The future of death already surrounds us. Technology is developing at such a pace that many things thought to be fictional like: enclosing your entire digital life into a physical object; splicing your DNA with a tree; and human composting are not only being researched but have become products that are currently passing through policy. As author of the Cyberpunk novel Neuromancer William Gibson put it in 1992: “The future has arrived — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”

Wealth and technological proficiency will ultimately shape the uptake of these practices — but as space becomes a premium traditional practices of burial will be ever more scarce with capital cities like London, Hong Kong and New York running desperately low of burial grounds, where prices can reach over $30,000 for a private grave and many graves being stacked high like underground skyscrapers. Panasonic in Japan has even begun buying grave plots and offering them as a corporate perk for their employees.

Virtual graves and digital memory experiences are also being considered as ‘solutions’ to the deep need for a grave. However, does the disembodiment or the lack of a body mark this ritual as something different, does it contain the same values and experiences as a funeral? Does the digital age bring us new ways to harness and care for those memories of love or perhaps all will fall into oblivion as services go bankrupt and servers get switched off or as data is left in an unreadable form — a product of technological progression.

This panel will delve into these questions and more as we uncover how technology, craft and immersion are shaping some of key trends that will give us new choices but also shape critical questions about the meaning of death in the 21st century.