Erasure, an Attempt to Surpass Datafication

Abstract

Digital death is a growing concern as personal data and archives are increasingly digitised and stored in networked servers. It refers to the issues surrounding data owner- ship after a person’s death. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have a rising number of deceased users. These companies have consequently developed policies for what happens after their constituents die. E.g, Facebook has a profile memorialisation option while Twitter will discontinue the account. There is very little said however about the erasure of digital data. The question then becomes, with the advent of digital technology, and cheap, plentiful storage devices, how is this nearly limitless archiving affecting our need to forget?