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Wydawnictwa AGH, Studia Humanistyczne AGH, 3(18), p. 23-43, 2019

DOI: 10.7494/human.2019.18.3.23

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Immortality as a Network of Relationships. Experience of Building a Posthumous Avatar on the Lifenaut Platform

Journal article published in 2019 by Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Question mark in circle
Preprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Postprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Published version: policy unknown
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Based on an analysis of the American Lifenaut research project, I attempt to capture immortality created today as a network of relationships among human and non‑human factors. Lifenaut was established in 2006 as a pioneering project in the field of creating posthumous digital avatars. The users involved in the experiment gather data on the www.lifenaut.com platform to retain their personality in a digitized form after biological death. Part of my work is reconstructive – I describe the assumptions of the American project and the main concepts associated with it, such as “mindclone”, “mindfiles” and “mindware”. In the second part I present the results of my own avatar creation experiment and confront them with the sociological perspective of symbolic interactionism (G.H. Mead, H. Blumer) and relational sociology (B. Latour).