Well heck. Seems the book is already available on Amazon.co.uk’s Kindle Store.
Hurrah! Get yours now!
"
When we’re gone, what will we leave behind? For all but a tiny proportion of us, our memory will fade quickly, gone in a generation or two. So, what then can we leave behind? Our genes? Our ideas? Our ethics?
What will have the most impact on the future? Technology? Society? Literature? Will our possessions be a gift to future generations, or a burden? Will our concepts help them live and thrive, or will they be a millstone they have to fight to free themselves from?
Do we even control our own inheritance? Will a political leader’s legacy be carried in the groups that gathered to oppose them? Will those things we neglect have more influence on posterity than those we work on? Many geniuses come from broken homes – and many children of the successful are screw-ups. Will our shadow legacy mean more than the one we worked for?
Even the baseline of genetic inheritance is more complicated then we thought, as the discipline of epigenetics explores. The environment our grandparents lived in has a direct bearing on our lives. How far do we even understand what have inherited from previous generations?
We may not be remembered, but we will pass things on. Genes, ideas, ecosystems. And maybe, we can do that in a more mindful way than we are now. Can we balance the now, with the then, and the yet to come? That’s what TEDxBrighton will explore this year.
"— This year’s TedXBrighton is all about Digital Death. I think they’re still looking for speakers. If you’re free on 25 October and are operating in this space, have a gander.
Ain’t she pretty?
I recorded this last week when I was at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia for a couple days of talks and workshops all about the new book!
as reported on BBC.
it may be that the search engines are reflecting society’s own prejudices
emphasis added
a great-grandson discovers documents about his great grandfather. Creates a Facebook profile for him. Fascinating way to memorialise the past in the present.
HT @davidfg
"What mainly goes up… is not the core network but the number of casual contacts that people track more passively"
—
The Social Brain Hypothesis (Dunbar, 1998) tested on Facebook, using generic behavioural closeness metrics (number of friends who people a) post on their wall, status updates or photos; or b) message/chat with), by the social network’s in-house sociologist Cameron Marlow.
from The Economist (26 Feb 2009): Social networks: Primates on Facebook
from the readers’ editor at The Guardian
"People often wander around cemeteries and look at gravestones and wonder who that person was. By using the QR codes they can find out all they need to know"
—
Interactive gravestones: how the dead live on, online
timely. just finished editing the chapter on death yesterday.
