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Death Glitch: How Tech is Changing Mourning Forever
5 Plays9 months ago
In this episode, Jennifer Muldowney sits down with Tamara Kneese, Author, and Leader of the Data & Society Research Institute’s Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab. They explore the intersection of death, and technology.
Tamara, an academic and writer, shares her unique insights into how technology is rapidly changing the landscape of digital legacy and mourning. From her book "Death Glitch" to recent discussions on AI and grief, Tamara reflects on the evolving challenges and the necessity for continuous research in the field of Death and Tech.
The conversation delves into the history and evolution of digital cultures, highlighting the rise and fall of startups in the funeral space.
Don't miss this insightful discussion on the future of digital legacy and the intersection of technology and mortality!
Key Topics:
-How technology impacts our final farewell
-Navigating digital legacies in the funeral industry
-The rise and fall of tech-based funeral services
-Preserving memories in a digital age
-Ethical concerns with future tech in funerals
Quotes From The Episode:
“A lot of my work is more focused on the people who are creating companies and so the startup ecosystem and understanding the motivations behind that”
- Tamara Kneese
“A funeral is both for the living and the deceased”
- Jennifer Muldowney
Timestamp:
[00:00] Podcast Intro
[00:36] Tamara explored the intersection of digital subcultures
[02:49] Jennifer and Tamara shared their experiences and interests in the death industry.
[09:00] Tamara expressed discomfort with interviewing grieving individuals for her book.
[17:01] Jennifer highlighted the complex emotional and ethical issues surrounding AI and digital legacies.
[19:08] Jennifer and Tamara discussed the increasing potential for deception and scams with AI technology.
[21:06] Jennifer talks about the limited control over one's digital legacy after death.
[23:37] Jennifer and Tamara delve into the need for big tech companies to include memorialization in their policies.
[25:18] Outro
Connect with Tamara Kneese:
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/tamara-kneese
Website - https://www.tamarakneese.com/
Twitter/X - @tamigraph
Connect with Jennifer/The Glam Reaper on socials at:
Facebook Page - Memorials
https://www.facebook.com/MuldowneyMemorials/
Instagram - @muldowneymemorials
Email us - glamreaperpodcast@gmail.com
Listen to The Glam Reaper Podcast on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-glam-reaper-podcast/id1572382989?i=1000525524145
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWe3sNoPny6UsMGYoYDeXfw
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Death Glitch' and Tech in Death
00:00:00
Speaker
the problem of preservation and archiving with a lot of these platforms especially from an historical perspective um it was so really alarming and then
00:00:25
Speaker
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm your host, Jennifer Muldowney, a.k.a.
00:00:31
Speaker
the Glam Reaper.
00:00:32
Speaker
And on today's episode, quite timely, I have a gorgeous author called Tamara who came out with a really interesting book called Death Glitch.
00:00:41
Speaker
So we're going to get into it today on all things tech and death.
00:00:45
Speaker
And let's hope there's no glitches in this podcast.
00:00:48
Speaker
So Tamara, welcome to the show.
00:00:51
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me, Jennifer.
00:00:53
Speaker
So tell us a little bit about you and not necessarily just all of it, but tell us a little bit about you, your background and who you are.
00:01:01
Speaker
Who's Tamara?
00:01:02
Speaker
So I'm an academic, primarily, and my background is in cultural anthropology, which is part of the reason why I became so interested in death as a subject matter.
00:01:15
Speaker
And I did a master's degree and a PhD.
00:01:20
Speaker
My PhD was in media studies, and so I did a lot of work on digital cultures and trying to understand
00:01:27
Speaker
the different kinds of subcultures attached to the internet, including very weird ones and ones that were quite ephemeral and part of web history, but maybe didn't continue on into the contemporary moment.
00:01:41
Speaker
And I also have worked
00:01:43
Speaker
in the tech industry, and I was at Intel in a couple of different roles.
00:01:48
Speaker
And primarily, my research focus within the tech and policy nonprofit world is very much focused on the ethics of technologies, including AI, and the matter of sustainability.
00:02:05
Speaker
And increasingly, my work on death and my work on climate tend to intersect.
00:02:12
Speaker
Hmm.
