What Does It Mean to Be Human? Who are you?
When read together, the two pieces, “Ever After”, by reporter Miles Klee and “Speak, Memory”, by Verge contributing editor Casey Newton tell a story of a “society [that] is traumatized by death,” a world that “want[s] to live forever.” (Newton, n.d.) Billionaire zealots of the cult of techno-immortality want to create “[a] new afterlife”, according to Klee. (Klee, 2013) Are they wishing on a monkey's paw? Or are they creating a world where, as friends of the late Roman Mazurenko who have been given the chance to grieve alongside a chatbot replica of Mazurenko would say, “The person is not just a body, a set of arms and legs…” but something “much more than that.” something “beautiful.” (Newton, n.d.) The answer to the question of techno-life and death is yet to be written, but in asking it, we may just learn something about living.