22 June 2019 | New Scientist | 31Book
All the Ghosts in
the Machine: Illusions
of immortality in the
digital age
Elaine Kasket
Little, Brown
MOVING first-hand interviews and
unnervingly honest recollections
weave through psychologist Elaine
Kasket’s first mainstream book,
All the Ghosts in the Machine, an
anatomy of mourning in the digital
age. Unravelling that architecture
involves two distinct but
complementary projects.
The first offers some support and
practical guidance for people (and
especially family members) who are
blindsided by the practical and legal
absurdities generated when people
die in the flesh, while leaving their
digital selves very much alive.
For some, the persistence of
posthumous data, on Facebook,
Instagram or some other corner
of the social media landscape, is
a source of “inestimable comfort”.
For others, it brings “wracking
emotional pain”. In neither case is
it clear what actions are required,
either to preserve, remove or
manage that data. As a result,
survivors usually oversee the
profiles of the dead themselves –
always assuming, of course,
that they know their passwords.
“In an effort to keep the profile
‘alive’ and to stay connected to their
dead loved one,” Kasket writes, “a
bereaved individual may essentially
end up impersonating them.”
It used to be the family who
had privileged access to the dead,
to their personal effects, writings
and photographs. Families are, as
a consequence, disproportionately
affected by the persistent failure of
digital companies to distinguish
between the dead and the living.
Who has control over a dead
person’s legacy? What unspoken
needs are being trammelled
when their treasured photographs
evaporate or, conversely, when
their salacious post-divorce Tinder
messages are disgorged? Can an
individual’s digital legacy even
be recognised for what it is in a
medium that can’t distinguish
between life and death?
Kasket’s other project is to
explore this digital uncanny from
a psychoanalytical perspective.
Otherwise admirable 19th-century
ideals of progress, hygiene and
personal improvement have conned
us into imagining that mourning is
a more or less understood process
of “letting go”. Kasket’s account
of how this idea gained currency
is a finely crafted comedy of
intellectual errors.
In fact, grief doesn’t come in
stages, and our relationships with
the dead last far longer than we
like to imagine. All the Ghosts inthe Machine opens with an
account of the author’s attempt
to rehabilitate her grandmother’s
bitchy reputation by posting her
love letters on Instagram.
“I took a private correspondence
that was not intended for me and
transformed it from its original
functions. I wanted it to challenge
others’ ideas, and to affect their
emotions... Ladies and gentlemen
of today, I present to you the deep
love my grandparents held for one
another in 1945, ‘True romance’,
heart emoticon.”
Eventually, Kasket realised that
the version of her grandmother
her post had created was no more
truthful than before. By then,
of course, it was far too late.
The digital persistence of the
dead is probably a good thing in
these dissociated times. A culture
of continuing bonds with the dead
is much to be preferred over one in
which we are all expected to “get
over it”. But, as Kasket observes,
there is much work to do, for “the
digital age has made continuing
bonds easier and harder all at
the same time.” ❚Survivors usually end up
managing the profiles of
the dead themselves PL
AINPICTU
RE
/HARR
Y^ +LIDYDead but undying
From Tinder messages to tragic memories, the digital afterlife of the
dead matters in new and unexpected ways, finds Simon Ings
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