affective space for realizing impossible longings that are also reflexive encounters with the "limit-situation" of human mortality.

Companion of the The Web Conference 2018 on The Web Conference 2018 - WWW '18, 2018

What happens to our social media profiles when we die? The episode "Be Right Back" as part of Netflix's series "Black Mirror" 1 provides a possible scenario. A digital avatar is created to communicate with close relatives which learns from past social media activities of the deceased user. While the users entrust their social media content to one or more companies, even after their death, it may be reasonable to ask: What will the company really do with a deceased user's data: sell it to manipulate users or create advertisements? In this paper we tackle the issues of ownership, ethics, and transparency of post mortem user data. CCS CONCEPTS • Security and privacy → Social aspects of security and privacy; • Information systems → World Wide Web; Document topic models; Information extraction; Sentiment analysis; • Humancentered computing → Social media; • Social and professional topics → Codes of ethics; Intellectual property;

Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, 2023

Modern and contemporary transhumanism has seen a recent rise in academic and popular relevance; specific naïve metaphysical ideas, such as immortality, have returned with this rise. This article refrains from any ethical or political assessment of transhumanism. Still, it critiques the exact metaphysical or idealistic nature of transhuman-ism and its pursuit of digital immortality: the idea that, through technological advancements, precisely in Artificial General Intelligence, an immortal virtual “self” will become possible. The article follows the form of Immanuel Kant’s “Paralogisms” from the Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant is concerned with the substan-tial, immortal nature of the soul and its experiential impossibility. The article will offer theoretical and practical paralogisms (false logical inferences), arguing that the transhumanist claim that digital immortality is possible fundamentally stems from two incorrect major premises. The first concerns the substantial nature of informa-tion, which informs the theoretical paralogisms; the second con-cerns infinite transformation (pure plasticity), which informs the practical paralogisms

Disentangling: The Geographies of Disconnection, 2021

The question of how the dead “live on” by maintaining a presence and connecting to the living within social networks has garnered the attention of users, entrepreneurs, platforms, and researchers alike. In this chapter we investigate the increasingly ambiguous terrain of posthumous connection and disconnection by focusing on a diverse set of practices implemented by users and offered by commercial services to plan for and manage social media communication, connection, and presence after life. Drawing on theories of self-presentation (Goffman) and technological forms of life (Lash), we argue that moderated and automated performances of posthumous digital presence cannot be understood as a continuation of personal identity or self-presentation. Rather, as forms of mediated human (after)life, posthumous social media presence materializes ambiguities of connection/disconnection and self/identity.

Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2023

This article mobilizes the motif of digital reincarnation to examine the regenerating bodies and the multiple lives of the mummy in The Mummy franchise. I read the body of the mummy as a cyborg hybrid because it features enhanced powers of rejuvenation that are indicative of malleable, porous, and networked bodies of our digital era. This updated version of a computer-generated mummy infuses digital aesthetics and logic into the mummy complex of cinema. Assembled in the virtual production pipeline of global Hollywood, this contemporary mummy is a heterogeneous amalgam of media forms: organic flesh, synthetic prosthetics, and digital bytes.

Mortality, 2017

This article explores the transhumanist effort to achieve digital immortality through the technology of mind cloning. Drawing upon the writings of Martine Rothblatt, one of the leading proponents of the Transhumanist Movement in the United States, it asks: how is this effort both similar to and different from other attempts our species has made to achieve 'symbolic immortality'? Can Lifton and Olson's concept of symbolic immortality adequately account for the transhumanist attempt to live forever in digital form? Or, is this effort predicated upon very different ontologies and conceptions of what it means to be human? By placing the transhumanist quest for digital immortality within a comparative perspective, this article hopes to enrich our understanding of the transhumanist project and develop a better sense for how it is reproducing and reconfiguring the way human beings deal with enduring existential dilemmas. The article concludes by considering how the transhumanist attempt to achieve digital immortality articulates with Bauman's discussion of modern and postmodern 'life strategies' for ameliorating death anxiety. Whereas Bauman proposed that modern strategies involve 'deconstructing mortality' , and postmodern strategies involve 'deconstructing immortality' , I argue that the transhumanist strategy is better conceptualised as a quasi-modern attempt to reconstruct immortality through technological means.

Communicatio Socialis

Nothing seems as certain as death. However, what if life continues digitally after death? Companies and initiatives such as Amazon, Storyfile, Here After AI, Forever Identity and LifeNaut are dedicated to precisely this objective: using avatars, records, and other digital content of the deceased, they strive to enable a digital contin- uation of life. The deceased live on digitally, and at times, these can even appear very much alive – perhaps too alive? This article explores the ethical implications of these technologies, commonly known as Death Tech. With the advancement of artificial intelligence, Death Tech will inevitably transform mourning practices, our perception of death, and how we cope with its reality in the coming years. In this article, it is demonstrated that Death Tech can contribute to individual grief support, education, and a vibrant culture of remembrance. However, it is crucial to recognise that the Digital Afterlife is not a paradise but necessitates active des...

„Virtual Art / Virtual Domains of Art”, ART INQUIRY, Volume 10, 2008

The article concerns the description of various phenomena connected with identity, which human can be subjected to in the Net. Accordingly, the processes have been presented which take place mainly within 3D electronics environment. These environments possess an ability to cause a strong immersion, which "engages" human intentionality, and also provides possibility for self-creation. For a description of the phenomena of translocating human activity to the Net, two processes have been indicated: incorporation process, i.e. receiving of an electronic body, e.g. of avatar, and existential process, i.e. human involvement in electronic environment which exceeds the utilitarian aspect. Both processes lead to the state of electronic incarnation, which is not related to any cause of being in the electronics environments, and becomes an autonomous value. Electronic incarnation combines with cultural and anthropological aspects, and has reflection in electronic art. Interrelation between common everyday activity with Net, influences a range of human involvement in the electronic environment, i.e. sometimes changing a user into a participant of immaterial events. On the one hand, such processes reach deeper in human, and secondly, electronic worlds, such as Second Life, create possibilities for finding there spiritual values, emotional life, and the sphere of feelings. Human subjected to immersion can begin specific "journey", starting in front of computer's interface, and ending in the rising of electronic personalityfinding oneself in the reality alternative to the physical world, in the electronic reality.

Lunceford, Brett. “The Ghost in the Machine: Humanity and the Problem of Self-Aware Information.” In Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television, edited by Michael Hauskeller, Thomas D. Philbeck, and Curtis Carbonell, 371-379. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Theories of posthumanism place considerable faith in the power of information processing. Some foresee a potential point of self-awareness in computers as processing ability continues to increase exponentially, while others hope for a future in which their minds can be uploaded to a computer thereby gaining a form of non-corporeal immortality. Such notions raise questions of whether humans can be reduced to their own information-processing: Are we thinking machines? Are we the sum of our memories? Many science fiction films have grappled with similar questions; this chapter considers two specific ideas through the lens of these films. First, l will consider the roles that memory and emotion play in our conception of humanity. Second, I will explore the question of what it means to think by examining the trope of sentient networks in film.

This paper presents a theoretical description of steps needed for digitalization and transfer of an individual’s self, and a concept of practical realization of immortality of the individual self.