Self Commemoration via Avatar - eterni.me

Finally: an update from eterni.me!

Eternime Alpha Two from Eternime on Vimeo.

When they first made themselves known they made a lot of noise (article, article, article and there is plenty more where that came from), I've signed up for updates back in April 2014 - and haven't heard from them since. 

Previous websites who tried to offer intelligent avatars and/or messages to be posted posthumously presumably composed by the deceased after their death (not to be confused with messages composed by the deceased while he/she were still alive, as can be found in this list) did not succeed - I'm curious to see what shall happen with this one. 

Intellitar is the first example that comes to mind: they offered us the chance to "pour" ourselves into an intelligent avatar which will preserve us - or parts of us - after our death. It didn't work out. I wonder what happened to the intellitars which resided in the servers when the site went offline. Kind of sad to think of them all being erased. 

Print screen by Digital Dust

Print screen by Digital Dust, 2011

From a recent interview in "Fusion" with Don Davidson, Intellitar’s CEO and co-founder, I learned that the site didn't go offline due to lack of interest, but due to an intellectual property dispute. 

I still had the chance to talk to Don's intellitar back in 2011 - I wrote about the experience in a series of articles I wrote in 2011 - and I didn't like it one bit. Turns out I wasn't the only one. 

Print screen by Digital Dust, 2011

Another site which offered a breakthrough - and then didn't deliver it - is (was?) Liveson, which offered to create new tweets after our death, based on what we tweeted while we were still alive. Despite their great slogan "When Your Heart Stops Beating, You'll Keep Tweeting", I haven't heard from them for so long that I suspect they are about to disappear as well. Their own last tweet was back in 2013. This must get you thinking about Black Mirror's episode "Be Right Back". Well, Liveson posted about it at the time, and Eterni.me's founder and CEO lists it as one of his influences. 

I don't know how active "That Can Be Ny Next Tweet" are, but I suspect: not very. 

Another website offering a similar solution is eter9, but they are so new I don't know how seriously they should be taken into account, if at all. 

Eterni.me's journey and behind-the-scenes story up to this point is told in length and detail here, by their founder and CEO. I appreciate his honesty. And the mention of Tamagotchi. Let's see if this time something will come out of it.