“Hi, lol, xd. Hello ppl, xd.” My sister forwarded me this cryptic Skype message, received from our father on his ninety-sixth birthday. He’d  apparently sent it to her daughter in New Zealand. Jokey acronyms were hardly his style, so in other circumstances we might have worried about his state of mind. We were indeed rattled, but for a different reason. He’d been dead for the last eighteen months. Our first thought was that our dad’s account’s been hacked, though it seemed a strange way to launch something sinister. And rather late in the game, since … Continue reading Tackling the Digital Afterlife by Elizabeth Bird →