Technology, science, and the immortalisation of everything

Social media makes us and our memories immortal, we can re-install body parts as they fail, and artists are being resurrected to give 'live' performances from beyond the grave as holograms.

Both advanced and everyday technology has allowed everything to be immortal. Stored in the cloud, on phones, on YouTube channels, and on social media accounts, there is an ever-present and ever-accessible version of everything we have ever done and everyone we have ever known. If it was documented well enough. Even fleeting things like moments, sounds, and laughter can be captured, made permanent, and revisited whenever we wish.

Disposable cameras and film cameras are making a small comeback, and physical copies of photos are possibly being seen as more authentic and permanent. The global disposable camera sales market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.5% from 2022 to 2030, and nostalgia for the past is being seen in other markets too, such as vinyl. Taylor Swifts 2022 album ‘Midnights’ was the first album since 1987 to sell more vinyl copies than CDs in the United Kingdom. With the rise of y2k aesthetics, that follow fashion and cultural trends of the 2000’s, since 2021 digital cameras are also steadily increasing in sales again. But, photos of the physical photos are still being added to our drives, and to Instagram. Taking photos of or scanning in your physical developed photos for your phone is the done thing. When taking a camera to get developed now, most places also email you the film as scanned documents. Despite our nostalgia for the past, we cannot move away from the guaranteed permanence of digital media. ‘Disposable camera dump’ is a common Instagram caption, and ‘send me the photos of your disposables’ is a common message to anyone with one. There is also a whole genre of Instagram account, a mutant of the ‘finsta’ (a more casual version of an Instagram account) that is the ‘film-instagram’ – a profile dedicated souley to immortalising your film-camera’s physical pictures. This shows that the desire for physical photos is more the aesthetic of the photos tinged with nostalgia that is setting the market trend – the end destination of the photo is in the cloud. Our urge to immortalise or to share or to imprint on something cannot be quashed, and… rightly so? Why not make our photo albums communal and share our stories with the world and generations to come, how great would it have been to have this from previous generations?

The Museum of Lost Memories is doing exactly this. Taking undeveloped film, cameras, and photo albums from thrift stores, the founder, David posts them on his Instagram. Often, they are reunited with their owners - and this is the sole purpose, but he told me there is also an importance in preserving the memories and ensuring they don’t become lost in history. ‘In a sense, preserving these memories immortalises people in a way that has only been available to the rich and successful’ he told me. Does our social media so the same for us? Let us go down in some sort of history, if only personal? Memories and the people live on through his work and the technology allowing it.

Save Family Photos operates with a similar inspiration and purpose. The project is ‘on a mission to save & share family stories, one photo at a time’, and followers submit their old family snaps to be posted and captioned. These are often from old film cameras and would, assumingly, eventually be thrown out as the generations progressed. The account makes that process less of an erasure – they are documented somewhere. The small, domestic history preserved on the account allows the people in them to live forever in some sort of consciousness. A quote by L.M Montgomery reads “Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it” this is how we and our lives are immortalised through technology. Maybe it is more poetic than dystopian.

But how then, can we let things go? And do we have to?

There is juxtaposition in accepting impermanence in a world where immortalisation seems so viable.

In media, relationship breakdown is depicted as checking their social media, texting a blocked number, and ringing and listening to their voicemail – which is dramatized, but still a version of the truth. Knowing someone is gone from the physical and emotional space of our lives, but still being able to access them (or a version of them) through technology creates cognitive dissonance in the process of grieving or getting over relationships. The most permanent thing you can do is block a profile, and even then, you can unblock them at any moment you chose. Their profile still exists, of course, it always will. Over 800 million photos are uploaded to Instagram each day, documenting, preserving, and creating an immortal and omnipresent version of ourselves. People we haven't seen in years, or people we meet once have become consistent and ever-present characters in our lives. We know what people are doing in almost the same way we would if we had emotional access to them, as well as visual – it seems a bit like owning a virtualised, immortal version of someone; an idea played with by Black Mirror.

Break-ups are often described by relationship experts as a form of grief. How can we grieve if someone isn't really gone? They exist in our camera roll, our videos, and our voice notes. People exist in precisely documented text conversations. Technology is built to regurgitate and store these memories – wholesome but juxtaposing the only guarantee in life: impermanence. Apple has a feature of creating slide shows of memorable moments from milestones ago, and Snapchat's 'snap memories' is built around an idea of immortalisation, annually showing us what we were doing '1 year, 2 years, 5 years… ago today'.

Out of our hands, a non-curated version of us exists on the internet too, our digital footprint, things even we have forgotten, able to be dug up by employers, family, or friends. Actions, moments, and spoken and written words are recorded, by either us or others, and immortalised online.

