IMMORTALITY AS A NETWORK OF RELATIONSHIPS. EXPERIENCE OF BUILDING A POSTHUMOUS AVATAR ON THE LIFENAUT PLATFORM

Abstract

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).

Keywords

• lifenaut
• mindclone
• symbolic interactionism
• symbolic immortality
• mind