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Online memorials and cyber immortality
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Remembered Forever is one memorial website online
Online memorials are a modern way to ensure that memories of loved ones are passed on to the future. Unlike traditional burials and memorial sites, cyber memorials can be viewed by anyone across the globe. Some even describe online memorials as a fragment or type of cyber immortality. Today there are now many sites that offer online memorials. These memorial sites are easily found online through typical search engines and many are free to use with registration.
The appeal of a online memorial is the relatively ease of posting information about someone without paying thousands of dollars. It also allows many others to view or even post their own memories of a deceased person. One can usually upload photos, writings, and sometimes videos. These sites can also be used as a common gathering point for many relatives and friends to post content about a person who has passed away. Not it only can online memorial sites act as biographical repositories, they can also be an aid in helping loved ones to work through grief.
What are the downsides? One might be privacy, even for a deceased person. There may be legal issues or estate legal ramifications if too much information is displayed online. One needs to be careful in reading any privacy disclaimers and ensuring that the posted content does not contain too private information. Another problem is that online memorial may either be copied or transferred to other sites. Or the memorial site may simply cease to exist if the web server it is hosted on changes. Some sites may take ownership over the posted materials such as photos. These downsides may or may not pose problems for family members of a deceased person wishing to post memories online.
The benefits of memorial sites are numerous. One benefit is that a deceased person's history or memories are stored online and could potentially last for many years. If done correctly, there could be enough material posted to form a semi biography that may be viewed by further descendants one day. Today, we can conduct genealogical research online or at various institutions. However, most details and background information found are very sparse and limited. One may find the birthdate, the death date, perhaps an occupation, maybe service records, and then a photo or two. For ancestors that lived past two centuries ago, there is usually even less. Posting biographical content online will give others access to a great deal of details about an invidual that genealogical or official records may lack.
So does posting online memorials or detailed information about someone create a sense of cyber immortality? This term has been used for different ideas including actual artificial intelligences that have aspects of a person. Can one's live details live on for a long time? The answer is probably yes and no.
Ideally, the information stored online may become archived somewhere and become hidden data. On the other hand, these memorial websites may go out of existence and take the data with them. The best way to ensure longevity of a person's biographical information would probably be to store it in multiple locations, servers, and even in time capsules. Distribution would be the key to success here. The more copies out there, the more chances one or more copies will survive. Most probably would not or become so hidden that copies might be almost invisible.
So the answer to online memorial sites providing a way towards some type of biographical or cyber immortality is based in part of one's efforts, luck, and technologies utilized.
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