Oksana Moroz— culturologist, associate professor of the Department of Cultural Studies and Social Communication of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, head
What is digital death?
Digital death is a very cool thing because it’s complex.Now this is a marketing construct thatturned out to be very interesting to web designers. Not in terms of sales, but in order to design new elements of the digital environment. Later, the humanities, who finally found a terminological basis for discussions about death in the digital environment, drew attention to this phenomenon. In fact, they began to borrow technical language.
If we try to describe the phenomenon simply, then we need to start with the idea of the digital environment as a number of tools used for different purposes.Today, regulatory applications to enter the Internet space and the digital environment are user applications and services for communication. Simply put, social networks, blogs.
You can live digitally: post something and write about something. But in digital it’s as if it’s impossible to die. It is not adapted for direct conscious representation of physical death.
Oksana Moroz
And, on the one hand, the figure is rich in traditionalways of the story of death, its image, updated due to the presence of a new, non-analogue space. On the other hand, the question arises: how to build a whole online environment in which a person can “work out”, imagine his own death, in which a location will be assigned to him as a “deceased” and which will also have “niche” social spaces for grief?
Photo: Vlad Shatilo / "Hightech"
Somewhere since the late 2000s, severalweb designers, one of the most famous is Michael Massimi, thought about how to rebuild the digital environment so that it included thanatosensitive user tools that allow reflexive interaction with the phenomenon of death. They were supposed to allow people to express their attitude towards death, experience the death of another, and at the same time program a personal and public attitude towards their own death.
Michael Massimi— web designer, Slack employee.His interests include research on human-computer interaction, computer collaboration, computer-mediated communication, and how technology helps people make sense of important life events. Massimi is developing a position according to which we can build a digital environment that will be thanatosensitive. This means that it will allow people to experience and imagine, represent the whole range of emotions associated with the death of others, and regulate and program their own departure from life. The digital environment will be adjusted to what we are used to offline. In other words, under the representation of that existential, radical, supporting experience, thanks to which a person recognizes himself as alive (we recognize ourselves as alive, including as beings who someday, in the future, will necessarily face death).
Thanatosensitivity involves the developmenttools that make it possible to easily manage user data and transfer it by inheritance without the participation of lawyers, who until recently did not fully understand what digital law is and how to work with it.Thanatosensitive design also involvesthe ability to freely design different memorial sites, within which the format of a virtual cemetery is not simply reproduced, but an entire history of the deceased is created. And this story can be constructed by the person himself. During my lifetime, I come up with a story about myself that will, in my opinion, be important and useful to loved ones, a story that will program my appearance for them and create the effect of my online presence after death. We live online while we are present, talking, texting with someone; there is no physical death here. Online is only social death; we die for numbers when we stop “sounding.”
The use of digital technology will not save from the death of the physical;But thanatosensitive digital design allowscreate an online simulation of a person’s social activity after death, an imitation of actual life. This is also why, in the context of the struggle for digital immortality, deferred posting technologies are being developed (big hello to marketers, PR specialists, SMM specialists), with the help of which you can schedule your Facebook and the work of other services for months in advance. Posts will appear after your death.
This technology is more suitable for people who assume an approximate period of their demise.But there is another option, which is based onless automation of posthumous social life online and greater inclusion of humans in the process of its debugging. For example, on Facebook you can appoint a guardian who has the ability to post information on behalf of the deceased, like him, and so on. The illusion of the presence of a living person within the account will be more effective.
There is a completely radical option that marketers like because it’s so convenient to sell the topic of artificial intelligence.There are applications that allowsynchronize your profile with the mechanism that learns on the original posts. When a user dies, a live account is deactivated, the same machine, digital double starts to control the profile. After the death of the owner of the original account, he commits independent actions on the basis of data gathered from the former, “live” profile owner. There is a startup ETER9.com, which works on this principle, but there are still few Russian-speaking users registered there. There was a startup Eterni.me, which now, apparently, has disappeared from the market. Its creators assumed the design of avatars, working on the principle of completely independent bots, which can be called (as we call, using Skype) and with which it will be possible to have a meaningful conversation. This startup involved the processing and reproduction of the appearance of the deceased, his voice, intonation of speech and, of course, the usual rhetorical constructions.
