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Tra neuroplasticità, memoria ed emozione, l’intelligenza umana resta un territorio non replicabile: così il cervello diventa l’ultimo archivio vivente e creativo
ISSUE NO. 31
In the past four decades, the World Wide Web has become quite a presence in the life of most of the world population. In western nations especially, life is increasingly digitized. It almost seems impossible to live without technology and without having a digital presence. In 2023, more than five billion people on the planet will own a smartphone.
All aspects of life are affected, including death. Death is the western social taboo par excellence. Yet, what the world is witnessing as people’s lives become increasingly digitized day by day, is a shift in the imagery and narration related to death. Providing a new field of study, called «Digital death».
According to Professor Davide Sisto, Digital death is defined as «the combination of interdisciplinary studies that investigate the way digital culture is changing human beings’ relationship with death, grief, memory and immortality». It has come as far as to call into question the very notion of what it means to be human.
During the past four decades our lives have become increasingly digitized. The role of the web in everyday life has been changing dramatically as well: it is no longer used merely to navigate sites or access information; it is now a space where anyone can replicate or express their own identity, or portions of it, through a multiplicity of channels.
As such, any given user now has one or more digital identities, in addition to their physical presence.
Online profiles are not, however, the only expression of a phenomenon that sees the social and personal life of users becoming increasingly digitized. It is now of common use to store information and personal documents on digital archives, both on software and hardware, using services such as iCloud or Google Drive, hard drives, or USB sticks.
Part of the documentation needed in physical life are now stored on digital supports. In this context, the notion of death is developing accordingly. In a digitalised world, death is becoming as digital as any other aspect of life.
A distinctive and emblematic case in this respect is that of Facebook, the most popular social network on the planet, counting 1.59 million active users a day in 2019. It has become common on the platform to come across the profile of either a friend or a family member who has passed away. Today, Facebook counts 50 million dead users.
It is estimated that, should the platform still be around at that time, by 2098 there will be more dead users than alive. Profiles remain on the platform and can be turned into «memorial» pages for other users to express grief. However, this changes the notion of death and grief entirely – creating a lingering digital purgatory where the elaboration of mourning becomes ever more complex.
Professor Remo Bodei defines death as «the last, insurmountable wall that enshrines and shapes both individuals and society». Men are the only living beings who are aware of their death. This awareness generates, in mankind, a natural tendency to wonder about their destiny. However essential in the very definition of life, death has become the greatest taboo in contemporary Western societies, replacing sexuality in the post-Victorian era.
Values promoted by Western societies, linked to the increasing rise of consumerism, have happiness at the core, which implies, according to philosopher Philippe Aires, «the need to be happy, the moral duty and social obligation of contributing to collective happiness avoiding at all costs any reason for unhappiness and boredom, while always looking happy, even when actually desperate».
In clear contrast with thoughts of death. In pop culture, recent blockbuster Barbie clearly represents this tendency: the event that starts the plot, disrupting the perfect equilibrium of Barbieland, is Barbie – an obvious symbol of capitalism – having death thoughts. Death and dying are de facto removed from contemporary public discourse in the West.
The digital age took it one step further. Thanks to new, and quite spooky, technologies – ranging from medicine to digital communication – the goal of achieving immortality seems now almost within reach. Bodies are still doomed, subject to the lows of biology, but our digital personas are not.
The technology is now available, for instance, to create chat bots that elaborate data like WhatsApp conversations, social media accounts, audios and videos and allow users to keep talking with a plausible digital version of their lost loved ones. This is just an example.
The ephemeral illusion that a version of us can live forever is leading to death being removed not just from public discourse, but also from the realm of the inescapable. This completely transforms the very basis upon which societies are articulated.
Digital death also brings up the question of rituals. As Bodei puts it, «all civilizations, all religions and philosophies of the world have developed strategies and rituals in order to ignore, obliterate, exorcize or attribute some meaning to death».
Rituals centered around the transition between life and death, and grief are an essential part of how societies are structured. To have a healthy society, people need to collectively process grief in a healthy way. A common view of death and a shared way of processing grief means a society has a collective view of destiny – which is key for living together in a meaningful way.
Some scholars, like Judith Butler, even went as far as claiming that violence, on a social scale, is a response to a wrongfully processed collective grief. In the digital age, it is not yet clear which rituals accompany death and loss. It is however key to look into it, remembering that the way we tell collective stories is a powerful force, driving how we live together.
The act of telling stories, argues historian Yuval Noah Harari, is what drives people together, pushes them to build social bonds. This is the case, for instance, with founding myths. Having a common story to tell about the fundamental aspects of life is what keeps a society together. What people have in common in a nation, a village, or any community, is the stories they tell, and which create a sense of belonging. This is true for explaining where we come from as much as it is for making sense of where we are going – i.e. talking about death.
Religion is an example of how a community creates stories about what happens when we die, and how these stories have an immense driving power on how people then go on and live their lives. In the discourse around digital death, it is essential to look at how we narrate death and dying in the digital age. A fascinating and representative case in this context is provided by the episode «Be Right Back» in Black Mirror season two. In the episode, Martha loses her boyfriend Ash in an accident.
Torn by grief, she turns to an artificial intelligence service that creates a plausible copy of him, elaborating his social media accounts and digital footprint. This is one of the first contemporary cases where we can see how our digital persona can survive our physical body. The point of the episode, the clue of narration is to be found in the gap between the two – serving as a reminder that the online version of each of us will never fully align, is necessarily partial.
Death is, quite trivially, an essential part of life – removing it from the public discourse is just an illusion. It represents the inevitable unknown that humans spend their lives trying to come to terms with. Philosopher Walter Benjamin argues that death is the final ‘scene’ of the narration of every life. As such, it is also what gives its final meaning.
In the digital age, everything becomes more complex, less definite, the limit between life and death blurrier – which affects the collective way of processing grief. What must change is the illusion of removal. In order to keep communities healthy, it is imperative to bring death back into the public discourse, so that people have the chance to face grief and loss in all of their newly acquired nuances and do so collectively.
This could help recover some of the lost sense of belonging and community in the contemporary West. If technology is at the heart of the developments driving digital death, the tools for elaboration are entirely else: ranging from literature, philosophy, rhetoric, art. Disciplines that seem to have lost significance, but are the only solution to turn to, to reclaim the very meaning of living and dying together.
Field of study that investigates the combination of interdisciplinary studies that investigate the way digital culture is changing human beings’ relationship with death, grief, memory and immortality.
ISSUE NO. 31
Lampoon is a cultural magazine.
Culture today means sustainability – in its honest meaning.
Culture has always been about human respect, tolerance. It’s not only about accepting human diversity but it’s about searching for the beauty of every human peculiarity.
Inclusion is the first value that defines art. Culture today means one thing only: to be part of a community, to think as a community.
Reading Lampoon, you see that these themes are smoothly aligned. A good part of the articles’ content discusses practices to restore our environment and stories about understanding the others.
Reading Lampoon, you find a dialogue between science and creativity. From sharp and edgy photo sessions to fashion, architecture, technology – the commitment is dedicated to a future that is all about us – together.
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