Category: Death + the Web

Categories
Death + Crime Death + Technology Death + the Law Death + the Web Death Ethics

“What About Morals?”

A Victim, Her Picture and Facebook
Jim Dwyer, The New York Times (March 29, 2011)

Photo credit: Mark Musarella, Caroline Wimmer/SIlive.com
Photo credit: Mark Musarella, Caroline Wimmer/SIlive.com

An instant was all it took to post the photo.

The photo I am referring to is the one taken by Mark Musarella. In March of 2009, Musarella—a then retired police officer and EMT from Staten Island, NY—snapped a photo of the beaten and strangled body of Caroline Wimmer in her apartment and posted it to his Facebook page. While the photo was taken down fairly quickly, the implications—legal, sociological and moral—are still being sorted out to this day.

While Musarella’s motivations for taking the photo are unclear, his instantaneous ability to share it make it profoundly clear the frightening speed at which lives can be changed forever. Posting the photo to Facebook—even for the short time it was up—allowed the perpetrator, even unintentionally—to re-victimize a family still grieving for their murdered daughter.

The New York Times ran a story this past week about the crime and the Wimmer family’s attempt to sue Facebook to get the gruesome picture back or have it destroyed. In Facebook’s vernacular, the photo is considered “intellectual property”, although a Facebook spokesperson now claims that the photo was removed long ago with no other copies remaining on any of its servers.

But I wonder about that. Here’s a 2009 article from PC World about Facebook’s track record with user’s deleted photos and a more recent article via Arstechnica.com revealing a 16 month or more lag time. Facebook says it is “working with” its CDN [content delivery network] partner to “significantly reduce the amount of time that backup copies persist.” This is obviously of little comfort to the Wimmer family and precisely why, I imagine, they are suing.

More and more, society is grappling with issues around death and dying in a technological age. Crissy Chriscitiello, Caroline Wimmer’s sister, was quoted in the NY Times as saying, “Everyone is all about technology. “What about morals?” We here at Death Ref have been posting about the intersection of death and the digital life for a while. Take a look at our “death + technology” or “death + the web” categories to view past posts. This June, the Centre for Death & Society (Bath, U.K.) will host a conference titled “Death & Dying in the Digital Age”—at which our very own Dr. John Troyer will present. It will be an engaging conference—hope you can make it.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology Death + the Web Death Ethics Suicide

Samaritans and Facebook Partner

The Samaritans, a confidential, emotional support service serving the U.K. and Ireland, launched a partnership with Facebook this past week. Now, any Facebook user who suspects another Facebook user may be suicidal or experiencing other emotional crises, can report it to the Facebook Help Center. Other suicide prevention organizations are also listed via the Help Center including the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in the U.S., Kirkens SOS in Norway and Befrienders.org serving other countries.

As reported in The Guardian, Samaritans chief executive Catherine Johnstone said:

“Through the popularity of Facebook, we are harnessing the power of friendship so people can get help. As a friend you are better placed to know whether someone close to you is struggling to cope or even feeling suicidal.”

The impetus behind the move is the Simone Back case, among others. On Christmas Day of last year, Back, of Brighton, England told her 1,048 Facebook friends “Took all my pills, be dead soon, bye bye everyone.” In the ensuing hours, no one went to Ms. Back’s aid. According to The Telegraph, “Some users of the site even taunted the 42-year-old over her final status update instead of trying to save her, calling her a “liar” and saying the fatal overdose was “her choice”. Some out of town friends implored online that she give them her address and/or phone number, but by the time her body was discovered the next day, it was too late.

BBC News aired a segment showing just how the system works. The mechanism for reporting is a bit cumbersome as Facebook is obviously trying to walk a fine line between having the service be too visible or too discreet. Although, in its test phase, several people reported suicidal concerns to the Help Center even before an official announcement was made. It will be interesting to see if statistics about Help Center usage for this purpose will be shared with the public and whether this will set a precedent for other social networks.

