Death, after-death and the human in the Internet era: Remembering, not forgetting Professor Michael C. Kearl (1949-2015)

Abstract

Today, humans have remains that are other than physical, generated within and supported by new information communications technologies (ICTs). As with human remains of the past, these are variously attended to or ignored. In this article, which serves as the introduction to this special issue, we examine the reality, meaning and use of enduring digital remains of humans. We are specifically interested in the evolving practices of remembering and forgetting associated with them. These previously posited considerations of 'human remains' and 'what remains of the human' are useful for exploring the relationship between the Internet, the body, remembering and forgetting. This article is a first step towards understanding how new technological developments are shaping and revealing our contemporary view of life, death and what it means to be human.

Information science and the inevitable: A literature review at the intersection of death and information management: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

“…The notion of human remains has changed in the digital age. Two key questions explored in research addressing the theme of digital remains are how the dead “persist and continue to participate as social actors through platforms” (Gibbs et al, 2015, p. 255) and how digital remains may be useful for exploring “the relationship between the Internet, the body, remembering and forgetting” (Graham & Montoya, 2015, p. 287). With the accumulation of digital remains of people who have passed away (Öhman, 2019), the deceased can appear to persist like the living (Meese, Nansen, et al, 2015) and even maintain a personal and often personified presence within the domains of the living (Öhman, 2020), and when publicly available such remains create public digital mortuary landscapes (Ulguim, 2018).…”