Data Storage, Digital Legacies, and Environment
00:02:13
Speaker
And so thinking about what happens to the data of the dead is also very much tied to thinking about data storage and the role of data centers and the power of tech companies over people's data when they're alive and then also when they're dead.
00:02:29
Speaker
And so I do a lot of writing.
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:33
Speaker
And tend to write for a lot of different kinds of audiences.
00:02:37
Speaker
And yeah, I would say that the other thing about me is that I'm very interested in dead media forms.
00:02:43
Speaker
So a lot of vinyl records and also vintage clothing is one of my passions.
00:02:49
Speaker
And I worked in vintage shops all throughout graduate school.
00:02:52
Speaker
And maybe the other part of me that is worth mentioning is that I have a background as a labor organizer and was very active in my graduate student union, faculty union as a professor, and am very engaged in tech worker union movements and other labor organizations around tech.
00:03:10
Speaker
So, and that I think is also a thread that comes out in the book.
00:03:15
Speaker
Very cool.
00:03:16
Speaker
Well, I mean, that is a decorated resume, as they would say over here in the States.
00:03:21
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:03:22
Speaker
And we've actually you and I have a lot of crossed paths there because, you know, I am.
00:03:29
Speaker
I own a memorial planning business.
00:03:31
Speaker
I'm from Ireland and I'm here in the States about nine years now, 10 years.
00:03:34
Speaker
I think it actually is this year.
00:03:35
Speaker
I keep saying nine.
00:03:36
Speaker
I keep living in the past.
00:03:38
Speaker
But I've always, always, always, aside from that,
00:03:42
Speaker
and my, you know, advocacy for pre-planning your own funeral.
00:03:45
Speaker
I've always been absolutely fascinated with the industry or the death space impact on digital, our digital legacies and then the environment.
00:03:55
Speaker
I've worked with companies.
00:03:56
Speaker
I've consulted with people all along my kind of travels, my own decorated resume where I've gotten kind of, yeah, a snapshot into that.
00:04:04
Speaker
It's just so fascinating.
00:04:05
Speaker
And I want to get into that more.
00:04:07
Speaker
Your book, Death Text, I'm going to show it here.
00:04:10
Speaker
So I, again, because of my fascination with it, it's called Death Glitch, How Techno Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond.
00:04:20
Speaker
It's not for everybody.
00:04:22
Speaker
You know, it's it is one of those books that you kind of have to be interested in.
00:04:26
Speaker
I think everyone in the funeral space should read it, honestly, just to have the knowledge.
00:04:31
Speaker
But there's a lot of things I think a lot of people in the funeral space should do and they don't.
00:04:34
Speaker
But because it's just so fascinating.
00:04:36
Speaker
Now, the first thing I thought of, because I read a couple of these types of books and yours was extremely thorough, though.
Challenges of Fast-Changing Digital Tech (Q&A)
00:04:43
Speaker
And you can tell you have that research background and you can see my so many notes and dog ears.
00:04:49
Speaker
A very well used, well read book.
00:04:51
Speaker
And that's mainly because, honestly, I just recently spoke about AI and death, AI and grief.
00:04:58
Speaker
And we have that video on our YouTube channel and you can find it on the website.
00:05:02
Speaker
But it was a panel of us, which was interesting.
00:05:04
Speaker
So I was kind of representing the funeral space.
00:05:06
Speaker
And then we had a, I was about to say an estate attorney, but no, she was.
00:05:11
Speaker
She was from the legal side of it.
00:05:13
Speaker
She wasn't a state attorney, but she was from the legal aspect of sort of what your digital legacy can do.
00:05:18
Speaker
And then we had an engineering data analyst.
00:05:21
Speaker
And so we were coming from three very different sort of spaces, but we were all kind of pretty much singing off the same hymn sheet.
00:05:28
Speaker
But in my research for that, I kind of wanted to absorb as much
00:05:32
Speaker
as possible.
00:05:33
Speaker
And one of the things that I wanted to ask you while I have you is in the books that I've read and even in the things I've written myself in this space, isn't it wild how just fastly out of date everything becomes?
00:05:47
Speaker
Like it just like people have often said to me when they see sort of on my LinkedIn, I'll say my three pillars are pre planning or, you know, planning your own funeral, digital legacy in the environment.
00:05:57
Speaker
And people will often say, why don't you?
