Pratiques numériques d’immortalité

• Main Author: Fiorenza Gamba
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Éditions de la Sorbonne 2015-09-01
• Series: Socio-anthropologie
• Subjects: Amortality; Digital Safes; Afterlife; Digital Survival; Body; Avatar
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/socio-anthropologie/2195

The myth of amortality expresses a desire for the body to survive. In modern times, this myth has seized on advances in science by treating death as a frontier to be pushed back. Today this is apparent in a wide variety of forms, such as nanotechnologies, anti-ageing medicine, cryogenics, etc. Alongside these phenomena, which are both scientific and unpredictable—for their results will become effective only over a very long period, if at all—other immortality practices are becoming more widespread. These do not directly concern the body ; indeed digital technologies, particularly digital safes, provide a favourable context for their realization. These spaces for managing users’ data have recently become sites of immortality, albeit sui generis : the individual, in addition to managing login details, passwords and documents, can send messages to their loved ones after their death, in a form that aims to be dialogical. These new practices not only interrogate the concept of immortality, but also the user’s post-mortem identity.