The ‘New(ish)’ Property, Informational Bodies, and Postmortality

Harbinja, Edina

doi:10.1201/9780429322198-7

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…According to Harbinja (2020), the legislature regarding the deceased's personal data, such as the 2018 UK Data Protection Act, defined personal data as "data relating to a living individual" and denies any rights to access deceased users' personal data after their death. However, the European Union's (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Article 27, which is a new data privacy law, allows member states to introduce protections for deceased people's data.…”

Section: Legal Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If we regard the deceased users' personal data as an informational body similarly to Floridi (2016), however, Öhman and Floridi (2017) showed the reality of commercial services' use of proxy sites for the deceased. Figure 1 shows the relationship between personal data protection, narrowly defined postmortem privacy, and broadly defined postmortem privacy (Harbinja 2020). Harbinja (2020) argued that legal solutions that promote the protection of privacy recognize the deceased users' wishes as expressed through wills or technology should take precedence over the default application of traditional property and inheritance law.…”

Section: Direction Of Postmortem Privacymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Figure 1 shows the relationship between personal data protection, narrowly defined postmortem privacy, and broadly defined postmortem privacy (Harbinja 2020). Harbinja (2020) argued that legal solutions that promote the protection of privacy recognize the deceased users' wishes as expressed through wills or technology should take precedence over the default application of traditional property and inheritance law. For better or worse, it is the technical aspects of digital heritage that facilitate this argument.…”

Section: Direction Of Postmortem Privacymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Using deceased people’s personal data

Nakagawa

Orita

2022

AI & Soc

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It is important to manage individuals’ personal data after their death to maintain their dignity or follow their wishes as much as possible. From this perspective, this report describes the real-world commercialization of immortal digital personalities, which gives eternal life to the deceased in a digital form. We identify the problems with the commercialization of deceased users’ images and personal data, which becomes postmortem entertainment. Considering these problems, we seek out the ideal form of deceased users’ personal data for commercialization. We conduct a social survey to understand how ordinary Japanese people feel about the various types of publicly available services that use personal data after death, such as social network service logs. By analyzing our survey results approximately 20% of respondents would allow the commercial use of their personal data, such as browsing their social network service logs, if they could receive compensation during their lifetime.

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Section: Legal Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Direction Of Postmortem Privacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Direction Of Postmortem Privacymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Using deceased people’s personal data

Nakagawa

Orita

2022

AI & Soc

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“…'Digital immortality' is, however, a contested concept because current thanatechnologies are unable to render convincing humanlike reactions and are vulnerable to deletion, as the demise of some of the aforementioned services suggests. Hence, while some (Harbinja, 2020;Stokes, 2015) regard the networked digital data of the deceased as a form of immortality, others remain sceptical of the notion of immortality through digital means and propose terms such as 'digital endurance' (Bassett, 2018;Kasket, 2019). Nonetheless, Meese et al (2015) argue that adaptive digital presence may offer the deceased the means to maintain active agency in everyday life, and envision 'a time where the dead are making direct interventions into our social lives ' (pp.…”

Section: The Intersubjective Construction Of Personhood and The Digital Persona Of The Deadmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Further research on this theme could provide more nuanced perspectives and highlight sources of conflict within a postmortal society of virtualised ancestors, as well as the legal and ethical frameworks for how to treat the VDP and the deceased's data. Current research is already moving in this direction (Harbinja, 2020;Öhman & Floridi, 2017;Savin-Baden et al, 2017) but adopting a future orientation, as well as a more critical stance, might help foresee both gradual and rapid societal changes deriving from the digital reintegration of the dead into the world of the living and avoid risks that accompany such processes.…”

Section: Conclusion: Towards a Postmortal Society Of Virtualised Ancestors?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a postmortal society of virtualised ancestors? The Virtual Deceased Person and the preservation of the social bond

Hurtado

2021

Mortality

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Research about digital immortality has grown in recent years, predominantly focusing on either the social effects of forms of digital immortalisation or on the available technologies. Few studies, however, adopt a clear sociological focus that remains attentive to the ontological dimension of digital immortality. Adopting a future-oriented perspective, this article contributes to the sociological study of digital immortality by introducing the concept of the Virtual Deceased Person (VDP), a speculative artefact that convincingly simulates the mannerisms and character traits of a deceased person, allowing them to operate as social actors posthumously and preserve the human social bond. The article draws on anthropological and microsocial theory to characterise the VDP as a persona of the dead given agency and embodiment by future thanatechnologies. By positioning the concept within the digital immortality discourse and expanding the scope of the social bond to the study of digital immortality, I portray the VDP as a manifestation of posthumous personhood, arguing that it might facilitate preserving the social bond between the living and the dead throughout its creation process and its reintegration into the world of the living. I further discuss its implications for the emergence of a postmortal society of socially active, virtualised ancestors.

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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

Dinneen,

Krtalić,

Davoudi

et al. 2023

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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Death is an inevitable part of life and highly relevant to information management: its approach often requires preparation, and its occurrence often demands a response. Many works in information science have acknowledged so much, and yet death is rarely a focused topic, appearing instead sporadically and disconnected across research. As a result there is no introduction to, overview of, or synthesis across studies on death and information. We therefore conducted an extensive literature search and reviewed nearly 300 scholarly publications at the intersection of death and information (and data) management. Covering seven topics in total, we review two groups of work directly engaging information management in relation to death (digital possessions, inheritance, and legacy; information behavior, needs, and practices around death), three engaging death and technology that require information and its management (death and the Internet, thanatosensitive design and technology‐augmented death practices, and the digital afterlife and digital immortality), and two reflecting the ethical and legal dimensions unique to death and information. We then integrate the collective findings to summarize the landscape of death‐related information research, outline remaining challenges for individuals, families, institutions, and society, and identify promising directions for future information science research.

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The ‘New(ish)’ Property, Informational Bodies, and Postmortality

Cited by 8 publications

References 1 publication

Using deceased people’s personal data

Using deceased people’s personal data

Towards a postmortal society of virtualised ancestors? The Virtual Deceased Person and the preservation of the social bond

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

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