Adam Ostrow: After your final status update

http://www.ted.com Many of us have a social media presence -- a virtual personality made up of status updates, tweets and connections, stored in the cloud. Adam Ostrow asks a big question: What happens to that personality after you've died? Could it ... live on?

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

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  People & Blogs

[xjaskix]

why the HELL would anyone want a creepily realistic AI hologram of their loved ones? that is messed up on so many levels... the simple fact is, we just need to accept death and non-existance. you and i WILL die and never come back, and it might even happen soon (or hundreds of years from now if we can learn to significantly slow the aging process). get used to the idea of non-existance and try to enjoy every breath you take, while you're still around.

[Mrmoc7]

My final status update will read: Ok folks, I'm dead now. Shit...

[George Rahal]

Brilliant

[DailyLGS]

So.. SHINY!

[Tephr1te]

you should watch black mirror season 2 episode 1

[AugustVonpetersborg]

There's no logical reason to believe that we have continuity of consciousness now. There's no evidence that we don't "die" every time we go to sleep, or close our eyes, or instant to instant. It's something we believe out of comfort, and likely nothing more. That's the real illusion. If you're brave enough to accept the reality of this there's no reason not to embrace a different kind of existence, if permanent death isn't something you crave.

[krys0g0]

I'm going to have my family update my final status on the day that I die: "I remember the day that I died like it was yesterday... oh that was today? Time sure flies when there's none left...."

[WorthlessLoser8]

Historical figures could be better studied if we preserve this information.

[DK0526]

>>> I agree that a hand full of tweets and facebook pics is not you. But crank up the resolution and scan copy your brain down to every synapse and nueron and the copy will argue forever that he is you and he will believe it....as much as you believe you are you right now despite having had many millions of molecules in your brain swaped out by your body throught your life. It looks like we are all copies already...information streams that believe they are unique...it may all be a self illusion

[DK0526]

Maybe your right but consider this if a startrek like transporter were ever made would the transported only be a copy? It would argue otherwise. To take it a step further while you are alive you body and brain swap out structure and material molecules that encode your mind. This suggests that you are already a series of physical copies and that your mind is already just the information that resides in your brain. Yet we still argue that we are unique not mere copies.

[DK0526]

unless cryonics works!

[Jay Smith]

At the end of this year, there will be over 7 billion people on this planet that actively sleep at night. The one thing that all of them have in common is they are going to die. Now that might be somewhat morbid thought, I think it has some profound implications worth exploring. Maybe we should preserve their pillows and blankets so their loved ones can hug something instead of them when they die.