{"id":3933,"date":"2024-06-01T14:15:21","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T14:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/?p=3933"},"modified":"2024-06-14T14:19:29","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T14:19:29","slug":"one-of-those-noodly-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/?p=3933","title":{"rendered":"One of those noodly problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Reading The Afterlife of Data by Carl \u00d6hman for the Spectator<\/a><\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t call Diogenes \u201cthe Cynic\u201d for nothing. He lived to shock the (ancient Greek) world. When I\u2019m dead, he said, just toss my body over the city walls to feed the dogs. The bit of me that I call \u201cI\u201d won\u2019t be around to care.<\/p>\n

The revulsion we feel at this idea tells us something important: that the dead can be wronged. Diogenes may not care what happens to his corpse, but we do. And doing right by the dead is a job of work. Some corpses are reduced to ash, some are buried, and some are fed to vultures. In each case the survivors all feel, rightly, that they have treated their loved ones\u2019 remains with respect.<\/p>\n

What should we do with our digital remains?<\/p>\n

This sounds like one of those noodly problems that keep digital ethicists like \u00d6hman in grant money — but some of the stories in The Afterlife of Data are sure to make the most sceptical reader stop and think. There\u2019s something compelling, and undeniably moving, in one teenager\u2019s account of how, ten years after losing his father, he found they could still play together; at least, he could compete against his dad\u2019s last outing on an old XBox racing game.<\/p>\n

\u00d6hman is not spinning ghost stories here. He\u2019s not interested in digital afterlives. He\u2019s interested in remains, and in emerging technologies that, from the digital data we inadvertently leave behind, fashion our artificially intelligent simulacra. (You may think this is science fiction, but Microsoft doesn\u2019t, and has already taken out several patents.)<\/p>\n

This rapidly approaching future, \u00d6hman argues, seems uncanny only because death itself is uncanny. Why should a chatty AI simulacrum prove any more transgressive than, say, a photograph of your lost love, given pride of place on the mantelpiece? We got used to the one; in time we may well get used to the other.<\/p>\n

What should exercise us is who owns the data. As \u00d6hman argues, \u2018if we leave the management of our collective digital past solely in the hands of industry, the question \u201cWhat should we do with the data of the dead?\u201d becomes solely a matter of \u201cWhat parts of the past can we make money on?\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

The trouble with a career in digital ethics is that however imaginative and insightful you get, you inevitably end up playing second-fiddle to some early episode of Charlie Brooker\u2019s TV series Black Mirror. The one entitled \u201cBe Right Back\u201d, in which a dead lover returns in robot form to market upgrades of itself to the grieving widow, stands waiting at the end of almost every road \u00d6hman travels here.<\/p>\n

\u00d6hman reminds us that the digital is a human realm, and one over which we can and must and must exert our values. Unless we actively delete them (in a sort of digital cremation, I suppose) our digital dead are not going away, and we are going to have to accommodate them somehow.<\/p>\n

A more modish, less humane writer would make the most of the fact that recording has become the norm, so that, as \u00d6hman puts it, \u201csociety now takes place in a domain previously reserved for the dead, namely the archive.\u201d (And, to be fair, \u00d6hman does have a lot of fun with the idea that by 2070, Facebook\u2019s dead will outnumber its living.)<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, \u00d6hman draws readers through the digital uncanny to a place of responsibility. Digital remains are not just a representation of the dead, he says, \u201cthey are the dead, an informational corpse constitutive of a personal identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00d6hman\u2019s lucid, closely argued foray into the world of posthumous data is underpinned by this sensible definition of what constitute a person: \u201cA person,\u201d he says, \u201cis the narrative object that we refer to when speaking of someone (including ourselves) in the third person. Persons extend beyond the selves that generate them.\u201d If I disparage you behind your back, I\u2019m doing you a wrong, even though you don\u2019t know about it. If I disparage you after you\u2019re dead, I\u2019m still doing you wrong, though you\u2019re no longer around to be hurt.<\/p>\n

Our job is to take ownership of each others\u2019 digital remains and treat them with human dignity. The model \u00d6hman holds up for us to emulate is the Bohemian author and composer Max Brod, who had the unenviable job of deciding what to do with manuscripts left behind by his friend Franz Kafka, who wanted him to burn them. In the end Brod decided that the interests of \u201cKafka\u201d, the informational body constitutive of a person, overrode (barely) the interests of Franz his no-longer-living friend.<\/p>\n

What to do with our digital remains? \u00d6hman\u2019s excellent reply treats this challenge with urgency, sanity and, best of all, compassion. Max Brod\u2019s decision wasn\u2019t and isn\u2019t obvious, and really, the best you can do in these situations is to make the error you and others can best live with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading The Afterlife of Data by Carl \u00d6hman for the Spectator They didn\u2019t call Diogenes \u201cthe Cynic\u201d for nothing. He lived to shock the (ancient Greek) world. When I\u2019m dead, he said, just toss my body over the city walls … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617,78],"tags":[647,371,872],"class_list":["post-3933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-reviews-and-opinion","category-reviews-and-opinion","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-data","tag-digital-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3935,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933\/revisions\/3935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}