This article detailing the theoretical ‘singularity’ (coined by me and deliberately so) brings up the interesting phenomena in which Memorial Pages of the dead outnumber the profiles of the living on Facebook. In our previous discussions, we have talked about antiquated equivalents to modern day social media platforms. For example, text messaging now may be analogous to telegraph or letter sending in the past. These memorial pages contain vast, diverse accounts of a person’s life. Looking at one of these pages may be akin to flipping through a photo album of a recently deceased loved one.
As we have stated repeatedly, one of the primary differences between today’s media and the media of old is the accessibility/the ease with which something may be done. Perhaps the reason why the concept of memorial pages may seem disconcerting is because many of the things posted on Facebook are often whimsical, spur of the moment thoughts and events, rather than a hand-written letter or pencil sketched portrait.
Is this the reason why looking at photos of a long-deceased great grandparent might not seem so strange? It might also be because it’s not such a personal look into their lives. Exploring the concept of ancestry, recent advances in digitalization of historical databases have made some able to easily ‘look up’ their ancestors through services such as ancestry.com. In the not too far future where the majority of Facebook users are dead, even basic information parsers might not be necessary–one could simply keep click on the ‘parents’ section of their parent’s profiles, and so on.
So unlike ancestry.com, where you might be supplied to years of birth and death, occupation, and a nice posed photo, in the future the curious will be able to see that embarrassing Facebook status from 6th grade about the gurl that got away. Regardless of what you might think of memorial pages, that seems quite frankly utterly terrifying for all parties involved.