Connor Graham, Martin Gibbs, and Lanfranco Aceti, eds., “Death, Afterlife and Immortality of Bodies and Data,” The Information Society 29, no. 3: (2013). The edited volume for Taylor & Francis is out. It has been a great collaboration with Connor and Martin and I hope you will like the result. The link to The Information Society where there are the abstracts. If you can access the Taylor & Francis site directly, please click here.
Extract from the introduction to the issue
This special issue poses questions concerning death, afterlife and immortality in the age of the Internet. It extends previous work by examining current and emerging practices of grieving and memorializing supported by new media. It suggests that people’s lives today are extended, prolonged and ultimately transformed through the new circulations, repetitions and re-contextualizations on the Internet and other platforms. It also shows that publics are being formed and connected with in new ways and new practices and rituals are emerging, as the traditional notions of the body are being challenged. We argue that these developments have implications for how people will be discovered and conceived of in the future. We consider possible extensions to the research presented here in terms of people, practices and data. Firstly, some sections of the population, in particular those who are the dying and populations in developing countries and the Global South, have largely been neglected to date. Secondly, practices such as (online) suicide and sacrilegious or profane behaviours remain largely uninvestigated. Thirdly, the discussion of the management of the digital self after death has only begun. We conclude by posing further questions concerning the prospect of emerging cities of the dead.
INTRODUCTION
Introduction to the Special Issue on the Death, Afterlife, and Immortality of Bodies and Data
Connor Graham, Martin Gibbs, and Lanfranco Aceti
ARTICLES
Millions Now Living Will Never Die: Cultural Anxieties about the Afterlife of Information
Grant David Bollmer
Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Death and Mourning
Jed R. Brubaker, Gillian R. Hayes, and Paul Dourish
Larger than Life: Digital Resurrection and the Re-enchantment of Society
Alexandra Sherlock
PERSPECTIVES
Designing for Death and Apocalypse: Theodicy of Networks and Uncanny Archives
Denisa Kera
Digital Gravescapes: Digital Memorializing on Facebook
Scott H. Church
The Digital Remains: Social Media and Practices of Online Grief
Jessa Lingel
Perspectives on Virtual Veneration
William Sims Bainbridge
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