00:05:59
Speaker
Why don't you specialize?
00:06:00
Speaker
Why never did you specialize in digital?
00:06:02
Speaker
And I'm like, because it changes so fast.
00:06:05
Speaker
It's.
00:06:06
Speaker
It's crazy.
00:06:08
Speaker
So how, how, I mean, you're talking in this book a lot about the past and your experiences and case studies with that.
00:06:16
Speaker
And there is one major one I want to want to talk about because I feel very strongly about it.
00:06:20
Speaker
How do you feel about that or what's, you know?
00:06:23
Speaker
I mean, so as an academic researcher, that's par for the course.
00:06:28
Speaker
So if you're going to be studying digital cultures, they're going to be shifting all the time.
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:33
Speaker
And I think, you know, I wrote the book, certainly it's, you know, an academic press book.
00:06:38
Speaker
It was intended to be my tenure book had I stayed in my academic job.
00:06:42
Speaker
And so...
00:06:44
Speaker
I was more concerned about reaching academic audiences and ensuring that it would be taken seriously in those circles.
00:06:52
Speaker
But I did also want it to be accessible to people who were not academics and didn't care about particular forms of media theory.
00:07:01
Speaker
But I think part of it is that I wasn't necessarily intending it to be a how-to or a guide.
00:07:08
Speaker
And that's in part because of how quickly things change.
00:07:12
Speaker
And so trying to accommodate
00:07:14
Speaker
the pace at which these technologies and just all of the infrastructures and cultures around them change over time, it would be so hard to capture that in anything connected to academic publishing because that takes years.
00:07:28
Speaker
And so, you know, there's a year gap between me turning in the final copy edits and the book being printed.
00:07:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:37
Speaker
And so when people say, you know, generative AI, it was not really a hot topic.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:07:44
Speaker
And yet I kept having to work in new references as I worked on this project from 2007 onward.
00:07:53
Speaker
But for me, I mean, it's a history.
Researching Digital Cultures and Mourning Sensitivity
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah, and it's very much like that.
00:07:59
Speaker
You know, and that's what I found so interesting is discovering sort of how a lot of these things came to par.
00:08:05
Speaker
And I know, so I've written books as well, and
00:08:09
Speaker
That's one of the parts of me that I was like, oh, my God, like from the second you turn it in and it's the final copy of final edit, it's at least a year before it hits the shelves.
00:08:18
Speaker
So it's it's one of those things.
00:08:20
Speaker
And probably because it's digital, why would you put it in maybe physical form?
00:08:24
Speaker
Honestly, you know, so it is it's it's.
00:08:27
Speaker
That was kind of top of mind.
00:08:29
Speaker
And as I said, I've read the other books and stuff.
00:08:30
Speaker
But what I thought was what I found fascinating was, as I said, the history and you coming at it from, you know, a very different brain to my own, really, because I am not scholarly.
00:08:41
Speaker
Well, I don't think, you know, I wouldn't consider myself that, but I could tell that that was the purpose of your book.
00:08:46
Speaker
And I just found it so fascinating.
00:08:48
Speaker
Like I never knew that really the beginning of Facebook meta, we'll call it their start into memorial pages started with Virginia Tech.
00:08:57
Speaker
But then, you know, when I was reading that, I was like, I mean, of course, because, you know, it makes sense.
00:09:03
Speaker
Like when you think of when I think of even my own timeline with Facebook.
00:09:07
Speaker
And and then, of course, all of these digital powerhouses are are developing as these crucial things are happening.
00:09:14
Speaker
You know, Facebook coming out with the emergency, like make letting people know you're safe and that sort of stuff.
00:09:20
Speaker
So how was it researching all that?
00:09:23
Speaker
Did you find people easy to talk to?
00:09:25
Speaker
Yeah, by by and large, I started feeling a bit uncomfortable with the idea of interviewing people who are in mourning.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yes.
00:09:34
Speaker
For my book.
00:09:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:36
Speaker
So I don't like the idea of being extractive in that way.
00:09:42
Speaker
And I think that tends to be an issue within especially academic research, but also in industry-based research.
00:09:49
Speaker
But at least, I mean, I wasn't working on...
00:09:52
Speaker
creating a product for people to use or creating something that was maybe of any kind of tangible benefit.