Categories
Death + Technology Death + the Web Funeral Industry

Webcasting Killed the Funeral Star

For the Funeral Too Distant, Mourners Gather on the Web
Laura M. Holson, The New York Times (January 25, 2011)
Webcast funerals reach more friends and family members and reflect the fact that people are living more and more online.

In January 2010, Meg posted some articles and a video about webcasting funeral services. Now, in January 2011, the New York Times is finally catching up to the postmortem future laid bare by ye olde Death Reference Desk.

Yet again, the Gray Lady is reporting on a story that is not particularly new. Or, at least, a new story for the funeral industry. I first read about webcasting funerals in 2002. Indeed, the funeral industry trade journals all discuss webscasting and webpresence and web death (for lack of a better term) nonstop.

The great irony of funeral webcasting (for me at least) is that the modern American funeral developed around waiting for people to arrive for a funeral. One of the reasons embalming became so prevalent in US funerals was that it allowed the preserved dead body to be shipped on a train without decomposing. Embalming also created time for the next-of-kin to arrive for a funeral, without worrying that prolonged travel would cause problems with the body. So, in nutshell, the modern funeral developed around travel time to funerals.

Postmortem Space and Time was expanded.

Webcasting inverts the whole situation. The need for travel time or to ship the body is being greatly reduced. There isn’t anything good or bad with this situation. It does mean that more people will have access to a funeral (given access to the required technology) and that’s certainly better than nothing.

And the webcasting trend is most certainly the future for most funeral services.

The question I always ask myself is this: What is lost by not attending the funeral in person? If anything? Given the choice, I will always attend a funeral in person. My own personal interactions with the other attendees and the deceased individual are important experiences.

I say all this now but I have strong suspicion that in the coming years I will end up “attending” a webcast funeral.

It seems inevitable at this point.

In an effort to find a YouTube video of an actual funeral being webcast I came across the follow advert. This was not entirely what I wanted to use…but it was too good to pass up.

Categories
Death + Crime Death + the Web

Stay Classy, AccuQuote and CNN

In the wake of Saturday’s shooting in Arizona, leaving among the dead a federal judge and a 9-year-old, with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition among the many wounded, life insurance company AccuQuote reminds surfers of CNN that our family’s future is uncertain (even if widowhood turns women into FOXES… part of the threat of death, perhaps?)… especially with that unknown person of interest still on the loose.

I know how internet advertising works. When not random (though I doubt this is random), it’s keyword correlated, in effort to show viewers relevant content. And life insurance is definitely relevant when a sociopath murders citizens and public servants at a community forum. But c’mon, AccuQuote and CNN. Have some taste and show respect.

…Though I suppose such a censure ignores that media orgs are always selling fear, mayhem and ad space. Ugh.

Our thoughts are with the victims of the tragedy. May we see a shift in political and cultural discourse toward the sane and peaceable.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology Death + the Web

Digital Death Day: London Calling

Digital Death Day London
Saturday, October 9th 9am-5pm
Centre for Creative Collaboration
University of London
16 Acton Street
(King’s Cross Station)
WC1X 9NG London

Last May, Meg wrote up a really interesting piece on a Digital Death Day un-conference in California. That post, Digital Death Day is Every Day, is part of Death Ref’s ongoing coverage of all things postmortem and online. See, for example, the Death + the Web section of the website.

Meg, Kim, and I were all disappointed that we missed the Digital Death Day since the organizers outlined a number of topics that the three of us follow:

Death is a part of life and life has (to an extent) become digital.

This un-conference will be primarily concerned with provoking discourse around the social, cultural and practical implications of Death in the Digital World. Thus stimulating a reconsideration of how death, mourning, memories and history are currently being augmented in our technologically mediated society.

The archiving, networking and post mortem engagement of ‘digital remains’ leads us to consider what place digital information has in our lives legally, sentimentally and historically.

But then something oh-so-exciting happened: a second Digital Death Day event was announced and this one will be in London.

Good old London.

