The Digital Departed: How We Face Death, Commemorate Life, and Chase Virtual Immortality

The Digital Departed explores the social meaning of digital death, focusing on how technology has become a medium for the dead and the dying to cope with the anxiety of death. It examines the posthumous internet world from the perspective of both the living and the dead, tracing how communication beyond death evolved over time. Combining data with interviews, surveys, news coverage, and a historical overview, the book explains what it means to live and die on the internet today, showing that although we might pass away, our digital souls live on online in a kind of purgatory.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 12 September 2023
Publisher: New York University Press

The intriguing examination of the social significance of digital death
From the blogs penned by terminally ill authors to the online notes left by those contemplating suicide, technology has emerged as a medium for the deceased and the dying to confront the fear of death. Services such as artificial intelligence chatbots, mind uploading, and postmortem blog posts provide individuals with the opportunity to nurture their legacies in their quest for digital immortality.
The Digital Departed delves into the posthumous internet realm, offering a perspective from both the living and the deceased. Timothy Recuber traces the evolution of communication beyond death over time. Historically, mourning practices have been characterized by unequal access to power and privilege. However, the internet grants the deceased greater agency, enabling users to have accessibility and creativity in shaping how they wish to be remembered. Recuber's analysis is based on hundreds of blog posts, suicide notes, Twitter hashtags, and videos, which he examines to understand how we die online and the digital texts we leave behind. By combining these data with interviews, surveys, analysis of news coverage, and a historical overview of the relationship between death and communication technology dating back to pre-history, The Digital Departed elucidates what it means to live and die in the digital age today.
In this thought-provoking and profoundly unsettling work, Recuber demonstrates that even after our physical demise, our digital souls persist online, inhabiting a purgatory of their own.

Weight: 444g
Dimension: 152 x 229 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781479814961