Austin Chronicle: Future Perfect - Contemplating the Digital Afterlife

Wells Dunbar spotlighted Emotion Technology's SXSW panel "RT: I'm Going to Kill Myself" in his March 5th trend piece for the Austin Chronicle on some SXSW 2010 panels about technology, death, and saving lives.

Right now, Gandin Le concedes, ways to help are pretty limited. "That's what we're working on, is to make sure that on Facebook or on Twitter those policies are in place, so if users report there's a problem, we are able to save lives." This could take the form of alerting local authorities, or "online crisis counseling, where users will be able to click on a link and get help immediately." If there's one thing people like Gandin Le and digital afterlife planners have in common, it's working on a standardization of responses from social network companies so the response process will be streamlined when threats are made –potentially saving lives in the process. "One thing I hear a lot," Gandin Le says of suicidal posts, "is, 'Oh, this person's just making a cry for help.' Well yeah, exactly, so let's get them help!"