AHK Culture Club | March 28th, 2024

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Workshop participants delved into the concept of digital immortality, a theme prevalent in science fiction and internet culture. Inspired by Robert M. Geraci's Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality, we explored how apocalyptic narratives have influenced technological discourses, predicting a future where technology facilitates immortality. According to these visions, human consciousness will be uploaded to computers, and our (impure) physical forms will be replaced with avatars' bodies. Salvation becomes possible in the transcendent realm of cyberspace.

We immersed ourselves in a speculative scenario where digital immortality has been realised and used digital governance as a lens to examine the underlying assumptions of these virtual worlds. 

In this workshop, governance refers to the creation of rules and regulations for digital transcendence, raising questions such as: Who has access to digital immortality? Which type of values could guide policy-making in this context? What constitutes a violation of these regulations and codes of conduct? Who oversees the infrastructure, is the virtual afterlife a public service or a luxury product? Do we envision a global afterlife, or do we impose existing nationalistic borders on these governing structures?