A few weeks ago, I wished a happy birthday to a Facebook contact with whom, until then, I had always had interesting exchanges. I received, a little later, an embarrassed note from a mutual friend who informed me that said contact had died several months earlier. This misadventure risks happening to all of us, and more and more often. Indeed, according to a study by Carl Ohman and David Watson of the University of Oxford, Facebook will have more profiles of deceased people than living users by 2070. notice, new technologies inaugurate a new relationship between the world of the dead and the living. In all cultures, there are rituals, usually annual, to honor the deceased. Among Christians, All Saints Day is the perfect time to pay homage to those who have passed away. Through the flowers we offer them and the words we whisper to them, we revive them a little.
The contemporary world and its technological outgrowths offer us multiple ways to bring back the dead. In February 2022, an Indian couple decided to get married in the metaverse. Among the 2,500 guests who feasted in the Hogwarts setting ofHarry Potter, there was the father of the bride. No wonder, except that the individual had died the year before. The groom wanted to honor his wife by resurrecting her father as an avatar. This situation is only one of those that will lead us to explore a new form of coexistence between the living and those who have left us.
Thus, several artificial intelligence applications make it possible to recreate in an almost indiscernible way the voices of missing persons. We could hear Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, declare that the Covid-19 pandemic had been the most significant event of the year 2020. Several companies have embarked on this technological “spiritualism” which will make it possible to speak with the dead. The companies Forever Voices or Somnium Space already offer to receive voice messages from missing relatives, provided that we have kept recordings of them. This condition is easily fulfilled in the contemporary world. We constantly leave traces of our points of view on the Internet, through our emails, our comments… These can be mobilized not only to create the vocal avatar of a voice, but also to simulate the way of thinking of individuals. . Free conversations with departed loved ones are already technically possible.
Towards a permanent carnival?
The next step is almost there: not only hearing them, but also seeing them. If this project still requires prior video recordings, this difficulty could quickly be overcome. Interviews conducted by Thierry Ardisson from Dalida or Coluche on his show hotel of time give an idea of a technology that will soon be available to everyone. There will only be one step left to take, to give this avatar a body, so that the disorder is total. It is this hypothesis that the episode explores Be Right Back from the Serie BlackMirror, in which a woman finds her dead husband in the form of a synthetic body animated by the voice and personality of her companion. If this technological opportunity develops, the surrounding questions will be immense, such as the very possibility of mourning. It will lead human societies to redefine the relationship between the world of the dead and that of the living.
Everywhere in the world there are annual processions in which the return of the dead to the living is mimicked. Whether through the Halloween party or through the multiple traditions of the carnival, the deceased come back for a moment to visit the world of life. Some anthropologists see in them rituals essential to the revitalization of social ties and of the world in general, in particular because they are frequently organized around the solstices. Whatever interpretation we give them, they are traditionally contingent on ancestral calendars, which have the wisdom to call for a limited time of remembrance. Technology makes us take the risk of disrupting the ritual market because it makes a new offer that will disrupt the regulation of the traditional calendar. Are we at the dawn of a social time which will be that of a permanent carnival?
* Gérald Bronner is a sociologist and professor at the Sorbonne University