“You will hope to live forever”
The memories come through as a "digital item" in a way, sometimes the memory comes through clearly other times we see the blurriness of other memories such as David's final memory. But what does Emily III or other Outernet beings do with this information? Emily III takes the random bits of memories from other dead humans and makes a museum of them for other Outernetlings to view.
What is so strange here is that Emily III is doing exactly what archivists are doing right now. She curating a specific things to locate and to put into her archive. She is looking at different memories of different humans and making them visual. In this way she is preserving past thoughts and past memories. A lot of what is found in an archive are memories of thoughts from a previous generation. Except in this way we have the exact image that was left inside in the brain. Are we that far from the world of tomorrow, especially when all this is already happening? Does it just become more digital?
The last point is that the Emily III is archiving in real time.
Statues are posted, pictures taken,and videos are uploaded not unlike what is going on in the film. Emily describes a process in which the Outernet beings watch things from the past or watch others react to someone else react. YouTube has a myriad of videos that are someone reacting to something and then we can watch someone react to those reactions. We archiving in real time just like what we see. And the thoughts and memories of the dead become more important once they are gone. Does archive change even when it is a completely digital space? Where does the humanity go when in this space?
