Stacey Pitsillides*, Savvas Katsikides**, Martin Conreen*, Duncan Fairfax* *Goldsmiths, University of London ** University of Cyprus ‘Death’, a five letter word, is one of the most feared words in the English dictionary. What makes this word strike dread into people’s hearts? How can this collection of letters be responsible for so much drama? Death, the permanent termination of a living being, is an emotional and potentially disturbing topic. People prefer to ignore this word; the mere mention of it transforming social situations into uncomfortable silences. Yet, everybody dies. Perhaps this is what has prevented the formal study of ‘digital death’ (and ‘digital afterlife’) in the past. Digital death and afterlife appear to be a topic hardly discussed in the literature. A search in Google Scholar, in early 2009, of the keyword ‘Digital Death’ (appearing together) produced almost zero results. ‘Results 1 - 10 of about 44 for "digital death". (0.04 seconds)’ and only one article (Lucenet 2002) appears to refer to the term in a similar, but opposite, context (preservation of digital heritage). This has now changed, the topic is gathering momentum, fuelled by collaborative working events like 'Digital Death Day' (http://digitaldeathday.com/)which have become a hub for all those interested in learning about and contributing to, discources around death and digitality. After a successful first Digital Death Day in Mountain View California, the event is coming to London! Please feel free to view an invitation to this event at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/37311302/Digital-Death-Day-London-Invites This site explores Digital Death, starting with the Dimensions of Digital Death. For more information on my current research on Digital Death, visit me at my blog: http://digitaldeathandbeyond.blogspot.com/ or tweet me @RestInPixels  A paper introducing the 'Digital Death' concept was presented in IOV'09 Images of Virtuality: Stacey Pitsillides, Savvas Katsikides, Martin Conreen, Digital Death, IFIP WG9.5 "Virtuality and Society" International Workshop on Digital version of exhibition book available at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/32250381/Digital-Death-Missing-Bits |
Introduction to Digital Death |