Department of Digital Remains

Anjali Nair
2020

Cover
End Paper
Contents
Case Files of the departed netizens

In 50 years, the dead will outnumber the living on Facebook and it will turn into a virtual graveyard. The Department of Digital Remains is a fictional federal agency that keeps a tab on all your virtual actions which will determine your fate in the digital afterlife.

In an age of immortal digital presences, this is a speculative look at what happens to our online selves after we die. This project uses design fiction to examine digital lives through the lens of digital death while trying to answer the question: If we have found ways to treat physical remains of the departed with dignity, why not digital remains?

The publication is divided into two parts, a fictional parts that explains the workings of the department and is set in the future and the other half is the origin story of the department. This section dives deeper into the research on digital afterlife and my experiments during the thesis projects that resulted in creating this ficional department.

Designer
Anjali Nair
Thesis Advisor
Jennifer Cole Philips
Thesis Advisor
Ellen Lupton
Project link