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Is Social Media changing our relationship with Death?

puntofisso.net

1–10 of 17 posts

Re: Is Social Media changing our relationship with Death?

#3
"Have you ever been at a cemetery, making a mass-visit to a dead loved one?" People do that all the time. Some cultures have a whole "day of the dead" to remember the deceased. The medium may be different (and the reach a bit farther), but the relationship with death is the same.

Re: Is Social Media changing our relationship with Death?

#4
post #3

"Have you ever been at a cemetery, making a mass-visit to a dead loved one?" People do that all the time. Some cultures have a whole "day of the dead" to remember the deceased. The medium may be different (and the reach a bit farther), but the relationship with death is the same.

Yep, Chinese have a day devoted to this. We burn money and eat good tasting food.

Re: Is Social Media changing our relationship with Death?

#6
I dont know much about this Tupac dude other than that he was famous and died, and then yesterday a hologram was represented of him somewhat convincingly at a public performance on a stage. It makes me reflect that, of my superset of all friends, 99% of them I have not talked to in years, and they could very well be dead. A few actually are and I found out only recently. To suppose there eventually will be a way of programming the states of our personality into some agent, and let others interact with it, I might say this surrogate might be enough to trick my brain that they are still alive. What if facebook could ask you 1500 questions, and emulate the first 80% of your psyche? It would be a weird way to remember someone, chatting with their agent like that. Like that mastergeek at the end of Serenity, perhaps. Some limited interaction thing. It's all damned weird to think about. I am uncomfortable with this thought experiment so far.

Re: Is Social Media changing our relationship with Death?

#7
My point was a bit different. The day of the deads is a day in which you remember the deceased as a whole. It's not the same, to me, as remembering that particular person, together with all your common friends, in a celebrative way (i.e. "Happy Birthday"). --@puntofisso

Re: Is Social Media changing our relationship with Death?

#8

I dont know much about this Tupac dude other than that he was famous and died, and then yesterday a hologram was represented of him somewhat convincingly at a public performance on a stage. It makes me reflect that, of my superset of all friends, 99% of them I have not talked to in years, and they could very well be dead. A few actually are and I found out only recently. To suppose there eventually will be a way of p…

Or to expound on that for a moment, think of Barkley in the holodeck - what are the ramifications of us programming our own psyches of people we know, to have virtual instances of them that we can interact with? How weird/wrong/fine is it to program up some girls you went to high school, but tweak them all to be friendly? I know this is a bit of a rant from the topic of social media familiarizing us with first-person death experiences. It just makes me stop for a moment to contemplate what we really are inside, or what we really arent.

Re: Is Social Media changing our relationship with Death?

#9

My point was a bit different. The day of the deads is a day in which you remember the deceased as a whole. It's not the same, to me, as remembering that particular person, together with all your common friends, in a celebrative way (i.e. "Happy Birthday"). --@puntofisso

At least in my (former) church, there's a tradition of having a mass for them on the anniversary of their death (first and tenth in particular), and family/friends would gather and make a social occasion of it, which was often quite a joyful affair.

Re: Is Social Media changing our relationship with Death?

#10

I dont know much about this Tupac dude other than that he was famous and died, and then yesterday a hologram was represented of him somewhat convincingly at a public performance on a stage. It makes me reflect that, of my superset of all friends, 99% of them I have not talked to in years, and they could very well be dead. A few actually are and I found out only recently. To suppose there eventually will be a way of p…

You might be interested in reading the short story "Learning To Be Me" by Greg Egan, which touches on this type of issue. A quick Google turned up this PDF: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&#...
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