Throughout the semester we spent a lot of time addressing digital mortality and immortality. We started off the year with Ashe and the episode of Black Mirror, Be Right Back, later on we discussed social media of deceased, to finally conclude the semester with discussions about death of famous people and their digital mortality. In Alexandria Sherlock’s article “Digital Resurrection and the re-Enchantment of Society”, the author acknowledged that the death of a famous person can have a substantial effect on society. Parasocial relationships with famous person cause mourning and hysteria. One of the most famous examples are death of Elvis Presley and Princess Diana whose deaths still remain a relevant topic in the present day. The rise of technology allowed people to express their feelings on a whole different level. Social media, such as Twitter and Instagram, get hyperactive every time a famous person dies. Technology evolved so much that people were actually able to create a concert of Tupac with a hologram to represent him. Although the hologram looked just like Tupac, at the end of the day it is nothing more than a simulation. The same thing can be said about Ashe once Marta brought him back. The resurrected Ashe looked better than he used to look in his everyday life (due to his social media pictures), but it did not take long for Marta to figure out all the differences between the real and resurrected Ashe. The grand point being that, even though technology has progressed incredibly, especially in the last two decades, we are nowhere close to immortality, in other words, our mortality still remains just as relevant to our lives with no substantial change of dynamic, even with the introduction of advanced technology. Our life spans are longer, but once death knocks on the door, it’s pretty much the same.
retrived from: humansarefree.com/2014/09/science-could-make-us-immortal-but-do.html%5B/caption%5D
Peace,
Duka