Beyond the Data: What Happens to Our Digital Lives When We Die

Throughout "Beyond the Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why It Should Matter to You" (Ediciones Godot, 2026), Swedish researcher and political scientist Carl Öhman repeatedly returns to historian Thomas Laqueur's idea that "the dead make civilization." The first permanent structures were built to give rest to ancestors, and technological leaps like writing or photography sought to serve as a kind of prosthesis to help them travel beyond their biological limits. However, during modernity, the idea of death is hidden, meaning we keep our dead tucked away, elsewhere. To connect with them, we must go out and seek them explicitly.

Öhman argues that since the internet has transitioned from being a reflection of life to being life itself (because we are connected all the time, a concept he calls "onlife"), we have begun to coexist with the dead in a new way. They have become constantly accessible, almost portable; there is no longer mourning, but rather a continuity of parasocial bonds, as they can continue tweeting or exist as chatbots. After all, an algorithm can predict what a deceased person would do or say just as well as if they were alive (unless the brain is protected from the algorithm).

We have begun to coexist with the dead in a new way. They have become constantly accessible, almost portable; there is no longer mourning, but rather a continuity of parasocial bonds.

Öhman exemplifies a couple of times with the case of an app that automatically posts prayers on behalf of a person even after they have died, because in Islam it is believed that spreading teachings could help chances of a good life in the afterlife, and he then wonders how many times one might have come across content generated by a dead person without knowing it, a Dead Internet Theory with an extra layer.

Öhman calls this civilizational reconfiguration (because it is a movement that affects society as a whole and not just the bereaved) the "post-mortal condition." Not because it resembles immortality or posthumanism, but simply because it means that the dead do not disappear but continue to exist, coexisting with us in a new way. And this is one of the central arguments of his book: the accumulation of digital remains is a collective issue that requires democratic deliberation, even if you don’t know anyone who has died and believe the topic doesn’t personally affect you. We have an obligation to future generations and the relationship they will have with their past.

He also repeatedly questions what constitutes the idea of "digital remains." He dismisses the notion that they resemble objects and are therefore inheritable, because they are not a representation of the dead but rather a part of them. For Öhman, the traces we leave on the internet (even those we leave involuntarily, unless we renounce everything) are a true informational corpse that constitutes a personal identity and, as such, resembles the ethical status of a human being. Following Kant, this makes it something intrinsically dignified and, as such, not subject to being used as a means to an end. A person remains alive as long as their information remains alive, perhaps not as the subjective experience of consciousness or a self, but rather as a narrative object made of pure information. This is one of the most original ideas in the text, and while the leap he makes in considering a person's digital remains as comparable to the human dignity of someone alive may seem a bit excessive, the truth is that they should not be equated with property (nor something inheritable) but rather linked to privacy and, above all, to identity.

But the discussion of dignity, humanity, and responsibility clashes head-on with the cruelty of the free market: as long as data is in the hands of private corporations, the principle guiding the preservation of digital history will be profit. The paradigmatic example Öhman takes is Facebook: if it continues to exist under conditions similar to the current ones, it will have more dead users than living ones in four decades. At first glance, this may seem like an outdated example (who still uses Facebook?), a risk that any book hyper-fixated on a particular technological moment runs, especially since Öhman seems to completely ignore all other social networks, except for a passing mention of TikTok, Instagram, or LinkedIn. But the truth is that Facebook has been the company that best occupied the role of guardian of digital remains. The author briefly recounts the commemorative apps that have come and gone, but Facebook, with its established infrastructure and some sound decisions (like legacy contacts who manage accounts of those who have passed away and commemorative profiles, without ads or friend suggestions), is the "ground" where we have buried our dead.

Facebook, with its established infrastructure and some sound decisions, is the "ground" where we have buried our dead.

Öhman does not mind that technologies allow mourning to never close (a bold stance, because a strong criticism that can be made of our relationship with the internet is the total lack of endings and our consequent infantilization as a society), but he does find it unethical that they exploit users for profit. Remembering the deceased is profitable, much like the episode of Black Mirror "Be Right Back." At this point, the book is already somewhat outdated (despite the first edition being in 2024), because it predicts that soon there will be interactive agents that can act like dead people. It is true that the phenomenon has grown exponentially, but Facebook does not see itself as the guardian of cultural heritage, the bridge that updates the pact between generations. As soon as it ceases to be sustainable, it will destroy or sell its data.

And who would want to buy it? Someone interested in training another algorithm, because as Öhman mentions several times, the dead are legally much more unprotected online than the living. This commercial valuation of the past risks the understanding of our history by future generations because it skews it, something that is already happening and he calls "structural amnesia," because the penetration of internet access is unevenly distributed around the world, and there are those who also control our access. Not to mention that diagnoses and predictions are made believing that the companies' archives will continue to exist, will be accessible, and that environmental costs will not become an impediment.

So what can we do then? At this point, Öhman plays a bit of a trick and says that his goal is not to provide solutions but to warn of the problem. Nevertheless, he outlines some general guidelines that may feel insufficient: as a society, we must build institutions, infrastructures, and incentives, create a globally managed archive democratically, pressure politicians to legislate, and companies, through our consumption choices, to preserve the digital heritage of humanity, regardless of its commercial value. Additionally, on a personal level, we should plan the digital afterlife of those who have died. In other words, we should be good ancestors.