All the Ghosts in the Machine

Elaine Kasket

• 25 april 2019
• 9781405542609

Samenvatting:

'Engagingly written, thoroughly researched - there is no better guide to how social media re-shapes our experience of death and loss'

Professor Tony Walter, University of Bath, UK

Seen any ghosts on your smartphone lately?

As citizens of the modern world, we generate vast amounts of digitally stored personal data - and those digital reflections don't simply vanish when we shuffle off this mortal coil. Every online action - each email, website visit and privacy-setting adjustment - affects not just how we're perceived in life, but how we'll be remembered in death. Although online ghosts are now an ordinary phenomenon, their impact on the living is often extraordinary.

All the Ghosts in the Machine sounds a clarion call to everyone who never thought about death in the digital age. Weaving together personal, moving true stories and scientific research, psychologist Elaine Kasket takes you on a fascinating tour through the valley of the shadow of digital death. In the process, she will transform how you think about your life and your legacy, in a time when our technologies are tantalising us with fantasies of immortality.

'Elaine Kasket has written a thought-provoking book that will help digital immigrants and digital natives alike'

Professor Carla Sofka, co-editor of Dying, Death, and Grief in an Online Universe

'As charming and touching as it is astute and insightful'
Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible and Drunk Tank Pink

'This a very useful book, even perhaps for people who have never been near a computer in their lives'
Jake Kerridge, Sunday Telegraph

Seen any ghosts on your smartphone lately?

As we're compelled to capture, store and share more and more of our personal information, there's something we often forget. All that data doesn't just disappear when our physical bodies shuffle off this mortal coil. If the concept of remaining socially active after you're no longer breathing sounds crazy, you might want to get used to the idea. Digital afterlives are a natural consequence of the information age, a reality that barely anyone has prepared for - and that 'anyone' probably includes you.

In All the Ghosts in the Machine, psychologist Elaine Kasket sounds a clarion call to everyone who's never thought about death in the digital age. When someone's hyperconnected, hyperpersonal digital footprint is transformed into their lasting legacy, she asks, who is helped, who is hurt, and who's in charge? And why is now such a critical moment to take our heads out of the sand?

Weaving together personal, moving true stories and scientific research, All the Ghosts in the Machine takes you on a fascinating tour through the valley of the shadow of digital death. In the process, it will transform how you think about your life and your legacy, in a time when our technologies are tantalising us with fantasies of immortality.