00:10:00
Speaker
And so that's why a lot of my work is more focused on the people who are creating companies.
00:10:07
Speaker
And so the startup ecosystem and understanding the motivations behind that is
00:10:13
Speaker
I felt much more comfortable doing that kind of work, particularly around something very sensitive like death, care, and mourning, which isn't to say that I didn't participate in things like death salon and kind of obviously did interview people who
Memorial Platforms and Legal Complexities
00:10:31
Speaker
were...
00:10:31
Speaker
the spouses of people who had died of cancer and maintaining their illness blogs and all of those things.
00:10:38
Speaker
But I found it easier to interview people who were maybe already publicly writing about those things as well.
00:10:46
Speaker
And so it was something that they already felt comfortable putting out there.
00:10:49
Speaker
And that's very different to cite people as kind of other people in the field, other journalists, other writers, other people who are thinking about this
00:10:58
Speaker
in a personal but also maybe a somewhat abstracted way rather than, you know, being like a, I don't know, like a Harold and Maude, like going and turning up at people's funerals.
00:11:11
Speaker
Yes.
00:11:11
Speaker
I don't know.
00:11:13
Speaker
There's there's quite a few books in the funeral space.
00:11:17
Speaker
But even for me in my own business, you know, honestly, and it's something I'm toying with a lot lately.
00:11:23
Speaker
It's, you know, I've this nickname that I got from the media after my first book, the Glam Reaper, which is great.
00:11:29
Speaker
And it's a little bit of fun and stuff.
00:11:31
Speaker
But you have to be so cognizant of the of the business we work in, you know, and if I lost my mom, like what?
00:11:38
Speaker
Am I do you want somebody who's who's fun putting that?
00:11:42
Speaker
And I hate this, the fun back into funeral and stuff like that.
00:11:45
Speaker
And to me, I very much of the school of thought that a funeral is both for the living and the deceased.
00:11:50
Speaker
It should be a tribute and it should be cathartic for the for the living.
00:11:53
Speaker
But it's finding that fine line where social media, all of that sort of marketing.
00:11:58
Speaker
It is it is really, really difficult.
00:12:00
Speaker
My one of the major things I really wanted to talk to you about or that I feel very passionate about that was definitely highlighted in all your research is since I started and I've been in this business 15 years now, probably more, and I've seen so many businesses come and go.
00:12:18
Speaker
So many.
00:12:19
Speaker
Some of them have contacted me to be a brand ambassador or to just help them enter the field or whatever it is.
00:12:24
Speaker
I've seen so many.
00:12:25
Speaker
I've helped many, you know, and I've seen so many come and go, you know, and the startup culture is real.
00:12:30
Speaker
I don't even know what the percentage is, but I think it's like 70% or something fail startups within the first three years, something like that.
00:12:36
Speaker
Anyway, something crazy.
00:12:38
Speaker
And that, of course, will apply to the funeral space.
00:12:41
Speaker
Why wouldn't it?
00:12:42
Speaker
But the problem with that is that you have all these...
00:12:46
Speaker
families mourning families who are putting their trust in you and then all of a sudden three years later you're gone you're bankrupt you're whatever now my biggest ick if you like my biggest problem with that and we have had a couple of people i interviewed on the glamoury for podcast and i as i say to them all i'm like i wish you well and i hope you succeed because i just think of all the crushed families left behind but it's these memorial pages or these companies who start you know we're going to be the facebook for the dead we're going to be the instagram for the dead we are
00:13:15
Speaker
you know, your memorial page online, your obituary online.
00:13:19
Speaker
And there's so many of them that have come and gone.
00:13:22
Speaker
And that data is just poof, you know.
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's just it's heartbreaking.
00:13:26
Speaker
And you really touch on that in the book.
00:13:29
Speaker
You mention a lot of them.
00:13:31
Speaker
How do you feel about that?
00:13:32
Speaker
Or what's your kind of take on that?
00:13:35
Speaker
Obviously, I've read the book, so I know, but.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it is upsetting because there is a need for it.
00:13:42
Speaker
And so people do keep trying to create new versions of these companies because the large platforms, the tech companies are still failing to bridge that gap.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:55
Speaker
And the law has been very slow and catching up.
00:13:58
Speaker
And of course, West, we also have very limited things like data privacy and things that are in effect in Europe do not matter in the US.
