Death already has a surprisingly vivid presence online.
Social media sites are full of improvised memorials and outpourings of grief
for loved ones, along with the unintentional mementos the departed leave behind
in comments, photo streams and blog posts.
Now technology is changing death again, with tools that let
you get in one last goodbye after your demise, or even more extensive
communications from beyond the grave.
People have long left letters for loved ones (and the rare
nemesis) with estate lawyers to be delivered after death. But a new crop of
startups will handle sending prewritten e-mails and posting to Facebook or
Twitter once a person passes. One company is even toying with a service that
tweets just like a specific person after they are gone. The field got a boost
last week when the plot of a British show "Black Mirror" featured
similar tools, inspiring an article by The Guardian.
Schedule social media posts long into the future
"It really allows you to be creative and literally
extend the personality you had while alive in death," said James Norris,
founder of DeadSocial. "It allows you to be able to say those final
goodbyes."
DeadSocial covers all the post-death social media options,
scheduling public Facebook posts, tweets and even LinkedIn posts to go out
after someone has died. The free service will publish the text, video or audio
messages directly from that person's social media accounts, or it can send a
series of scheduled messages in the future, say on an anniversary or a loved
one's birthday. For now, all DeadSocial messages will be public, but the
company plans to add support for private missives in the future.
DeadSocial's founders consulted with end of life specialists
while developing their service. They compare the final result to the physical
memory boxes sometimes created by terminally ill parents for their children.
The boxes are filled with sentimental objects and memorabilia they want to
share.
"I don't think that somebody would continually be
negative and troll from the afterlife."
James Norris, founder of DeadSocial
"It's not physical, but there are unseen treasures that
can be released over time," Norris said of the posthumous digital
messages.
Very loosely related: Manti Te'o and messages from a
"dead" girlfriend
Among the early beta users, Norris observed that younger
participants were more likely to make jokes around their own deaths, while
people who were slightly older created messages more sincere and emotional.
He's considered the potential for abuse but thinks the public nature of
messages will be a deterrent. The site also requires members to pick a trusted
executor, and there is a limit of six messages per week.
"I don't think that somebody would continually be
negative and troll from the afterlife," Norris said optimistically.
"Nobody really wants to be remembered as a horrible person."
The UK-based startup will only guarantee messages scheduled
for the next 100 years, but in theory you can schedule them for 400 years,
should your descendants be able receive Facebook messages on their Google
corneas. The company has only tested DeadSocial with a group of beta members,
but it will finally launch the service for the public at the South by Southwest
festival in March. Fittingly, the event will take place at the Museum of the
Weird.
The last, private word
For those interested in sending more personal messages --
confessions of love, apologies, "I told you so," a map to buried
treasure -- there's If I Die. This company will also post a public Facebook
message when you die (the message goes up when at least three of your appointed
trustees tell the service you've died), but it can also send out private
messages to specific people over Facebook or via e-mail.
Though If I Die has attracted a number of terminally ill
members, the company's founders think it could be appeal to a much wider
audience.
"Somebody that knows he's about to die gets time to
prepare himself; the big challenge is when it happens unexpectedly," said
Erez Rubinstein, a partner at If I Die.
The Israeli site launched in 2011 and already has 200,000
users. Most have opted to leave sentimental goodbyes, and written messages are
more common than videos, according the company. So far, the service is entirely
free, but it plans to launch premium paid options in the future.
"It's an era where most of your life and most of your
presence is digital, and you want to have some control over it. You want to be
in charge of how you are perceived afterward," Rubinstein said.
A tweet-bot to remember you by
A more extreme version of this type of control lies at the
heart of _LivesOn, a new project with the catchy tag line "When your heart
stops beating, you'll keep tweeting."
Still in the early stages, _LivesOn is a Twitter tool in
development at Lean Mean Fighting Machine, an advertising agency in the United
Kingdom. The agency is partnering with the Queen Mary University to create
Twitter accounts that post in the voice of a specific person, even after he or
she has died.
"People have a real faith in what technology can
do."
Dave Bedwood, a partner at Lean Mean Fighting Machine
When people sign up, the service will monitor their Twitter
habits and patterns to learn what types of content they like and, in the
future, possibly even learn to mimic their syntax. The tool will collect data
and start populating a shadow Twitter account with a daily tweet that the
algorithm determines match the person's habits and interests. They can help
train it with feedback and by favoriting tweets.
"It's meant to be like a twin," said Dave Bedwood,
a partner at Lean Mean Fighting Machine.
In the short term, Bedwood and his team said it will serve
as a nice content-recommendation engine. But eventually, in the more distant
future, the goal is to have Twitter accounts that can carry on tweeting in the
style and voice of the original account.
The people behind the project warn against expecting Twitter
feeds fully powered by artificial intelligence, or worrying about Skynet, any
time soon.
"People seem to think there's a button you can press,
and we're going to raise all these people from the dead," joked Bedwood,
who has seen a huge spike in interest in the project over the past week.
"People have a real faith in what technology can do."
Artificial Intelligence is still a long way from being able
to simulate a specific individual, but recreating the limited slice of
personality reflected in a Twitter feed is an interesting place to start.
The _LivesOn service is hoping to roll out to a limited
number of test users at the end of March.
As with the other services, _LivesOn will require that members
choose an executor. At this point, it's as much a thought experiment as an
attempt to create a usable tool.
A little bit of immortality
All these companies see the potential for technology to
change how people think about death. Goodbye messages can help people left
behind through the grieving process, but composing them can also be comforting
to people who are uncomfortable with or afraid of death.
"We shy away from death. It reaches us before we
approach it," DeadSocial's Norris said. "We're using tech to soften
the impact that death has and dehumanize it. It allows us to think about death
in a more logical way and detach ourselves from it."
The prospect of artificial intelligence, even in
140-character bursts, can also be comforting to people who see it as a way to
live on.
"The afterlife is not a new idea, it's been around for
quite a long time with all the different versions of heaven and hell,"
Lean Mean Fighting Machine's Bedwood said. "To me this isn't any stranger
than any one of those. In fact, it might be less strange."