Lots of death and dead bodies in that city.

Here is the official .pdf invitation for Digital Death Day London.

Meg, Kim, and I want a strong showing from our UK Death Reference Desk readers. Indeed, I’ll be able to attend this next Digital Death Day since Bath (where I live) is just a hop, skip, and a jump for old smokey.

The trick with all these ongoing discussions about how death has changed due to digital technologies is that we Homo sapiens are still in the middle of the forest on this one.

As Meg once succinctly put it: How long is forever on the internet?

So there you have it.

I look forward to engaging in all these postmortem discussion topics on October 9 and please, please come up and say hello.

Categories
Death + Technology Death + the Web Monuments + Memorials

Social Networking’s Sudden Morbidity and Mortality

Twitter. And Facebook. And death.
Future Tense with John Moe, American Public Media (August 16, 2010)

Just recently, Twitter announced new guidelines on what it will do when a user dies. Twitter now joins the ranks of Facebook and Myspace in coming up with policies for dead members.

We here at Death Ref have been covering this issue since day one. You can find all kinds of information at our Death + The Web link. Indeed, just last week both Meg and Kim posted items on social networking websites and death.

The radio program Future Tense interviewed me about what social networking sites are doing and the broader history of human memorialization.

You can listen to the interview right here:

Categories
Death + the Web Monuments + Memorials

1000Memories, a Thousand Possibilities

1000memoriestitle

Despite the option of putting a deceased Facebook user’s account into memorial mode (and necessity, to avoid suggestions to “reconnect”), Facebook is for the living. That’s okay. Social media sites weren’t intended to handle death, and only years after their inceptions recognized the dilemma and developed related policies, as Kim’s last post explains.

But now there’s 1000Memories, a no-fee, ad-free site specifically designed to bring together family and friends to share photos and stories and even undertake charity projects in a loved one’s name. While not a social media site per se — it’s reasonable to suspect that over time the memorial pages will stabilize and become more or less static — pages are the product of user-supplied content and interaction, including commenting on others’ contributions.

But even without sustained interaction (which certainly may happen), the collaborative nature of the memorials offers evocative possibilities. Not only can far-flung friends and family come together virtually to remember a loved one, it gathers in a range of voices that piece together a multifaceted life. Memories through the eyes — and in the words — of a young grandchild will be much different from those of a spouse or old fishing buddy, and it is precisely this variation, provided enough people participate, that can make the memorials so rich.

Also, significantly — the site is gorgeous, and nothing breeds confidence like good design. Unlike so many new web startups, 1000Memories gets a huge Win with actually showing what the product does before you create an account, with a few examples available to explore.

1000memories

According to the Terms of Service, “Privacy settings are administered on a per memorial basis and site administrators are able to set and adjust the privacy as relevant.” Sounds reasonable. Non-private pages are also indexed and discoverable on the open web, and purportedly available “forever” — imagine the boon it could provide for genealogists, now or in the future (or lazy This American Life interns, looking for story leads).

Also stated: “Persons establishing memorials agree not to restrict the right of any legal next of kin to assume or share administrative responsibilities and fully participate in memorials established.” Yikes. Yes. 1000Memories must tread the ground of family feud craziness and black sheep.

I’d like to see a base-line bio page with general information — birthplace, education and career milestones, possibly a family tree — editable by all or in the hands of the memorial administrator, with links to the deceased’s personal blogs and other social media identities. Naturally this could be contentious — while such sites are often easily findable anyway, you may never intend your ultraconservative/-liberal relatives to read your opposing-view political rants or other sticky revelations of heart and mind. Additionally, linked sites may not remain into perpetuity, though some sort of archival mechanism would also be slick. Nonetheless, including such content would be a way to further draw in a person’s life, and in their own words.

Check out a short interview from TechCrunch with two of the co-founders, Brett Huneycutt and Rudy Adler:

We’ll be keeping our eyes on this one!