00:14:08
Speaker
And so figuring out the differences between international law and different cultural rituals and
00:14:14
Speaker
even in the US state by state differences.
00:14:17
Speaker
And so it and that's why the the person I interview in the book who is an estate planning attorney, but who also has worked in tech, she worked at Twitter.
00:14:26
Speaker
So Megan Yip and all her work on estate planning, and her ability to create plans for people that will endure in part because legally obligated, yeah, as an attorney to carry forward these plans.
00:14:44
Speaker
But, you know, she and I have had many conversations about the fact that there is still a need.
00:14:50
Speaker
There are services that large tech companies do need, particularly those that don't even have any kind of memorialization policy in place.
00:14:59
Speaker
And I think something that she has also really been firm about is the fact that it isn't just death.
00:15:05
Speaker
It's also when people become incapacitated.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:08
Speaker
about aging and with a large demographic of people, the baby boomers who are now aging and some people may not die right away, but if they are no longer able to manage their accounts and their children or next of kin need to be able to access them,
00:15:25
Speaker
this will be a big problem.
00:15:27
Speaker
And so we've talked about different ways of, you know, what can be done?
00:15:32
Speaker
How do you package services?
00:15:33
Speaker
And how do you figure out how to deliver something that would make this easier on people, but that maybe isn't
00:15:40
Speaker
totally a startup model, like maybe this is a kind of cottage industry of consultants or people who are doing policy at nonprofits like mine.
00:15:50
Speaker
This is also where they might come in to help kind of shape internal tech policies around this kind of issue.
00:15:58
Speaker
It seems like something that responsible AI teams, in fact, should be looking at, the death use case.
Tech Companies and Death-Related Services (Q&A)
00:16:05
Speaker
But
00:16:06
Speaker
I think they're so overwhelmed by work right now.
00:16:09
Speaker
And this is the issue too, is just that within tech companies, this is not a subject that is being prioritized.
00:16:16
Speaker
It is not something that is being well-funded and well-staffed.
00:16:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:20
Speaker
And with kind of good reason, you know, in some respects, like, you know, I've often thought like if I put myself at the top of a tech company, like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, they're about living and life and the moments and the memories.
00:16:34
Speaker
That's what they're about collecting.
00:16:35
Speaker
They're not focused on, you know, I mean, sure didn't Elon Musk, when he bought over Twitter, didn't he cull all the profiles or something like that?
00:16:44
Speaker
Like he just got rid?
00:16:46
Speaker
Wild.
00:16:47
Speaker
Yeah, the problem of preservation and archiving with a lot of these platforms, especially from an historical perspective, it was so really alarming.
00:16:57
Speaker
And then the fact that a lot of people still don't have any plans.
00:17:03
Speaker
through their own possessions and haven't really thought that through and don't have any way of documenting it.
00:17:11
Speaker
And so I do think that the services that seem to be a little bit longer lasting are those that provide mortuary care and will writing, planning, and other end-of-life protocols on top of the digital housekeeping aspect.
00:17:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, because it's, you know, as we talked about at the at the panel discussion on AI and, you know, as I said, I could have talked for hours and hours about it because there's so many different aspects.
00:17:38
Speaker
There's so many different facets we could have talked about.
00:17:40
Speaker
Like we did, we talked about history and I'm like, you know, reenacting my grandmother who's passed away.
00:17:45
Speaker
I may not want that.
00:17:46
Speaker
Like that might be horrific for me.
00:17:48
Speaker
I just don't want it.
00:17:49
Speaker
You know, creepy.
00:17:50
Speaker
But to another person, that might not be the case.
00:17:52
Speaker
And then you think, OK, but historically, historically, historically.
00:17:55
Speaker
So my great, great, great, great grandmother, you know, if she was in, I don't know, the Battle of Hastings or something, wouldn't it be incredible to sort of, you know, reenact her memories or somehow like for me to hear her voice that I never heard in real life?
00:18:08
Speaker
So, you know, there's so many there's so many pros and cons to it.
00:18:12
Speaker
And a lot of it is an emotional attachment to it.
00:18:14
Speaker
You know, like one of the conversations that came out in the panel discussion was, well, what right do we have to celebrities?
