Yesterday I had an epic writing session, and finished my final paper for my class on the social and organizational issues of information.
The topic of my paper was a bit on the morbid side, but somehow that’s what I’m doing a lot of work on this semester. The concept for the paper is that as more and more people create and have online profiles on social networking sites, a system is created where more and more people have an online memorial when they die, whether they intend to or not.
This topic became interesting to me about a year ago when my friend Blake Bigler died of a sudden heart attack (at the age of 25). Immediately afterwards, his Facebook page became a memorial to him where friends posted messages, pictures and the like. To this day, friends still wish him a happy birthday, and post notes on his page.
I thought that this was a dramatic change to the way that deaths occur and are memorialized, and that it needed to be analyzed more carefully, and so my paper was born. If you’re interested, please feel free to read.
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