Categories
Death + the Law Death + the Web Death Ethics Monuments + Memorials

Dead Netizen

There’s been much talk of late about what happens to your online social connections, not to mention your email and all the other ways you exist virtually, after you die. With Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others there’s you and then there’s virtual you.

As more and more people join the virtual you ranks, the implementation of protocols and practices become necessary when the real you dies.

Yesterday, Twitter announced their new policy for deceased users. Prior to this, they had no policy in place.

In July, the NY Times published a story about what happens to your Facebook account after you die. Facebook’s policies, specifically the ability to “memorialize” someone’s Facebook page, have been in place since October, 2009.

But one size does not fit all as policies and practices vary greatly among the various email and social network providers, making it a confusing maze for those trying to navigate through it after a loved-one’s death. Various sites attempt to sort it all out. But, as technology changes and new social networking and email sites emerge, so too will protocols need to change. In writing this post, I ran across a socialmedialawstudent.com post discussing the legal ramifications of deceased users and their “digital property”. It seems future lawyers are trying to understand it too—perhaps all the better to eventually litigate it, I imagine.

Think about this: a typical scenario might be a person who has a Facebook, Twitter and Gmail account—and probably a work email too—although I imagine most family member’s are less concerned with work email and understand that companies and organizations have exclusive rights to their employee’s email accounts. Ultimately, however, your virtual fingerprints are everywhere. Gaining access after your death—should someone need or want to—can be potentially confusing and frustrating for everyone. And what if it goes completely against your last wishes? Do you want your family and possibly friends, noodling around in the remains of your virtual life?

All sort of websites have emerged to help you figure out these existential questions and more. Some of the sites, like 1000memories.com, are for the living to remember and memorialize the dead. Some sites, like legacylocker.com, are virtual vaults that keep usernames and passwords safe until you die and the info is then released to selected friends and family members. And still other sites, like mylastemail.com, allow you to craft out messages while you are still alive that will then only be released to friends and family upon your death.

Despite the best efforts of Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and others to address the post-mortem needs of their members and the people who survive them, it’s still an ungainly, swirling, complex mass of legal, moral and ethical issues. It seems progress is being made, but I think it will always be a messy business the more you and virtual you become intertwined and perhaps ultimately, indistinguishable.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + the Web Funeral Industry

Alas, King Elvis’ Embalming Instruments are Still Dead

Auction House Drops Elvis Embalming Tools
Andy Grimm, Chicago Tribune (July 23, 2010)

I know for a fact that many people saw last week’s news item about the instruments used to embalm Elvis Presley going up for sale. I know this because many people (including my Mom…) e-mailed me the story. What I think most people missed was the announcement a few days later that the same sale had been called off. It’s true. The Presley embalming gear will not be auctioned in August.

At the top of this post you will find a Chicago Tribune article announcing the sale’s cancellation as well as a statement by the auction house, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, on what happened.

Ooooohhhhhh the intrigue.

 

images_managed_press_elvis_toolsHere is a sampling of the items from the defunct sale: forceps, needle injectors, aneurysm hooks, an arterial tube, lip brushes (for makeup), rubber gloves, a comb, eye liner, and a toe tag.

I’ve even included a photo of some of the gear.

Most people commented on the sale this way: “Gross.”

I, however, had an entirely different reaction. Since I am a Death Studies Professional my first thought was “No way. It’s fake.” There is absolutely no way to prove the provenance and authenticity of this embalming equipment (short of DNA traces, if that’s even possible) since everything listed could be bought from any embalming supply company. Some written materials were also included in the sale but I did not see any images of the documents.

And, lo, it turns out that the authenticity of said embalming instruments became an issue after the initial news story drop. As a result, the auction house could do nothing but pull the sale.

There is another angle on this entire debacle. It turns out that the Memphis, TN funeral home which questioned the authenticity of the instruments is owned by the Texas based Service Corporation International (SCI).

That’s an interesting twist.