Photo: Vlad Shatilo / "Hightech"
To summarize, digital death is, on the one hand, all the representations of death that are present in the Internet space.These are all situations of mourning,condolences, sorrows that a person can imagine and implement online. Either because he specifically constructs a special space (for example, a virtual cemetery), or because he uses popular social services for public mourning. And the third variant of practices, united by the umbrella term “digital death,” involves the development of chat bots and alternative doubles that ensure the social posthumous existence of a person online.
Ethics bots
After the Replika bot was invented, a conversation arose about the ethics of producing such tools.Now there are already several cases whenprogrammers invented such bots based on data from their deceased loved ones. Of course, by first collecting their consent. There is a wonderful startup called Dadbot. This bot was created by a programmer whose father was dying of cancer. The son began recording endless hours of conversations with him in order to leave a recorded memory of his father, to record his voice that could be played over and over again when he was gone. And then he thought: why do I need these recordings if I can create a program based on them that can speak and react like my father? After obtaining informed consent from his father and all family members for subsequent actions, he created Dadbot. And he really speaks in recognizable phrases of the deceased, “realizing” that he is a machine, not a living person. So you can imagine a product for domestic, family use, which is created for therapy, and not for commercial use.
With the help of these developments (which will not disappear from the market), people will be able to easily “communicate” with the dead.The possibility of conversation is therapeutic in principle,but to produce such a digital thing, you need to have serious competencies in the field of computing. Although, I believe, in the near future it will be possible to imagine the creation of services where third-party people, based on the presented datasets, will develop exactly the same machines for specific orders. Or that there will be custom services similar to constructors that will allow you to create simple chat bots.
But you can look at this ethical dilemma and otherwise.In the history of culture there is a kind oftradition: after the death of a famous person, on the basis of his public or personal statements, ego-documents, some new artifact is often created. Letters or, as in the case of Kafka, entire texts are published, the author obviously did not intend for publication. If this or that person seems important enough, and his knowledge and memory of him are quite valuable, then the bearers of culture turn a blind eye to post-facto violations of a person’s right to confidentiality of personal information and protection of correspondence. So contemporary concern with ethical issues suggests a more reflective attitude towards cultural artifacts and the people whose statements constitute its archive. However, at the same time, we know that historically everything turned out a little differently. When people recognize the value of public display of artifacts, ethics often takes a backseat.
Changing memorial practices
Typically, the practices of remembering the dead and other memorial rituals (which, by the way, should not be associated exclusively with grief) are tied to the calendar rhythm.So, on the one hand, if we are onlineHaving a communication tool with the deceased that will provide the opportunity for constant communication with them can create a kind of neurotic attachment to the deceased. On the other hand, it is clear that communication practices may begin to resemble those of the owners of the Replika bot: we constantly forget about chatting with this bot because we realize that it is not alive. In general, we are rather detached from these tools, even if they involve some personalization and personalization of the service and its services.
There is another very important context for discussion.For quite some time now, practices have been unfolding in the worldDeath Awareness Movement. This movement advocates for the highest possible quality and frequency of discussion of death, for removing the taboo from talking about dying and passing away. Accordingly, thanatologists appear - psychologists who are ready to talk about death with the dying and their families, “death midwives” emerge, a kind of doulas who combine the functionality of funeral agents and psychologists. They work with families as loved ones die. Death cafe-type events are appearing, which people attend to discuss death in any context, completely freely, without psychotherapy. And, in the end, psychotherapy appears that actively works with the fear of death. A modern person can, if he wishes, talk about death on a regular basis. Think about it as a continuation of life or as a separate event. Arguing about his own death, someone else’s, the one he saw, the one he is afraid of. The phenomenon itself ceases to be distant, detached, something that is under the jurisdiction only of special people - ministers of religion, funeral directors or other initiates. Death affects everyone and everyone, so we all have the right to discuss it.
Death becomes secular and it entersin almost every home and every life. We constantly encounter death, for example, in the media. We see more obituaries than ever before on the same social media platforms when someone dies. Death has come closer to us as a topic for discussion, and therefore, it seems to me, there will be no vulgar desacralization of the topic. Precisely because we can calmly communicate, including on this topic, every day and in different formats. As a result, there will be a greater awareness of the attitude towards dying, the frailty of existence - and towards life, of course.
