Rage Against the Ghost in the Machine

People have been using technology to try to contact ghosts for over a hundred years. From ouija boards to EVP to the not-quite-unbelieveable creepypasta you stumble across on a forum at 3am, the spirits of the dead are ever present in our imaginations and (maybe?) our servers.

Some of the recently departed haunt our Facebook advertisements, and many tech companies have had a history of failing to deal well with (or even think about) death. However, very soon, you could deliberately leave a ghost of your own! Researchers are currently working to make our sci-fi dreams a reality, and let us live on digitally after we are gone. Trailing information in our wake every time we touch the Internet, it becomes increasingly possible to create a digital presence that will use these (and future) data points to respond and react to events after our deaths much as we might have in life.

But, as we grow ever-closer to building this reality, how should we think about our ghosts? Are they technically 'us'? Do we own them, or does Google? Could a hacker spin up a doppelganger to plague you in life? Could a corporation do the same?

To explore the answers to these questions and more, light some candles, and follow Lilly into the beyond.

Transcript

1. The RAGE against the Ghost in the Machine the philosophee and ethicks of the digitall afterlife With illustrations by Lilly Ryan @attacus_au
2. Preface What is a Ghost?
3. Fig. 1 - The split between body and mind
4. Fig. 2 - The privacy of thought
6. The 3 Stages of Ghost Hunting Chapter 1. - How to summon a ghost Chapter 2. - How to capture a ghost Chapter 3. - How to banish a ghost
7. Ch. 1 - How to summon a Ghost
8. Wells_ebooks @Wells_ebooks Kepler and I watched, towards this houses away) I wished bison swimming before than our worlds if the nineteenth century papers. 8:16 AM 12 Apr 1897 via Hootsuite - Embed this Tweet 2 Favourites
9. Fig. 3 - Ectoplasm
10. Fig. 4 Ecto- meta- data
11. Fig. 5 - The telephone in use
12. Fig. 6 - Bots of to-morrow
13. Ch. 2 How to capture a Ghost
14. Fig. 7 - The ghost in conversation
16. Fig. 8 - The ghost at work
18. Fig. 9 The criminal
19. Ch. 3 - How to banish a Ghost
21. Fig. 10 - Anonymity
22. Fig. 11 - Network connections
23. Fig. 12 Virtual Private Networks
24. Fig. 13 - Law
25. https://www.ag.gov.au/ Consultations/ Pages/ Access-to-telecommunications-data -in-civil-proceedings.aspx
26. Fig. 14 Ghost- proof architecture
27. Thank- you!
28. ...
29. Questions? Lilly Ryan @attacus_au