The latest episode of Imagine Otherwise is streaming now!
In episode 157 of Imagine Otherwise, we dive into the complex relationship between Big Tech and mortality, specifically how digital media platforms mediate our experiences of death.
My guest is media scholar and Ideas on Fire author Tamara Kneese, who is a senior researcher and project director of Data & Society’s AIMLab.
Tamara’s new book Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond was recently published by Yale University Press.
In our conversation, Tamara and I chat about how platform economies built around planned obsolescence shape our experiences of life and death, as well as how gig workers, families, and community organizers are creatively harnessing these tools for progressive possibilities.
Tamara shares how in forms like cancer blogs, digital estate planning, online memorializations, and networked mutual aid in the context of COVID-19, communities are reimagining what collaborative online labor and worldbuilding look like.
We close out the episode with Tamara’s vision for more just afterlives as well as a more just present, where digital technologies are put to use ensuring labor rights, climate justice, and more expansive futures for us all.
You can listen to the episode on your favorite podcast player or the Ideas on Fire website here: Tamara Kneese on Death in the Digital Platform Age
