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The afterlife of data : what happens to your information when you die and why you should care / Carl Öhman.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Öhman, Carl, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Digital media--Social aspects.
- Digital media.
- Death--Social aspects.
- Death.
- Dead.
- Future life.
- Social media and society.
- Digital preservation--Moral and ethical aspects.
- Digital preservation.
- Physical Description:
- 199 pages ; 23 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2024]
- Summary:
- "In recent years, more and more of our lives takes place online. But what about our afterlives? Thanks to the digital trails of data we leave behind, much of "who we are" can be reconstructed-even after our death. Sooner than we think, the dead will outnumber the living on Facebook, and in time, AI technology will allow us to "interact" with the departed. In this short, thought-provoking book, Carl Öhman asks us to consider what happens to our data after we pass away. How do we decide what data should be preserved? What sorts of ethical issues does it raise? We live in what Öhman calls the post-mortal condition, one in which the dead and the living coexist online through digital remains. Examining government digital heritage committees, public archives, NGOs, museums, and commercial institutions, Öhman analyzes various forms of data preservation and digital reanimation, ultimately calling for us, as a society, to acknowledge and to engage creatively with our condition. He calls for us to reevaluate the relationship between the living and the dead, and to work together to create a shared ethics of preservation. This isn't just the duty of our digital overlords. These are our lives, our deaths, and it is time we think seriously about how we want our data to be treated"-- Provided by publisher.
- Contents:
- Introduction : a collective matter
- From bones to bytes
- How to think about digital remains
- The rise of the digital afterlife industry
- Who owns the (digital) past?
- Living in the post-mortal condition
- Epilogue.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Local Notes:
- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.
- ISBN:
- 9780226828220
- 0226828220
- OCLC:
- 1384443785
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