Digital Eternity Is Just Around the Corner

Humans want to keep the memory of the dead. The use of photography has helped us do this. In my 2020 project ALIVE: Lost for Words, I photographed people against a projected image of their dead loved ones.

The Pandemic made us confront our mortality and the legacy we leave behind. Digital tools have had a huge impact on our traditional death rituals. We lit virtual prayer candles from our laptops as we said goodbye.

Artificial intelligence and the internet of things will allow us to create new forms of posthumous digital presences in the years to come. The idea of living forever in the virtual world is gaining traction because of the adoption of these technologies. KimKardashian had a hologram created by hologram experts for her 40th birthday. Deep Nostalgia is a genealogy platform that creates fake faces in family photos. Stonses is a memorial platform that can store digital replicas of our cherished possessions, giving them a permanent place in our memories.

The concept will be taken to the next level by the adoption of Web3 technologies. Virtual reality and multisensory stimulation will allow us to interact with the image of our lost loved ones. Premium cinema startup Positron has created a range of virtual reality chairs that amplify cinematic experiences with pillows and scent dispensers. This tech will allow us to not only see the image of the deceased, but also smell their signature perfume and feel their presence on our skin, in a way that has never been done before.

We will be able to use technology to preserve our conversations with those who have passed on. Project December uses artificial intelligence to mimic the style of text that is fed to it. Through learning from the remnants of their digital trails, an artificial intelligence will be able to mimic someone who is no longer with them.

As these technologies become more accessible, we will be able to use them in combination to create "intelligent avatars" that will live on after we die. The metaverse company Somnium Space allows users to create digital clones of themselves using data they have stored while alive.

There's a catch to this sense of immortality. A huge amount of personal data accumulated through the course of our lives will be fed into the artificial intelligence system. If we want our digital selves to live on, this is the exchange we must accept: that the beliefs and opinions we express today can be used to build these posthumous personae. We can have a voice in the afterlife but we don't know what it will say. This will force us to think about how our behaviors might affect the way we live. It will be the year that we broaden our definition of what it means to live forever, a moral question that will fundamentally change how we live our day-to-day lives.