Posthumous data at stake - An Overview of Digital Immortality Issues

• Vinicius Ferreira Galvão UFMT
• Cristiano Maciel UFMT
• Vinicius Carvalho Pereira UFMT
• Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia UERJ
• Roberto Pereira UFPR
• José Viterbo UFF

Abstract

Who wants to be immortal? While this rhetorical question seems to haunt humans, digital immortality is already a reality. Social networks have allowed and facilitated our digital footprints to remain forever at reach of Internet users. We will all die, on the other hand, our digital self may remain forever. Social media technology has also allowed people to browse or even post messages to maintain the memory of a person alive. It seems spooky, but it is technically feasible to build a chatbot from a deceased person’s digital legacy allowing a certain degree of presence of a deceased. This unaware digital immortality brings new cultural, technical, social, ethical, and legal challenges and implications that should be brought to light and discussed. There is an urge to recognize the limits for an adequate use of digital immortality. By means of an overview, this paper reports our literature survey where we identified some key issues regarding digital immortality, looking at the benefits, consequences and complications from its use. Our study identified differences when dealing with famous versus non-famous deceased, explicitly defined public versus private data, right and duties related to data preservation versus deletion, technological advances versus restrictions, cultural impedance, and differences from the reasons for desiring immortalization. With this article, we aim to encourage discussions on digital immortality, its current limits and points that need to be considered regarding such a sensitive theme that is already a current issue.

Keywords: Digital Immortality, Digital Legacy, Death, Posthumous Interaction