Go Probe Yourself!

Is anyone ever going to view the average dead person's content? If not, then what's the point of saving it? These questions strike at the very heart of digital immortality, which many feel is reserved for the famous or extra-ordinary. I think that a good part of the answer lies in the way we swap stories with our friends and relatives. Much has been written on the power of storytelling and its deep-rooted history (dating back thousands of years) in connecting us with current and past generations. I believe that most of us, even the non-story-tellers, have some good human interest stories just waiting to be coaxed out; and chances are that at least one of your family relations down the line will want to read about it. A good digital immortality service, then, should effectively capture person-defining stories and help future generations to discover them.

There are (at least) a couple of big problems to solve here. First, most people do not create content on the Internet. It has been observed that for every 1 person that publishes digital content, there are roughly 100 people that only read content, and about 10 people that will post comments. Nobody will hear your stories if you don’t tell them. Second, attention is the scarcest resource. With every passing moment, there is an over-whelming amount of content published to the Internet. Imagine how much worse it would be if everybody did it! Nobody will listen to your stories if they are not receptive to them (or cannot find them when they want to).

I propose that the solutions to both problems is the question. Questioning is a powerful tool used to draw out information in education (testing), journalism (interviews), law (cross-examination), philosophy (Socratic method), science (inquiry), sociology (surveys) … the list goes on and on. In each case, a question is specially formulated to elicit a particular type of information. It stands to reason that the same principle would apply to drawing out a person’s anecdotes, insights, and life-lessons. Why would you tell a story unless somebody asked a relevant question? Conversely, you may know someone who tells stories at inappropriate times—does this deserve your attention?

iNetSelf is designed around asking probing questions (“probes”) designed to draw out stories from seemingly average people AND matching the answers with the people most receptive to them. It looks to the wisdom of crowds to come up with the probes that lead to the most sought-after stories, to give each of us the best chance of a digital survival. If you have an idea for a great probe, then please head over to iNetSelf and submit it. The digital life you save may be your own.

Digital Homicide Watch

At the opposite end of the spectrum from digital immortality lies digital death—the eradication of all traces of your Internet self.  There are several services that can accomplish this on your behalf (digital suicide), or allow relatives to do it for you (assisted digital suicide), as Scott Brown discusses in “Managing Your Digital Remains”.  I cannot personally relate to why anyone would want to do that (aside from transferring finances, etc.), but then I’m not very private when it comes to digital expression, and I want those representations to permanently outlast me.

But what if someone obtained and exercised their right to erase my Internet self?  The following video raises the specter of this, possibly to remove embarrassing photos:

While I firmly believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion, I have a big problem with the potential for someone other than myself to delete pieces of my digital life—that would be digital homicide.  I love my family very much, but I also love my right to preserve the things that I do (however embarrassing).

Now I don’t really think my particular family would delete anything about me (well, maybe this), but I know that some others will and already have, and that poses a critical threat to the possibility of digital immortality.  What do you think—should loved ones of the dearly departed have the right to edit their digital legacy?

Springing Face First

Our first stop along the road of digital representation is the face, as it is widely recognized as the physical trait which best distinguishes a person.  At a glance, we can detect a person’s identity, gender, ethnicity, age, attractiveness, emotional state and focus of attention.

Need some convincing?  Click the "Start" button below to display 2 photos, one of which is the upside-down version of this one. Click the button again when you can tell which one.

It took you  seconds.  Compare your answer with the same photos viewed upright above.  Most people will have trouble distinguishing between the upside-down faces.

This is a famous illusion called the Thatcher Effect, and for our purposes it just goes to show how sensitive most people are to changes in facial features.  But what is the best digital representation of a face?

2D headshots have been heavily used as profile avatars since the advent of the World Wide Web, but a single photo can’t represent the gamut of human emotions or approach the realistic fidelity of 3D animation.  What we ultimately need is a model that can faithfully emulate our facial features, expressions and vocal movements.  I will explore each of these in future posts.

Digital Immortality 101

If I had a lot more time on my hands, I would blog about Death 2.0 in general, rather than just focus on the technology. Luckily, there is at least one other site doing just that, The Digital Beyond, and they’ve nailed it. Check out this slick video that introduces the topic:

The Digital Beyond is well organized, up-to-date, and polished. The blog’s authors, Evan Carroll and John Romano, cover the gamut of digital immortality topics. Thanks to them, I can spend more time with family, friends, iNetSelf, and fashion crimes. :-)

