Informational Corpses
Ron Charles has the most brilliant weekly book newsletter – if you don’t already read it, you may want to sign up. Not only do you get book recommendations, but he also dives deep into certain books/ideas.
His newsletter from a week or two ago blew my mind with the concept of the informational corpses we leave behind.
“When we encounter the dead through their left-behind data,” Öhman writes, “we are not merely facing a symbolic mask but a lifetime of data, an informational corpse.” More than 2 billion people are expected to die in the next 30 years. Eventually, the deceased will outnumber the living on Facebook.
Whoa. Isn’t that a thought that gives you pause? I don’t unfriend people after they die, so I have accounts in my feed for people who are no longer here, and no one has done anything with their accounts. I still get reminders to wish them a happy birthday or memories to look back on.
But this writing — this blog — will one day become part of my informational corpse. Everything I leave behind digitally will be part of me because it’s part of my mind and personality; someone will have to decide whether to preserve it or allow it to fade away.
Ron Charles always makes me think.
3 comments
I get his newsletter too! — always so much there to dig into!
Well, that’s an interesting thought…. I never thought about “informational corpses” before. I do have people I knew from high school who still have facebook presences despite being long gone, and it is a mixed bag — I feel like it can be a great place for people to remember a loved one who passed, but it can also be awkward if you get a birthday reminder and people actually wish the deceased person a happy birthday. I like the idea of the blog living on in cyberspace much better.
For some reason, I am still paying for my husband’s phone line and checking his email accounts. It’s hard to let those connections go.