If a meal is eaten in a fancy restaurant and it isn’t posted on Instagram, has really been eaten at all?
We have been seeking immortality ever since we became conscious of ourselves and our mortality.
There have been many means of reaching immortality: People write their names on buildings, start wars and build business empires in order to be remembered. People have children, their scion, and pass on their name, their values, their genes.
Five thousand years ago humans started to write, firing the starting pistol for the Anthropocene epoch. We created a new way to retain information forever, and thus a new way to achieve immortality. This ability to record information has evolved and evolved again to the Internet, Instagram and this blog (via the printing press and TV). Thoughts, photos, videos, likes, comments all now recorded for almost all of humanity (and all robots) to see for all of eternity. We can all live forever on Facebook.
In a sense are we all being connected by the data we share, becoming one superorganism? In a sense is the hyperindividualism at the core of today’s sharing culture actually making us less individual and all part of a larger machine?
I’m not a serial sharer. I’m a non-poster on Facebook and plan to shut my account down (for some reason I haven’t hit the big red button quite yet). I’m not on Instagram, Snapchat or on other social media channels.
This leaves me concerned. Will I not be remembered? Will I not leave a mark on the world? Will I not have any say in how this information superorganism behaves?
Perhaps my decision to make this blog public rather than a journal is my way of being part of this superbeing; my small way of achieving immortality (if it doesn’t happen in reality first).
musings of an untrained mind 
Get this printed
Sent from my Windows Phone ________________________________
Thanks Dilipmasa!
I like the irony that you mention in our collective contribution to this super organism, inspite of our narcissism.
Physical immortality is around the corner. Whether this is through biologically defying age-related death or the integration of organic life with inorganic matter (eg downloading our memories to a remote server somewhere for time immemorial), our physical lifespans will no longer be a restraint.
It is also interesting then to think about the impact this would have on the way we live our lives. Death (or the knowledge of its presence) currently acts as a mechanism for the way we live. How would our lives change were we to know that in some way, we were going to live forever??