There is then the horrendous reality of grieving death in a world that juxtaposes the very notion. In the Black Mirror episode 'Be Right Back', a woman's partner passes away. A company creates a life-like physical version of him, installed with his personality from his social media, posts, messages, photos, and videos. The episode is heart-breaking because although he is there, he isn't really; he is ultimately AI, technology. The availability of this being means she struggles to grapple with his death and the presence of the AI being. Instead of being able to grieve, she is constantly confronted with his half-presence.

Famously, the franchise speculates on the possible dark realities of tech. There is a whole genre of apps with a similar otherworldly nature. Safebeyond, for example, allows you to record, write, or photograph messages for your loved ones to be sent after death on a timer to coincide with important life events. My Afterwords allows the user to store messages in the app to be sent after your passing, containing whatever you wish. These work on the principle of being able to communicate from beyond the grave, to be 'not quite gone'. Oddly, the apps are under the social media section in app stores, nodding possibly to the existing functions and qualities of our current profiles and accounts. Apps like this have many downloads, help thousands, and are driven by a wonderful sentiment, but technology has so casually afforded this communication.

ChatGPT, a recent development of AI and the original GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), generates uncannily human responses in terms of language and style in response to questions or demands. It can spookily draft letters, write articles, craft essays, and much more. It is trained on a large dataset of human conversations, and 'learns' as it chats. Combining this existing capability of AI with how much of our being is stored in data, could something be created where 'we' can chat with our loved ones after death? With AI crafting responses based on what we would say, with knowledge of our lives and there's?

Abba Voyage, the recent stadium tour of 'Abba', is performed by holograms of the no-longer together group. The same technology has been used to resurrect passed artists. Michael Jackson, Buddy Holly, and Whitney Houston have all done concerts and tours since their deaths. At Coachella 2012, Snoop Dogg famously 'bought out' Tupac Shakur and performed alongside him. Audiences at such shows marvel at the likeness of the creations 'incredibly realistic, as if they were actually there, better than any video game I've seen', with the only giveaway being the eyes in close-ups for the large stage screens. In 2020, there was a New York Times Magazine article bluntly titled 'Old musicians never die, they just become holograms.' Working people for profit, even after death, creates both a moral dilemma and speculations on the capabilities of technology and how they should or will be used. With an ageing population, people are not earning more years of leisure, instead we are retiring later, and working longer; maybe immortalisation wouldn’t afford us an eternity of bliss anyway.

Are we a generation that believes, inside of us, that science and technology can and will defeat death? Have we already and are revisiting now as the past? Conspiracy theorists theorise that we are currently living in a sort of video game simulation so realistic that it convinces even the avatars that it is real. Some scientists support this, claiming that if technology continues to advance at the rate that it is now, our abilities will no doubt make this possible at some point in the future. With Abba Voyage creating ‘incredibly realistic, as if they were really there’ holograms in 2023, who is to say what will be creatable and wholly immersive in 100, or 1000 years to come. Are we re-living this as a nostalgic past from all the way in the future?

More defined groups that explore and support claims of defeating death are called 'Immortalists'. Each put their faith in something different but are joined by their trust in the evidence of scientific and technological advancements. The most plausible versions are 'Transhumanists' and 'Singulartarian mind-uploaders'. Both believe in the ability of science and technology to enhance humans to the point of immortalisation.

Singulartarian mind-uploaders believe in the future ability and plausibility of being able to transfer your "self" — the pattern of information that represents your thoughts and memories brain—into a computer. There are arguments for this. Elon Musk explained that our phones are already essentially extensions of ourselves, an external implant. 'We're already cyborgs. Your phone and your computer are extensions of you.' Could we upload everything else to become completely eternal? We also already rely on data and data storage for a lot of what we ‘think’ is our brain. Our knowledge comes from google, our memories are stored on our phones or in the cloud, and we use calculators and virtual diaries. Are we so reliant on the intelligence of technology that we are part-AI too?

Transhumanists believe in the power of transforming the human body. First through an optimum lifestyle, second through enhancements and replacements, and third through genetic engineering. Current biotechnology allows us to hear after our ears fail (hearing aids) or walk after our legs fail (bionic limbs or hip/knee replacements). Could this be a continual process until we are living after our whole body 'should' have failed? Hip or other joint replacement surgeries are seen as a routine, commonplace procedure, but we rarely consider the transhumanist nature of this. The quality of life extended, the amount of time life is extended by due to mobility, independence, and subsequent health. Approximately 28,000 patients begin new lives each year thanks to organ transplants - The UMPC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh uses this exact phrasing. This is the beautiful reality of such transplants, a new life, elongated, thanks to medical science.

Civilisations of the past were acutely aware of death. Elaborate burials, art, sacrifices, and mummification are just some of the ways that this manifested. Instead, we are a civilisation obsessed with life, and the documenting of it. The cultural, religious, and artistic movement 'Memento mori' has served since the Medieval Period as a reminder that 'you have to die’ -- but now, can we ever?