SCI is an ENORMOUS funeral industry conglomerate and it owns funeral homes all over the world. I have to imagine that once SCI HQ heard about the sale it decided to take a looky loo at the situation and, indeed, SCI released the following statement:

“We feel the sale of these items is entirely inappropriate…Their removal and subsequent submission for auction are inconsistent with our policies and our commitment to all families we serve to treat the loved ones in our care — be they celebrities or not — with privacy, dignity and respect.”

I’ll take SCI at its word that the privacy, dignity, and respect of the Presley family is important but I also think that SCI wanted to hang onto this property. If these embalming tools are authentic (which I still doubt) then it’s the kind of thing any corporation wants in its private holdings.

Interesting enough, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers pulled the original sale announcement off its website. You can that here. Our good friends at BoingBoing, however, still have that posting up.

So there you have it. Buyer beware. Especially when dealing with run-of-the-mill embalming equipment.

Categories
Death + the Web

Happy First Birthday, DeathRef!

Believe it or not, the Death Reference Desk officially launched a year ago last July (with some content seeded in June to get us started). Gadzooks!

It all started when death and dying practices professor John approached librarian Meg about setting up a site where he could post death-related news links that he would otherwise put on Facebook or email to friends (and which friends, including librarian Kim, would constantly email to him). After much brainstorming — including the librarians pulling in the reference service idea — Meg created the site in a caffeine-induced fever dream. The rest is less history than designing the future.

Here are our most popular posts to date!

1,258 — Premature Burial Device Patents
1,021 — Dead Bodies Having Sex: the Backstory
989 — Deathly Art at DIA
757 — Blue Screen of Death… Memorial Tattoo?
661 — The Impossibility of Identifying the Dead in Haiti

And the top five search strings:

373 — memorial tattoos
268 — death reference desk
204 — corpse flower
123 — death masks of famous people
95 — memorial tattoo

Two deal with memorial tattoos, and there are many other tattoo-themed search terms that send people to our site: “memorial tattoo ideas,” “memorial tattoo designs,” “cremation tattoo” and many more. This is a pet interest of John’s, in fact, he’ll be speaking about memorial tattoos at a public lecture July 20th in New York City. He’ll post more about this soon, but here are the vitals in the meantime.

Hey! We now have a Facebook Page! Ironically, or perhaps just “finally,” we have come back around to posting content on Facebook, now with our own group page. Like us, love us and confuse all your stalkers trolling your Likes and Interests!

And don’t forget our DeathRef Twitter account, affectionately called the Death Feed. While we tweet links to our own posts here, we also throw out additional content that we don’t have the time or inclination to write full posts about. In addition, we have internal editorial guidelines / a collection and redistribution policy so to speak, known colloquially as “taste,” that prevents us from wallowing in schlocky, scandalous content on the DRD website (Pets Eat Dead Owner! 50 Wacky Coffins! and so forth). But some of that stuff still makes the Twitter Death Feed just for the heck of it, and it’s a good way to say yep, we’re still here, even when posts are long in coming.

Which brings us to… sometimes posts are long in coming. As our About page says, we suffer full-time jobs and part-time lives, and it’s also sum-sum-summah time! Rather than All DeathRef, All the Time, we’ve been dragging our pasty carcasses out into the sunshine. You should try it. It’s awesome.

Also of note: despite the low count in the DeathRef Questions category, Kim and Meg actually do field reference questions, usually one or two per month, but most of them are private issues that overlap legal and medical concerns that we don’t post for reasons of confidentiality. (We’re also not doctors or lawyers and can’t give related advice, but we do try to track down appropriate, useful services local to the patron.)

It’s been a great year, folks — we look forward to many more!

Categories
Death + the Web Death Ethics

Legacy for Hire

A recent post by Idle Words blog caught my eye. It’s about the unscrupulous practices of Legacy.com, the back end machinery behind obituary notices in newspapers across the country, including, but not limited to, the venerable NY Times.