Oksana Moroz
For example, I have a deceased grandfather who passed away eight years ago, I love him very much.I have very little left of him - not a single one.recordings of his voice, for example. As an adult who lost him as an adult and now does not perceive this event as acute, painful, I would be glad to “hear” him sometimes. Chatting with “his” chatbot that would speak in his phrases would be quite nice. It is unlikely that this would have a serious therapeutic effect, but it would be important for me to sometimes “talk” with him, maybe even consult. Another thing is that the presence of such a chatbot, made “for” a person who died tragically, can be painfully perceived by loved ones, for whom such a death is a disaster, an open wound. As a result, when discussing the issue of chatbots, we find ourselves in the space of cultural libertarianism. If we present such a technology to the masses, then potentially everyone will have to decide for what purpose and for what purpose to use the tool. Which may look like a toy, or maybe a cause of retraumatization.
Photo: Vlad Shatilo / "Hightech"
Digital death and religion
In Japan, Pepper, one of the most famous social robots, was already programmed to service funerals a few years ago.In Japan, funerals are very expensive, and quitea large number of people cannot afford the high-quality implementation of this ritual. At the same time, the population is aging. So people experience some frustration due to the fact that they cannot properly ensure that their deceased observe the most important ritual that marks the end of life. And then a robot appears that can conduct a service, and its services will cost much less than a ceremony performed by a Buddhist monk. Such technologization, in which the robot, of course, does not completely replace the servant of religion, but points to the internal problems of religious systems, is not a challenge to the church or religious authorities. This is a challenge to the entire society, for which so far it is religious systems that have the right to serve and interpret death as an event.
In the case of Christianity, things are somewhat different.Catholicism since the Second Vatican Councillooks closely at the achievements of the secular world, including technological ones. Orthodoxy may be more conservative, but even here at the community level there are many techno-optimists. There are priests who specifically study the problems of AI, there are priest-bloggers, there are lay people who pray using instant messengers. As they note, the main thing is prayer meetings, and not the technology of their implementation. So in this case, technology is not an asset in itself, but a tool. And its influence on the being, the content of the rituals is still minimal, because not a single technology can reproduce the act of presence in the sacrament.
I believe that technology will increasingly invade the space of religion, at least at the level of visual presentation, representation.In the end, into sacred spaceHave cemeteries been invaded by interactive tombstones, QR memorials and digital tombstones? Their presence provides mourners with a large amount of information about the deceased, but does not in any way transform the essence of farewell rituals or services. The key question about the digitalization of physical death is the attitude of the church to digital technologies as an element of progressive changes in the living conditions of mankind. In the modern Russian version, digitalization is not yet at the center of the interests of religious systems, turning out to be simply part of the everyday life of parishioners.
Digital Death Geography
In Russia, the attitude towards digital death is much less calm than in Europe and in the Western world in general.And yes, of course, you should always understand thatThere are different national, historical, cultural and religious traditions and customs of interaction with death. In this sense, the representation of death in China, Russia and America can be very different. However, most startups that work with digital death are focused specifically on the Western market, on the European or American healthcare systems - with insurance and digital law, with digital inheritance management systems. For example, JoinCake is one of the largest and most successful EOL (end-of-life) management tools. Before you start actively using the service, you need to answer a number of questions. And all of them are related to the everyday realities of the Western (at least American) healthcare system.
Photo: Vlad Shatilo / "Hightech"
"In Russia, death is more often associated with something negative and painful."
Modern European society (and Philip Ares has written quite a lot about this) is in some sense in an “upside down relationship” with death.Death as a painful, terrible phenomenoncanceled or its presence relegated to the background. Almost everything can be cured; quality survival and pain relief can also be provided for many people. Conditions that were previously clearly associated with death (pain, suffering) are no longer considered as its obligatory companions. So death becomes simply a functional part of life, of everyday life. And it can be treated instrumentally. This is exactly what happens with digitalization. Some apps are designed so that you can plan your funeral - right down to what color napkins your guests will have and what kind of food they will be served. Yes, it's a game. But at the same time it also demonstrates a very rational attitude towards death. Now I'm going to die. I want my end of life to cause as little trouble as possible to those who will remain after me. Other apps allow you to handle digital wills.
Philip Ares- French historian, author of works on historyeveryday life, family and childhood. The subject of his most famous book, Man Facing Death, is the history of attitudes towards death in European society.
In Russia, it seems to me, up to a certain age, people simply do not even think about their wills.Not to mention wonderinghow to inherit digital assets. And discussing such issues is a bit taboo. Why? In Russia, in principle, there are very few social guarantees that allow a person to be confident that his death, sudden or, on the contrary, quite expected, will be accompanied by a normal farewell organization and adequate legal procedures. Therefore, death is not a phenomenon that should be ordered according to the principle “Well, it will happen anyway,” it is such a radical non-event that you don’t want to think or talk about.
