Extracted from publication Il senso immerso
Le carni digitali nell’eternidì online. Immersioni funebri tra fantasmi residui e attivi
DOI: 10.53136/97912218165256
Pages: 127-145
Publication date: February 2025
Publisher: Aracne
My essay aims, firstly, to show the main metaphors used to understand the characteristics of human beings in the age of digital culture. These metaphors aim to emphasise the hybrid character of today’s humanity, marked by the full correspondence between the online and offline worlds. Above all, the metaphor of the digital flesh highlights the affective investment by humans in the care of their digital extensions through screens. Secondly, these metaphors allow us to understand how the relationship between life and death changes in the technologically hybridised world. Once biological life ends, the digital life of Internet users continues. This continuation produces passive and active ghosts of deceased individuals, leading to a peculiar form of independence of online life from offline life. The essay aims to show the characteristics of these passive and active ghosts according to interpretations typical of the field of study of Digital Death.