Internet Afterlife: Virtual Salvation in the 21st Century
Can you imagine swapping your body for a virtual version? This technology-based look at the afterlife chronicles America's fascination with death and reveals how digital immortality may become a reality.

The Internet has reinvented the paradigm of life and death: social media enables a discourse with loved ones long after their deaths, while gaming sites provide opportunities for multiple lives and life forms. In this thought-provoking work, author Kevin O'Neill examines America's concept of afterlife—as imagined in cyberspace—and considers how technologies designed to emulate immortality present serious challenges to our ideas about human identity and to our religious beliefs about heaven and hell.

The first part of the work—covering the period between 1840 and 1860—addresses post-mortem photography, cemetery design, and spiritualism. The second section discusses Internet afterlife, including online memorials and cemeteries; social media legacy pages; and sites that curate passwords, bequests, and final requests. The work concludes with chapters on the transhumanist movement, the philosophical and religious debates about Internet immortality, and the study of technologies attempting to extend life long after the human form ceases.

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Internet Afterlife: Virtual Salvation in the 21st Century
Can you imagine swapping your body for a virtual version? This technology-based look at the afterlife chronicles America's fascination with death and reveals how digital immortality may become a reality.

The Internet has reinvented the paradigm of life and death: social media enables a discourse with loved ones long after their deaths, while gaming sites provide opportunities for multiple lives and life forms. In this thought-provoking work, author Kevin O'Neill examines America's concept of afterlife—as imagined in cyberspace—and considers how technologies designed to emulate immortality present serious challenges to our ideas about human identity and to our religious beliefs about heaven and hell.

The first part of the work—covering the period between 1840 and 1860—addresses post-mortem photography, cemetery design, and spiritualism. The second section discusses Internet afterlife, including online memorials and cemeteries; social media legacy pages; and sites that curate passwords, bequests, and final requests. The work concludes with chapters on the transhumanist movement, the philosophical and religious debates about Internet immortality, and the study of technologies attempting to extend life long after the human form ceases.

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Internet Afterlife: Virtual Salvation in the 21st Century

Internet Afterlife: Virtual Salvation in the 21st Century

by Kevin O'Neill
Internet Afterlife: Virtual Salvation in the 21st Century

Internet Afterlife: Virtual Salvation in the 21st Century

by Kevin O'Neill

Hardcover

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Overview

Can you imagine swapping your body for a virtual version? This technology-based look at the afterlife chronicles America's fascination with death and reveals how digital immortality may become a reality.

The Internet has reinvented the paradigm of life and death: social media enables a discourse with loved ones long after their deaths, while gaming sites provide opportunities for multiple lives and life forms. In this thought-provoking work, author Kevin O'Neill examines America's concept of afterlife—as imagined in cyberspace—and considers how technologies designed to emulate immortality present serious challenges to our ideas about human identity and to our religious beliefs about heaven and hell.

The first part of the work—covering the period between 1840 and 1860—addresses post-mortem photography, cemetery design, and spiritualism. The second section discusses Internet afterlife, including online memorials and cemeteries; social media legacy pages; and sites that curate passwords, bequests, and final requests. The work concludes with chapters on the transhumanist movement, the philosophical and religious debates about Internet immortality, and the study of technologies attempting to extend life long after the human form ceases.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781440837968
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 08/08/2016
Pages: 264
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kevin O'Neill, PhD, is professor emeritus of philosophy and one of the founding members of the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xi

List of Abbreviations xiii

1 Introduction: Journeying into New Worlds of the Dead 1

2 Beginnings: Online Memorialization and Haunted Social Media 17

3 The Rise of the Avatar 39

4 Can the Mind Be Portable? Theories of Mind from Plato to Turing 57

5 Moving Minds: Transhumanism and the Path to Internet Afterlife 71

6 Martine Rothblatt and the Virtually Human 87

7 The Truths of Terasem 107

8 Dmitry Itskov and the Immortality Button 129

9 Itskov and Neo-Humanity 151

10 The (Post)Human Future? 177

Notes 197

Bibliography 219

Index 239

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