The age-old question of "what happens after we die" is something humanity has grappled with for millennia. Religions, philosophers, and thought leaders have put forward theories about each person's destiny beyond life on earth. Until now, no factual conclusion based on science has provided a satisfactory answer.
psychologists have understood that the fear of death, or the realization of mortality, is a primary motivator of human action. Advances such as cloning and the creation of virtual worlds, which were once science fiction, have become reality, perhaps as another struggle to answer this question, or even to defeat death.
Now, in the era of the metaverse, humans are the creators of a new digital world and, therefore, of a new digital life. In the Web3 space, the metaverse has gained a lot external investment attention and greater participation from legacy companies. The metaverse sector will have a estimated value of $5 billion by 2030.
Many believe that the metaverse reshape how social life it is structured.
This new genesis of digital life naturally raises the same timeless questions, with a twist. If life is reinvented in digital reality, will death also be different? Specifically, what happens after we die in the metaverse as humans and avatars?
What happens when we die digitally?
The existential question of what happens after we die remains unanswered regarding the final or proximate destination of our souls. However, cultures around the world have different ways of handling ceremonies related to death, which is the human experience of deciding what happens to our bodies after death.
As more people continue to digitize their identities, create avatars in virtual worlds, and maintain digital assets, the question of What happens after death reappears.
The introduction of social media was one of the first cases where humans had to deal with a digital identity after death.
On Facebook, for example, a user's profile is "memorialized" as a "place for friends and family to gather and share memories after someone has passed away." It also serves as a security feature to prevent future logins.
Facebook's parent company, Meta, has been actively pursuing the development of the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the company, made an explanatory video of the Metaverse in October 2021.
While the clip did not explicitly mention death, users began asking about death in the metaverse question. Soon after, a dystopian meme circulated on social media with a quote attributed to Zuckerberg: "If you die in the metaverse, you die in real life."
โ Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2021
However, the founders and executives of metaverse platforms are toying with the idea of โโdeath as digital reality unfolds.
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Frank Wilder, co-founder of metaverse platform Wilder World, told Cointelegraph that as we build sacred places within the metaverse and create new avatar versions of ourselves, the concept of "dying" is no longer limited to the death of a physical body:
"In this digital world, we have the ability to imagine new forms of existence after death, such as preserving a person's digital consciousness or creating a virtual memorial."
Wilder said that honoring the "sanctity of life is a delicate exploration," and humans will inherit various avenues for choosing how they would like to honor their lives.
graveyards in the sky
For Mariana Cabugueira, principal architect and urban planner of Wiami, Wilder World's first digital city, this โnew dimension of realityโ invites a new approach to preserving legacies.
Let's take the concept of cemeteries, for example. In his view, metaverse cemeteries will be less like graveyards and more like designated memorial spaces with capsules containing memory and soul, created by the owner for digital repose.
โThese digital capsules share how we want to be remembered and honored, tell our story, and convey the warm feeling of a soul.โ
Although avatars do not age, the mind behind the avatar can replace the digital character and deserves closure and celebration, Cabugueira said, adding: โmemory capsule cemeteries will be places for the closure of life, to end our characters, a self from which we start. or a stage of life in which we are no longerโ.
In Wilder World, Cabugueira has a vision of how these spaces will take visual form. She said these memorial spaces would stand high "like cathedrals," with symbolism tied to heaven and light.
โRemembrance is no longer just a burial, but a celebration of the evolution of life,โ he said.
Ethics of digital life after death
Digital graveyards are just one part of what happens after a digital death. A more pressing question is: What happens to our digital assets and data?
Yat Siu, co-founder and CEO of Animoca Brands, believes that we are still in the early stages of this discussion. He told Cointelegraph that those who think about these things do so more in terms of "how custody of assets can be transferred to heirs instead of managing metaverse identity". siuu said:
โIn the metaverse, your digital persona can still have influence and impact even if you no longer operate it. In fact, a digital person could become even more influential and therefore valuable after physical death."
Marja Konttinen, director of marketing for the Decentraland Foundation, the founding organization of the Decentraland metaverse, said that virtual worlds are often considered a "thing of the future"; however, they can also be a powerful tool as windows to the past.
Konttinen noted that a digital twin that lives on after the physical death of its users could raise ethical questions similar to those surrounding artificial intelligence and deepfakes.
โIt certainly opens up the possibility of creating a permanent virtual mausoleum of our memories and experiences, perhaps in the form of NPCs. [non-player character] who looks and talks like us, living forever in the metaverse," he said.
'Tanotechnology' and 'dreams'
Death in digital reality has bridged emerging technologies with older fields of study around death and mourning.
Cole Imperi is a thanatologist, a specialist in understanding death, dying, pain and grief, derived from the Greek word for death, "thanatos", and founder of the American School of Thanatology. She told Cointelegraph that there is a subfield in thanatology called โthanatologyโ that focuses on the intersection of her field and her technology.
She told Cointelegraph that digital spaces could offer more ways to โseamlessly connect the dead with the livingโ that physical spaces do not:
"The digital afterlife offers the most opportunities for continued ties to our deceased loved ones and, I believe, also harbors the greatest opportunity for advancement in the way we commemorate and remember our loved ones."
In 2009, Imperi even coined the term "dreams," which refers to the digital remains people leave behind online after death. Imperi helps run ThanaLab, which monitors "patterns of online commemoration and developments related to user deaths."
He said that the digital death of users is becoming more frequent and that it is natural to bring this aspect of our physical lives into a digital space.
Do we have answers?
The metaverse has been a long time coming. In 1992, the American science fiction writer Neal Stephenson first coined the term metaverse, even before the existence of any of the platforms we have today.
That said, even now that we have more tangible insights into the metaverse and its capabilities, it's still in its infancy. This means that concepts important to humanity that have a place in the physical world, such as death, are still taking digital form.
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Digital architects like Mariana Cabugueira are now reimagining the future of digital cemeteries, and researchers like Cole Imperi are monitoring the digital remains of human life online.
We may not yet know what happens after we die; however, in the metaverse, we are getting much closer to the answer.
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