Digital Departed

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A01=Timothy Recuber
affordance theory
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Timothy Recuber
automatic-update
blogging
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JBCT
Category=JFD
Category=JHB
Category=JHBZ
COP=United States
death
death anxiety
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
denial of death
digital media
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
hashtags
Internet
Language_English
leaving virtual legacies
memory
mind-uploading
mnemonic freedom
mourning
narrative freedom
PA=Available
photography
post-mortem messaging
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
rationalization
reenchantment
self
social justice
softlaunch
soul
suffering
suicide notes
telegraphy
terminal illness
Twitter
virtual

Product details

  • ISBN 9781479814961
  • Weight: 499g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 12 Sep 2023
  • Publisher: New York University Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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A fascinating exploration of the social meaning of digital death
From blogs written by terminally ill authors to online notes left by those considering suicide, technology has become a medium for the dead and the dying to cope with the anxiety of death. Services like artificial intelligence chatbots, mind-uploading, and postmortem blog posts offer individuals the ability to cultivate their legacies in a bid for digital immortality. The Digital Departed explores the posthumous internet world from the perspective of both the living and the dead.
Timothy Recuber traces how communication beyond death evolved over time. Historically, the methods of mourning have been characterized by unequal access to power and privilege. However, the internet offers more agency to the dead, allowing users accessibility and creativity in curating how they want to be remembered.
Based on hundreds of blog posts, suicide notes, Twitter hashtags, and videos, Recuber examines the ways we die online, and the digital texts we leave behind. Combining these data with interviews, surveys, analysis of news coverage, and a historical overview of the relationship between death and communication technology going back to pre-history, The Digital Departed explains what it means to live and die on the internet today. In this thought-provoking and uniquely troubling work, Recuber shows that although we might pass away, our digital souls live on, online, in a kind of purgatory of their own.

Timothy Recuber is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Smith College. He is the author of Consuming Catastrophe: Mass Culture in America’s Decade of Disaster, winner of the Outstanding Recent Contribution Award from the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Emotions section.