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

Abstract

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.

Digital Resurrection: Challenging the Boundary between Life and Death with Artificial Intelligence

“…However, thanks to AI, recreation systems known as Thanabots or Deadbots have emerged. This technology is based on the idea that humans can converse with robots that mimic deceased individuals [3]. AI draws on information from individuals to emulate a person, leveraging emotional, visual, and oral responses.…”

Chatting with the dead: The hermeneutics of thanabots

“…In another article, Savin-Baden and Burden (2019) review common ways in which people are already digitally memorialized, and outline their own development efforts to create a thanabot system that continues to learn so that, put crassly, the deceased stays relevant. Hurtado Hurtado (2021: 11) also proposes a process for thanabot development, suggesting that the creation and social integration of a thanabot could eventually be regarded as a rite of passage. After surveying some of the many communicative means for interacting with the dead throughout history, Tony Walter concludes that digital technologies may significantly change our relationships with the dead.…”

The incurable self: Negotiating social bonds and dis/connection with metastatic breast cancer

“…However, advancing theorisation on belonging proves challenging due to its multidimensional nature: belonging can encompass connection to place, collective ideas, material objects and personal relationships (May, 2011), as (re)negotiated over time. Building on this scholarship, this article examines relational belonging through the lens of social bonds, that is, by viewing social bonds as the glue that holds social units together and through which collective identities, communities and societies are created and sustained (Hurtado Hurtado, 2021; from a linguistic perspective; see Knight, 2010). Specifically, we draw on work by Scheff (1997), which distinguishes between secure bonds and threatened bonds (see also Ketokivi, 2009).…”