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Digital Ever After

The topic of our today’s post might be scary to some - death.

Death has long been the least technologically optimized part of our lives. However, Internet has been an indispensable part of our lives for a great many years. This means that the rising number of users of social media are no longer with us. This creates a new set of ethical dilemmas. Have you ever wondered what happens with your online presence once your life is up?

This might be not the most pleasant thought, but relevant to consider for some tech entrepreneurs. Death is always a difficult topic, but hopefully, technology can help with this experience and make it a bit easier. So, how is the technology used today for that purpose?

‍Memorialized accounts on Facebook

Currently, the platform has approximately 30 million accounts of people who have passed away. This is not much yet - however, there will come a point in the future when the number of accounts of dead people will become higher than the living ones. So, what happens to your account after you die? Facebook will set up your account as a memorialized one - meaning that the algorithms will not show your news in the feed, and your friends and family won’t receive a notification about your birthday. However, they will be able to share memories on the timeline.

A hologram of your loved one

Tech also provides an opportunity for digital resurrection - for example, in a form of a realistic hologram. This was the gift Kanye West gave Kim Kardashian for her 40th birthday - a hologram of her late father. Reconnecting with loved ones who have passed sway is made possible by the startups such as the Dutch company Here we Holo. With the help of this technology, you can even speak at your funeral! This raises a moral dilemma however - how ethical is it to bring back the dead, even if it’s only digitally?

Plan your funeral online within several minutes

Funeral planning is an inevitably stressful activity. While for other major life events you get months of preparation, you only get a few days to plan a funeral, while also going through a grief process. Fortunately, innovation comes into play to make this process easier. With a startup Everdays, the funeral organization would take just a few minutes. The startup offers three experience-based funeral packages - each offering a different way for a family to say goodbye.

While no amount of tech can alleviate the pain of losing a loved one, it can at least make things a bit easier. The internet will certainly outlive any of us, and our digital assets will last much longer than our lifetime. Therefore, it’s a good idea to think of the will not only for your physical, but also for your digital assets. However, how that would work in practice we are yet to find out.