The HBS hosts discuss what happens to our digital personalities after the meatspace person dies.
Co-host Leigh M. Johnson is in the hot seat for this episode’s discussion of digital afterlives. If we consider the “digital,” information-based self to be distinguishable from the meatspace self, we should ask: how long can the Digital Me live on after my meatspace body dies? Technology already enables us to “re-animate” archives of personal information in many ways, and some futurists believe that we may, someday, be able to upload our consciousnesses to the cloud. Who owns that information? What are they currently allowed (or not allowed) to do with it? What would happen if we insisted that all of our information being “deleted” after we physically die?
Whether or not you believe in a Heaven or Hell, all of us need to think more seriously about our digital afterlives. Rick, Charles, and Leigh work through some of that thinking– and much more– at the hotel bar!
Check out the links below to learn more about thinkers and ideas referenced in this episode:
- Maggi Saven-Baden and Victoria Mason-Robbie, Eds., Digital Afterlife: Death Matters in a Digital Age (2020)
- Rebecca Skloot, The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks (2011)
- origin of the term “meatspace”
- A visualization of the length of Terms of Service for 14 popular apps
- Tupac hologram performs with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre at Coachella 2012
- “Facebook told to grant grieving mother access to daughter’s account” (The Guardian, 2011)
- Black Mirror episode “Smithereens” (on IMDB, or watch the episode on
Netflix) - Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Message (2001)
- “Everything You Need to Know About Twitter Direct Messages” (Livewire, 2020)
- What is data anonymization?
- “What Really Happens To Your (Big) Data When You Die?” (Forbes, 2017)
- “What Happens to Your Email and Social Media After You Die?” (MoneyTalks, 2020)
- “What Happens To Your Medical Data After You Die?” (The Medical Futurist, 2021)
- What is commodity fetishism?
- U.S. House of Representatives’ antitrust report on Big Tech
- Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” (1988)
- What is content curation?
- “Computerized job interviews: Artificial intelligence algorithm may judge you, determine whether you get hired” (Chicago Tribune, 2021)
- “Google’s Grand Plan to Eradicate Cookies is Crumbling” (Wired, 2021)
- How to recognize a phone scam
- “Black women, AI, and overcoming historical patterns of abuse” (VentureBeat, 2021)
- “Black and Queer AI Groups Say They’ll Spurn Google Funding” (Wired, 2021)
- Nick Bostrom, “Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up” (2006)
- HBO series Years and Years
- “The race to stop ageing: 10 breakthroughs that will help us grow old healthily” (Science Focus, 2021)
- Anne Rice, The Vampire Chronicles
