The work of the digital undead: digital capitalism and the suspension of communicative death

Abstract

During the past years, online services like LivesOn, Eterni.me and DeadSocial received some media coverage. They seem to establish ways to suspend death by digital means as they perpetuate some communicative aspects of the deceased individual. This article shows how a new logic of negotiation between life and death is not restricted to such specialized services like LivesOn, Eterni.me and DeadSocial. On the contrary, the computational processes that are embedded in massively used communication platforms enforce a phenomenon that I suggest to coin with the term algorithmic undeath: Web algorithms for recommendation and personalization in general establish a post mortem prolongation of individual communication. The article unfolds this argument, suggests a categorization of dimensions of death and closes with some remarks about the cultural and social significance of algorithmic undeath. The algorithmic perpetuation of some aspects of individual communications poses serious questions in relation to our concept of death, work, expropriation and value creation, personal identity, authorship and continuity, but also in relation to the question of creativity and the social value of oblivion.