Is It Me, Or Is It Memorex

Like Jake Sully in Avatar (the highest grossing movie of all time!) I want to transfer myself to a more durable, preferably biological, host. As I stated in my first post, I assume there is no "natural" life after death, so I want the next best thing: to hop from body to body. But while I believe host transfer will be feasible one day, I am certain that it won't be in my lifetime, so I look to the next, next best thing: to save my consciousness so that it can later be re-hosted when the technology becomes available. This is what Lifenaut is trying to accomplish (sort of), but its approach would not yield the result I am looking for, which is to go to sleep one day, and wake up in another host someday in the future. Although this seamless transition may be possible before I die, given the geometric progression of technical innovation, it isn't yet (frozen heads aside), so I have chosen to focus on the next, next, next best thing: a digital representation of myself that looks, sounds, and acts like me. This is my ultimate goal with iNetSelf. The technologies to do that already exist today, or mostly so, and it's just a matter of gathering them in one, affordable place, and improving upon it. I will explore what I consider to be the most promising of these in future posts.

To Beme Or Naut To Beam

Lifenaut.com is a full-featured website dedicated to preserving lives in digital form, with the extraordinary goal of recreating the consciousness of those lives at some point in the future. Although it has a lot in common with my vision for iNetSelf.com, it is light years ahead of it... literally. By this, I mean that Lifenaut beams personal information (aka mindfiles) into space. Other features include: talking avatars with artificial intelligence and mindfile archiving with several rich views.

If you log in to Lifenaut, you can see an impressive graphical dashboard (done in Adobe Flash) for yourself or any other user (note: everything in Lifenaut is public). The dashboard summarizes key information about a person such as their personality characteristics, tenets, and visual expressions. From here, you can also access all of the user's mindfile views (include time-, location-, and person-based), talk to their avatar, browse users, and, of course, send mindfiles into space.

As objective as I'd like to be, I must say that this last feature is about as cool as cool can be. I have had most of the other features planned, though in different ways, for iNetSelf (in fact, I stumbled on to Lifenaut researching talking avatar technology), but no matter how great those features may be, they will mean absolutely nothing if our planet is unforeseeably destroyed. And even if you could afford to send your physical self into space, it wouldn't matter much once you were dead. But the idea of beaming the defining things about yourself in digital, everlasting form, is nothing short of brilliant. It is the only solution I can think of that more or less preserves a record of your existence as long as this universe exists.

I will have more to say about Lifenaut in future posts, but for now, I highly encourage you to check it out. Feel free to friend me (name=jeffskla), and although I haven't taken the time to upload much information yet, you can bet I will--see you in space!

Hang On For The Ride Of Your Death

CKSEQ4JYNX6V Hi. My name is Jeff Sklaroff, and I don't want to die. Well, most of the time. It's not that I'm afraid--it's just that I'm not ready. At 46 years old, I've lived a great life relative to much of the world (depending on your criteria): I have a great job, a great family, great friends, and great hobbies. But I don't believe in any traditional sort of life after death, so little of that great living will matter after I am dead. The people I am close to may remember aspects of me when I am gone, but few of those memories, if any, will be passed on to others. There are antiquated ways of preserving some of those things: photos, audio recordings, scrapbooks, memoirs, etc., but not in a way that anyone can discover reliably, and not in a way that anyone would want to.

Ever since my dad passed away in December 2003, I have been thinking about preparing for death. It was not until then that I realized I had no good record of my father's existence. What remains of him is scattered in a variety of fading memories carried by many people, most of whom I don't know and do not know each other. Even the physical things he created (e.g. art) have been similarly dispersed, and could only be documented through tremendous effort.

And so it was that I decided to create a website dedicated to preserving defining things about myself, or anybody else, that others could discover. The result is http://inetself.com. In creating iNetSelf, I discovered several other efforts and technologies that make preparing for death a far richer endeavor than ever before. I also observed that there is relatively no journalistic coverage of these developments, as compared to those that make living easier, longer, or otherwise better. And while I am all for life and living, I want the better of it to outlast me. Ideally, if I have to die, I want anyone to be able to "know" me at any time in the future.

And so it is that I am creating this blog dedicated solely to modern tools for dying, or "Death 2.0". Just as "Web 2.0" was coined to describe a shift from passive to interactive web technologies, "Death 2.0" (which I will call "D2") refers to a new paradigm for dealing with the only thing in life more certain than taxes. For a brief introduction to D2, please see http://www.psfk.com/2009/08/digital-immortality-and-death-20.html. I will, of course, discuss iNetSelf, partly because I am a selfish human being, and partly because iNetSelf is my small attempt to fill in the gaps of D2 as I see it.

But this isn't about me--it's about all of humanity--and my viewpoint may not be very representative. So contributions, corrections, and other feedback are highly, highly encouraged. Please, speak your mind, but do attempt to stay on the topic of D2. I am so looking forward to it. Let the ride begin.