Things are looking up
Things are looking up
Deathtech in the time of mass corona vaccines
If you live in a country in which January is a winter month then 2021’s starting weeks were pretty bleak. More lockdowns and dark, long nights are not a great mix.
If you live in a country where January is summer then you have much less to worry about in general - you can bake in the sun as life starts to open back up. Maybe go to a gig. Generally enjoy the fact that your country got Covid under control early on - at least compared to the europeans and north americans.
This update features a bunch of things that together form a bit of a pattern. 2021 is going to be a big year in the progression of digital culture, tech and services around death.
Corporations are waking up to the potential of tech to change death in a digital age (see the Microsoft story) which is a good reason for the rest of us to pay attention. Though maybe we are starting to. There is evidence that the taboo on talking about death in a mainstream way online is being broken down. Plus we have some reminders that big business’ engagement with these things is often more of a cock-up than a conspiracy (see the Fidelity story). And that some people are already creating smart responses (see LifeArk).
So things are there to be shaped. Vaccines are rolling out to give the people experiencing a cold February some hope that they will have what the hot february people now have. Things may be starting to look up.
First, Digital Culture and Deathtech
Emma Pattee on the backstory of digital culture and contemplating death
As long as we’ve had mobile phones we’ve been contemplating our own mortality through them. Though it has been kept in the quirkier parts of digital culture. Emma Pattee has a smart take on that, and what might be changing.
Near Death is being Netflixed
Leslie Kean wrote a bestselling book on near-death experiences and now ‘Surviving Death’ is coming to Netflix. What genre is this? Popular science or self-help?
Ray Dalio grieves on Linkedin
Ray Dalio is many things and an eloquent writer is one. His Linkedin post on the death of his adult son was honest and quite profound.
There’s a peculiar role Linkedin seems to have found itself with through these posts. It does seem out of place to see this private and deeply personal material posted on a platform that sells a membership called ‘Sales Navigator.’ The old way was to post in the local newspaper I guess which seems oddly formal now (and hardly anyone reads them anymore anyway of course). So if you want to do something more personal there is at the moment nothing better than social media platforms who never designed for this use case - even if you are someone with the resources and profile of Ray Dalio.
Now, Tech and Services and Deathtech
Microsoft have registered a patent to turn you into a Chatbot after you die
This has been coming for a while. The patent suggests the idea would be to use the media you posted during your lifetime to create the bot that can be pretty active after you are gone.
This throws up lots of questions of course. Would people want it? Would they want it from Microsoft? Even if they wouldn’t prefer a company like Microsoft to run their social media afterlife, would they trust anyone smaller to be in business long enough to make it count? And then what can you meaningfully consent to ahead of a digital evermore? Is it even advisable to let the grandkids know how your attitudes now would be playing out in their world?
LifeArk starts to get traction
LifeArk is a digital time capsule that seems to take design inspiration from the succinct statement that “we share details of our lives with friends, politicians, advertisers and strangers, but have no way to share what matters most with our kids.”
There aren’t public numbers on MAU just now but it certainly seems to be making referral loops work in their favour.
Lost Passwords are Locking Bitcoin Millionaires out from their Fortunes
Its the ultimate modern nightmare for many people. Forgotten passwords are leading to grown men searching through dumps for old hard drives as well as generally losing their minds in less poetic circumstances. The internet smugly watches them with pity. Not always making the link to the question ‘so what happens when my partner has to access some of my data at some point and I can’t help anymore.’
Fidelity mistakenly told UK savers that a £1,300 inheritance had ruined their own pension plans
The tax rules are of course absurdly complicated in this area but its clear the systems here just didn’t cope - and ended up telling some young people that their inheritance had unexpected consequences.
The mistakes here are wide-ranging and go from from sending letters in error to begin with (I have no reason to know but this story reeks of an automatically generated letter) to failing to give the individuals involved an easy place to go to get the error rectified.
Thats a negative journey all round. The bottom line though is that failing to stop these things happening is a damn high risk approach to running a business - but its a pretty common one.
That’s it for now.
See you on the next one.