Facebook as a digital graveyard
It seems to me that the inhabitants of Facebook will grow old and inevitably die, and new users will not appear.People will not so much change their attitude towardssocial networks in general, how many will reflect on the practice of monopolization of a digital resource by some giants. This monopolization is quite noticeable: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and to a lesser extent Instagram are the most popular services that provide the maximum number of people with the full range of possible tools for communication. And they also establish censorship that users have to put up with. I hope that sooner or later people will go to more specialized and smaller social media or instant messengers, where they can create nanonetworks of their people, their loved ones, and this will be a new version of a person’s online life world. Because a lifeworld from a network of 100–300 connections can still be somehow maintained, but if you have 5 thousand friends, you, of course, don’t know them all.
But for the time being, social networks remain the monopolists in the field of memory digitization, which have launched tools to memorize the accounts of their users.And thus they turned out to be ambassadorstolerant attitude towards death. The same Facebook literally publicly reports the following: “We do not hush up the fact that our users are dying. But we don’t erase them from the world of those existing on Facebook. We show respect for their posthumous presence in our space.” Although it is clear that for Facebook, dead accounts are an important marketing resource, a tool for advertising services.
So the number of Facebook users includes the accounts of dead people.And it looks like this zombie apocalypse:Not only that, other people often hold lengthy wakes for the deceased, tagging him/her in their mournful statuses. Also, with the help of the profiles of the deceased, some products are promoted. As a result, the manipulation of these accounts, which may look like respect for death, is actually advertising and an important way to make money. And in the process of this manipulation, many algorithmic mistakes arise when the network begins to show grieving users contextual macabre advertising - quite appropriate in their case, but ethically undesirable. Recipients of such advertising are indignant, publicly appeal to the management of the same Facebook with exclamations of “What are you allowing yourself to do?”, but there is no way out. To resolve the issue, it is necessary to isolate the algorithm, and this is not always the most correct solution from the point of view of the design of social media and adjusting their “sensitivity” to issues of representation of death. The bottom line is that a network that shows some respect for death can also hurt mourners—and it's not entirely clear what can be done about it.
Facebook memorial practices have ceased to bethe company's internal kitchen in the mid-2010s, when a massive online reaction to the terrorist attack was published by the Charlie Hebdo editorial (Jemo Charlie flash mob).Then many terrorist attacks and other masscatastrophic events were accompanied by online mourning, which almost always acted as some kind of reflection, continuation or replacement of state mourning, nationwide. Next to offline grief, online grief has appeared, implemented across state borders and language differences, but associated with filter bubbles. By which groups changed their avatars and set mournful statuses, you can almost always understand who is in what “bubble”, for whom this or that tragedy is significant, and who, for various reasons, does not identify with this grief.
Je Suis Charlie, from fr. “I am Charly”- a slogan that has become a symbol of condemnation of the terrorist attack on the editorial office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which resulted in the death of 12 editorial staff.
At the same time, in parallel with the development of the “I Grieve with the World” position, the non-acceptance of the totality of online grief arose.When we declare national mourning,We personally may not grieve or show empathy, but we find ourselves in a limited information space that precludes the publication of entertainment content, for example. We agree with this, so we are not required to be actively involved in grief, but we are required to demonstrate some collective respect for the grief of others.
But now there is no state mourninginfluences the fact that you can download “BoJack Horseman” on the same day and watch it. In the online environment, grief is accompanied by a contagion effect: changing avatars, black backgrounds, and mournful formulaic speeches flash everywhere. And at the same time, the obligatory nature of these expressions of grief is optional. A conflict arises. It seems that you are free not to mourn with others and to exist within your online field in accordance with your communication habits. But there is pressure from the moral authority of other people who believe that since a massive misfortune has happened, why don’t you mourn with everyone else? This conflict is especially noticeable if the user finds himself in a filter bubble where online grief of a certain type is the norm.
Oksana Moroz
In the end, almost everyone who dared to stand onsome public position on the spontaneous online grief and voice it, something, so they will blame. For example, the fact that a person refuses to grieve publicly. Or does it wrong. Of course, the appearance of these claims depends largely on the community and on the same algorithmically collected filter bubbles. But if collective self-identification through concrete actions (in particular, spontaneous memorialization), collective empathy is important for the community, then claims can be voiced quite clearly. And this issue is also studied within the talk about digital death, because recalling mass disasters and tragedies is part of the discourse about death.