With our continued investment in and interaction with technologies, an increasing amount of our intellectual and creative output is born digital or has been converted to digital platforms. As a consequence, we have been presented with new opportunities to revive, remix, and reimagine past projects, prolonging their lives and making them available to new audiences in innovative ways. At the same time, we have had to confront a multitude of long-term issues and impacts, including the sustainability and maintenance of our digital projects, as well as the privacy and accessibility of our personal information. This symposium explores digital afterlives: how we resurrect, preserve, and extend through digital means; the ways in which our accumulated online data haunts and challenges us; and the ways in which we process and understand our own mortality through the lens of the digital. Papers presented will explore this topic through a variety of technologies that will help illuminate the changes, opportunities, and disorientations we face and their implications for the future.
Peter N. Miller
Bard Graduate Center
Welcome
Jesse Merandy
Bard Graduate Center
Introduction
Abby Smith Rumsey
Independent Scholar
A Mere Shadow of the Past: How Memory Creates Identity
Robin Davis
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY
The Final Death(s) of Digital Scholarship: An Ongoing Case Study of DH2005 Projects
Tamara Kneese
University of San Francisco
Death, Disrupted
Margaret Schwartz
Fordham University
The Haptics of Grief: A Taxonomy