Carl Öhman and I share a weird specialism that isn’t so weird anymore, and we’re both banging the same drum. Whether you use social media, whether you own a smartphone, whether you’re an Instagram addict or a Neo-Luddite, the existence of digital afterlives matters to you … in ways few of us realise.
We’ve both been in this space a long time, exploring different parts of a very large map while sometimes overlapping territories. We’re always referring inquiring journalists to one another so that a fuller picture can be reached. We’ve had previous conversations for podcasts too, discussing whether social media companies can profit from the data of the dead.
This time around, we’re talking about:
Why digital remains – the data left behind when we die -- matter to everyone on the planet, not just the approximately 63% of the world who are connected to the Internet.
Why it makes sense to say that we live inside the Internet, or inside of an archive
Our responsibilities to the digital dead, and to history, and how our current ways of dealing with the dead connect us to history, including ancient history
What happens artificial intelligence is combined with digital remains
I put more highlights on my (digital) copy of Carl’s new book than any book I’ve read in recent times, and I’m so excited about its release in April 2024. It’s called The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care, and it’s an elegant argument, beautifully and incisively written. My previous book is All the Ghosts in the Machine: The Digital Afterlife of Your Personal Data, and there’s a brand-new chapter on digital afterlives in Reboot. (By the way, the audiobook is available now worldwide courtesy of Bolinda audio!)
A snippet from this episode:
Carl: Now we've entered into this era where once again, we have technology surrounding us, like we're inside the internet. As you pointed out, it becomes almost an absurd question of asking, like, but were you online? Like, what does that mean? Like, I was close to my fridge, which is connected to the wifi.
Elaine: There was an Echo Dot next to me, ambiently listening. I had my watch on.
Carl: Exactly. I was in my car, like everything is connected all the time. So like. Whether or not I was online. It sounds like, did you go into the room where you had your computer and connect to the cables of the internet?
Elaine: You're like in Tron or something. That 1980s movie, where you go in those eighties movies, we would go into the mainframe or would be zooming around in it. We are essentially in Tron whilst denying that we are in Tron all the time.
Carl: Exactly. And and I make use of that idea in saying that what has really happened is that we built the archives to store the dead and to store the past. And now we have moved into the archives. We’re living inside the archive.
(By the way, for some reason the audio in the intro to this is sort of crunchy. I need to figure out what’s up with my fancy microphone! Persist a couple minutes for far warmer audio.)
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