Wydawnictwa AGH, Studia Humanistyczne AGH, 3(18), p. 23-43, 2019
DOI: 10.7494/human.2019.18.3.23
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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).