Idle Words did a little research (which Boing Boing then posted) to uncover exactly what’s going on with Legacy—because their mode of operation is less than transparent. At issue is how their online guest books work and the deceptive and manipulative way money changes hands in the process. The process is this: you sign the guest book after which you are greeted with a warning that states that the guest book will expire in a little over a month. You can make sure this doesn’t happen by paying $29 to keep it up for a year, or go for the eternity package and pay $79 to keep the guest book alive “in perpetuity.”

While that might seem a bit crass, that’s not really the issue. Through some investigation, Idle Words discovered that creating an online Legacy.com death notice is a less than forthright when it comes to the money. At no time in the process do they tell you what the charges are (from $79). For that, you need to drill down into the small print back at (in this case) the NY Times rate sheet page—outside of the confines of the obituary creation stage. I dare you to even find where the rate sheet info is because I can tell you it’s under deep cover—and I’m a librarian!

Says Idle Words:

[The] site takes money from bereaved people without disclosing what it’s billing them, gambling on the fact that they’re probably too preoccupied to care. Whether or not this kind of thing is legal, it is completely unethical. Even an undertaker who has upsold you on everything from coffin to funeral buffet has to show you a number before you sign on the dotted line.

I applaud Idle Words for looking into Legacy’s practices. Maybe this exposure will shame them into changing their “business model”.

Categories
Death + Art / Architecture Death + Technology Death + the Web Grief + Mourning

Inventing the Future of Death

Recent design school graduate Jake Shapiro of New York shared his thesis project with us: “The Future of Death” examines how our internet and social media oriented lives have and will continue to change the way we think about and deal with death and grief.

The project, for which Jake designed and constructed working prototypes, includes an external drive that downloads and preserves a loved one’s online data. The LED screen allows users to view content on the handheld device, which can also be docked with the Digiurn — an urn with a screen “where a loved one’s physical and digital existence can be preserved and viewed forever.”

Here’s a demo of the software:

Deathware from Jake Shapiro on Vimeo.

Managing digital assets and identities after death is certainly a timely topic. Some sites cater to password management and transmission upon death (such as Legacy Locker and Deathswitch), while Facebook has death memorial mode for personal profiles. This may, however, be the first effort to draw together a person’s social media output and combine it with the physical reality of the urn and what remains of the deceased within it.

(There is an irony here — online communities can be vastly dispersed with “friends” having never met in person. While grief with such deaths can be indisputably intense, these people will probably not attend the funeral or ever see the urn or grave. In other words, The Future of Death compiles content once shared with a potentially vast network and archives and relays it to only a select few — the family and perhaps close friends. It could easily have an online portal as well, of course — or people could simply go to the original blog, twitter account, and so forth, though the long-term availability of content at its native origin is uncertain.)

While the social media aspect of this is new, there is precedent with digital urns delivering photos, video and audio. Interestingly, search results for such urns mostly turn up cremain containers for pets, suggesting that consumers may consider the product a gimmick or otherwise inappropriate for human remains — fine for your dog, but your dad? No. (They do exist, however: One $900 urn inexplicably states that “This urn can be sealed airtight as well, for those who choose to bury their loved ones.” Why buy an urn with a digital display then hide it in the earth? Eek.)

Jake’s concept diverges not only with including social media content, but in the design itself. Check out these other digital photo urns:

They resemble tiny television sets, complete with remote controls, while the Digiurn is both a throwback and a distinctly modern piece, using the classical urn shape while set up like an iPod docking station.

How comfortable with LED screens and external drives are Grandma and Gramps? Hrm, well, it’s their children to whom such products would be marketed. But in a similar complication, compiling, storing and providing access to the deceased’s social media content assumes he or she participated in it. This is a very current concept for a market that largely won’t need it for another 30 to 70 years.

Of course, this is the future of death we’re talking about. Considering how the internet has evolved over the past 10 or even 3-5 years, who knows what the future will hold for technology, not to mention how it will transform grief. At the same time, as computer scientist Alan Kay so eloquently put it, the best way to predict the future is to invent it — and we can be sure designers like Jake Shapiro will do just that.