00:18:20
Speaker
You know, and I had to be the sort of the I brought it back to being human.
00:18:24
Speaker
I said, yeah, you might think Whitney Houston, we deserve to sort of have access to her voice forever.
00:18:30
Speaker
But I mean, she's a human being.
00:18:31
Speaker
She was a daughter.
00:18:32
Speaker
She was a mom.
00:18:32
Speaker
Like she's all these things that doesn't we don't get a right just because somebody's in the public arena.
00:18:37
Speaker
We don't get a right to them.
00:18:39
Speaker
But then there's that argument of, well, do we?
00:18:41
Speaker
And, you know, what?
00:18:42
Speaker
What do you sell your soul?
00:18:44
Speaker
You know, if you become a celebrity and all that sort of stuff.
00:18:46
Speaker
But then it comes down to.
00:18:48
Speaker
It kind of comes back to pre-planning.
00:18:50
Speaker
And, you know, I do have a PDF document and it touches on digital a little bit, but it's like your passwords, you know, financially you might have investments in music, you might have books you've bought online.
00:19:01
Speaker
You know, where do all they go?
00:19:02
Speaker
Your digital profiles, do you want them kept up?
00:19:04
Speaker
Do you want them turned into memorial pages?
00:19:05
Speaker
Do you want them taken down?
00:19:06
Speaker
Maybe you're an influencer.
00:19:08
Speaker
So where is that money going?
00:19:09
Speaker
You know, like, are they going to use your likeness for years to come?
00:19:12
Speaker
Like several celebrities.
00:19:14
Speaker
I mean, didn't they bring Audrey Hepburn back from the dead in some ad?
00:19:17
Speaker
You know, your thoughts in your blogs, this like this podcast after long after we're gone tomorrow, maybe they'll, you know, take our heads and voices and put them somewhere.
00:19:27
Speaker
Maybe not.
00:19:30
Speaker
I think if they could if they could make a buck from it they would.
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah that's a scary thing.
00:19:35
Speaker
I mean I joked at the panel discussion a joke but it was deadly serious where I had a conversation with my parents because I said this is you know the world is kind of getting scarier and I said if you ever get a phone call somebody saying they have me kidnapped.
Digital Identity Theft and Asset Management
00:19:50
Speaker
It did elicit quite a bit of a laugh.
00:19:52
Speaker
I said that if they have been kidnapped and they're demanding $10,000, which is really not a lot.
00:19:57
Speaker
But anyway, if they're demanding $10,000, my dad would probably say, keep her.
00:20:02
Speaker
They'll soon return me.
00:20:03
Speaker
But I said to them, I said, you might hear my voice, but it might not actually be my voice.
00:20:08
Speaker
So now we have a secret code question that they have to ask me and I have to validate it and stuff like that.
00:20:15
Speaker
that's the world we're living in.
00:20:16
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, the capacity for deception and for scams has only increased.
00:20:22
Speaker
And I do think this problem of being able to say plainly, I don't want my likeness or my digital assets or anything about me used in this particular manner.
00:20:38
Speaker
But it is so hard to because to preempt what future technologies will be.
00:20:42
Speaker
And
00:20:43
Speaker
So for quite a while now, we've had this issue of people, you know, the sort of Tupac hologram phenomenon or other cases of reviving celebrities even earlier.
00:20:55
Speaker
Like you don't even need digital technology to do that entirely.
00:20:59
Speaker
You can, there are other kinds of splicing techniques that you can use and
00:21:04
Speaker
But now with generative AI, there is this notion that it can be universalized, that it could happen to anyone.
00:21:11
Speaker
And the notion that there are so many terrible, terrible use cases for it, really.
00:21:19
Speaker
And so to be able to have control over these things in the future is something that I think if people do think about these things, they would find it quite disturbing.
00:21:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:32
Speaker
And there will always be, you know, on every post, there'll always be somebody who comments, you're all be dead, who cares?
00:21:38
Speaker
And that sort of thing.
00:21:39
Speaker
And absolutely.
00:21:40
Speaker
Look, we understand that it's, you know, you're you've only got so much control once you pass away.
00:21:46
Speaker
Unfortunately, you've only got so much control.
00:21:48
Speaker
And a lot of that falls into your family or your next of kin or whoever you've nominated at hand.
