Tag: NYT

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The Darker Afterlife of Electronics

While the story behind “Landfill Legend,” and the dump of Atari E.T. games was charming, particularly with its myth-like status and cult following, I had always been warned that the life cycle of electronics as detailed by Raiford Guins had a far more nefarious end. My parents and older brother would chastise me about tossing batteries or electronics in the trash because of the environmental consequences. However, I recalled a NYT article I once read that argued the health risks of our electronic disposal system are more immediate than even their long-term environmental consequences. I tried to hunt it down, and whether it is the same article or not, I found one detailing the conditions of electronic dumps in third world countries. Leyla Acaroglu describes what happens to our digital devices after they’re dumped: “In India, young boys smash computer batteries with mallets to recover cadmium, toxic flecks of which cover their hands and feet as they work. Women spend their days bent over baths of hot lead, “cooking” circuit boards so they can remove slivers of gold inside.” Acaroglu paints a picture of the legacy of our electronic devices that is quite a bit darker than Guin’s statement of the legacy of the Atari dump: “the invisible presence of decaying matter deep below my feet attests to a complex life history, one pieced together and sustained by the various projects that refuse to forget (234).” While tracing the afterlife of our electronic devices certainly may tell us a lot about where they came from, it’s hard for me to focus on much other than the relatively gruesome health and environmental consequences.

An image of an electronic dump from “Where Do Old Cellphones Go to Die?”
www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/opinion/sunday/where-do-old-cellphones-go-to-die.html%5B/caption%5D

Acaroglu, Leyla. “Where Do Old Cellphones Go to Die?” The New York Times. 4 May 2013. www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/opinion/sunday/where-do-old-cellphones-go-to-die.html.

Guins, Raiford. “Landfill Legend.” Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife. USA: MIT Press, 207-235.

 

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My Life & Wishes: An Archive for the Grievers, not the Deceased

While reading “Cyberspace While You’re Dead,” by Rob Walker, I was struck both by the author’s commentary regarding the number of Americans that don’t have a will, as well as the number that acknowledge that some sort of digital will would probably be a good idea but haven’t done that either. So I decided to see what the experience would be like. After a quick Google search, I came across the site, My Life and Wishes (www.mylifeandwishes.com), which calls itself “an online archive of everything you want your family to know after death.” As an added bonus, there’s a 30 day free trial before a subscription fee of $79 annually, so I signed up, setting the account to cancel after the free trial.

The website allows you to fill in everything from financial information and healthcare information to who should get your pet and what you want to be in your eulogy. You can also set exactly who should be able to see what information. For example I set my parents able to see financial information but my siblings to be in charge of determining where my cat ends up. Additionally, the way it prompted you for answers made me include things that I can’t imagine I would have in a real will, for example, what kind of food my pet eats.

An image from the dashboard of the My Life & Wishes account. (www.mylifeandwishes.com).

In reflecting on the experience of setting the whole thing up, I had a quite similar experience to Walker when he wrote about how his wife was relatively disturbed about receiving an email detailing her role as digital executor. My parents were both confused and slightly concerned when I explained what I up to. Knowing my parents would want little to do with it, I set up my roommate as in charge of my social media accounts. I asked her what she would do with them and she said, “absolutely nothing.” She also seemed slightly irritated that I was making her responsible for it, but that also could just be because I interrupted her Netflix to ask. Maybe in part because I don’t have a whole lot of financial information or any dependents, I felt like the whole thing was a little unnecessary. When my roommate asked me what I would want done with my social media accounts, I came to the realization I really didn’t care. I would want my friends and family to have access to whatever would help them grieve or come to terms with my death, but that’s the extent of my preferences. After all, I’d be dead, and whether my Facebook account remains active or not isn’t going to change that, but if it helps those who mean the most to me, why not let them do what they want with it.

Walker, Rob. “Cyberspace When You’re Dead.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 Jan. 2011. www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/magazine/09Immortality-t.html.

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Reliving Tragedy in the Digital Age

In her last blog entry, Merry closes her thoughts on The Possession with the statement, “Maybe I won’t be able to stop myself and I’ll just start watching the series from the beginning. Again (Tremblay 254).” This, for me, is perhaps the most horrifying part of the book. While it is certainly true that recording technology allows us to relive, or at least be reminded of, our fondest memories, it is easy to forget that it also allows us to do the same with some of our worst moments. The idea of Merry not only having the ability to rewatch her sister’s descent into mental illness, her family’s slow deterioration, and the events leading up to her killing her family is quite disturbing, but the fact that she chooses to do so, for me, was truly disturbing.

However, it also brought to mind some of the many news articles I have read about people who have been forced to relive personal tragedies because of news coverage, often watching family members be killed or injured. I thought of, in particular, a New York Times article, “Dying in the E.R., and on TV Without His Family’s Consent.” This article described a woman who came across video footage of her husband dying in the E.R. on a TV show, NY Med, and the show claimed that the family didn’t have to have provided consent because the man’s face was blurred out. While it is clear that the girls in The Possession didn’t have a real role in providing consent to be filmed, at least it was Merry’s choice to rewatch the show years later. Here, neither the man dying, nor his family, consented to his death being broadcast to the public, and his wife had no warning before seeing his death occur a second time. We have discussed in class several times the issue of consent to one’s image or information being used after death, but I think it is also important to consider the impact that has on one’s family. Both the news cycle’s continual portrayal of violent tragedies, as well as reality TV shows like NY Med, provide examples of how technology has the potential to create “digital ghosts,” but also how these reminders of the dead can “haunt” living friends and relatives without their consent and in a far more vivid way than was possible prior to recording technology.

An image of the reality TV Show “NY Med,” being filmed in an E.R. From the NYT article, “Dying in the E.R., and on TV Without His Family’s Consent.” Photographer: Donna Svennevik. www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/nyregion/dying-in-the-er-and-on-tv-without-his-familys-consent.html

Works Cited

Orstein, Charles. (2015, January 2). Dying in the E.R., and on TV Without His Family’s Consent. New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/nyregion/dying-in-the-er-and-on-tv-without-his-familys-consent.html.

Tremblay, Paul. (2015). A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel. New York, NY: William Morrow. Print.