00:21:53
Speaker
But it is a scary thing.
00:21:54
Speaker
It's something we do need to address.
00:21:56
Speaker
I was really watching an episode of Criminal Minds there recently.
00:21:59
Speaker
I've started rewatching it where one of the I know it's a fictional show, but it just highlighted to me what can be done.
00:22:05
Speaker
And they obviously deal with criminals.
00:22:07
Speaker
But one of the detectives or FBI agents, whatever they're called, she appeared on the dark web in Pornography.
00:22:14
Speaker
And it was not her, obviously, but it was her likeness attached to somebody else's body.
00:22:19
Speaker
And that's why a lot of parents I know are afraid to put their children's faces out on the web, on social media and stuff like that, because there's that fear of child porn and stuff.
00:22:29
Speaker
But it's...
00:22:30
Speaker
Just having control over our voices, our face, you know, our likeness.
00:22:37
Speaker
Yeah, I don't I don't.
00:22:39
Speaker
The scary thing is I don't know in my lifetime, honestly, if the law is going to catch up with it.
00:22:44
Speaker
Because as you just said, in these companies, these hugely growing companies, most of them are just concerned with the bottom line and satisfying their client, their target audience.
00:22:54
Speaker
And their target audience and therefore them and their and their finances are not concerned with death because then you're not, you know, you don't exist anymore.
00:23:03
Speaker
You're not.
00:23:04
Speaker
They can't sell you anything anymore.
00:23:05
Speaker
And that's that's a tragedy.
00:23:07
Speaker
It's crazy.
00:23:07
Speaker
And, you know, for for my funeral folk that are out there listening, because I know we have my audience of this is sort of funeral folk, but it's also people who just sort of want are interested in the crazy things I talk about.
00:23:19
Speaker
I know for me, for my clients,
00:23:21
Speaker
For the most part, I recommend my families, we do a website, a personal website for the person as opposed to using any of these startup companies.
00:23:30
Speaker
And I kind of hate saying that, and I would never discourage somebody from using one of them, but it's just that.
00:23:36
Speaker
fear that I don't want to put my clients through the pain of in three years time I have to say to them you know when they go looking for it they're saying Jen where's my website and then it's not there so at least a personal website you know we can transfer to them it's up to them if they want to keep it going if they want to let it go they can download everything but again even that part of me goes yeah but what if the internet just explodes one day and that's got you know oh god it's a lot to think about this time of day Tamara yes yes I mean yeah certainly it's
00:24:05
Speaker
The shakiness of the undersea cables and crews of people who are trying to maintain them is always somewhat alarming.
00:24:15
Speaker
But I think, I mean, you can only really do the best...
00:24:20
Speaker
know with what you can control exactly and i think every if any any big tech companies are listening to us out there i think the one thing we would both ask is that there'd be some even if it's one person in the department in the tech in the tech department so like facebook like have people looking out for this taking care of it creating some sort of a okay what do we do when this person dies
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Integrating Memorialization in Tech Services (Q&A)
00:24:45
Speaker
Memorialization should be part of trust and safety.
00:24:50
Speaker
It should be part of responsible AI.
00:24:52
Speaker
There has to be a way of integrating it into companies, especially large ones.
00:24:57
Speaker
It is alarming that even a lot of quite large companies don't have a real policy in place.
00:25:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:05
Speaker
Well, on that kind of depressing note...
00:25:08
Speaker
Thank you so much, Tamara.
00:25:10
Speaker
This was super interesting.
00:25:12
Speaker
I hope everybody's as obsessed with this as I am.
00:25:14
Speaker
Like, I'm just fascinated with it and I could talk to her for days.
00:25:17
Speaker
But definitely get her book if you're in any way interested in it, because it's just super interesting and it does.
00:25:22
Speaker
It just looks at everything, I think, from a
00:25:24
Speaker
from a bit of a historical point of view, but just the background, the why and the fact, you know, you've interviewed so many people and stuff.
00:25:31
Speaker
It's just really, really interesting.
00:25:32
Speaker
And I looked up, I Googled so many of them and, you know, I learned quite a bit from it.
00:25:36
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:25:37
Speaker
So thank you for writing the book.
00:25:38
Speaker
Thank you for coming on the Glamour River podcast.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:41
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:25:42
Speaker
This was great.