Due to unforeseen circumstances with the venue we have had to change the location of this event. This event will now take place at:

City Place Coffee
Victoria Road
Chelmsford
CM1 1QU

City Place Coffee Facebook Page

There’s no denying the growing role that technology has in our lives. How does this make you feel – curious and excited? Or confused and vulnerable? As advances take place, so questions arise around ethics and sources of power and control.

The RSA is exploring these and many other issues through its current “Tech and Society” programme. RSA Essex is delighted to be hosting a related event during Essex Book Festival where you’ll have an opportunity to consider and explore some of these questions. This will form part of a series of RSA Essex meetups on themes related to science, technology, creativity and learning, linking RSA Programmes and Research to the Essex 2020 programme.

Refreshments will be available to purchase from 6.30pm, ready to be in seats for a prompt start at 7pm.

All the Ghosts in the Machine
The Digital Afterlife of Your Personal Data
By Elaine Kasket

Who do our digital lives really belong to? What happens to our online data when we die? Who has control over it, who should have access to it, and what could it be used for? With so much of our lives lived online, how do we protect our legacy for when today’s digital platforms become obsolete?

Come along to hear writer, keynote speaker and public intellectual Dr Elaine Kasket talk about her latest book All the Ghosts in the Machine, a thought-provoking look at online data, posing profound questions about our digital lives – and deaths.

All the Ghosts in the Machine

Using the lens of what happens to your data you die, Dr Elaine Kasket exposes where the power truly lies when it comes to digital data. We may think that we have ownership of our online lives, deaths and memories – and tech companies encourage this assumption. But our rights in this area are not enshrined in law; and the right to privacy of a dead user is weighed up against the needs of the bereaved by a small group of Silicon Valley tech workers. Will the corporations that pull your strings when you’re alive end up determining how you’re remembered forever? Does the existence of the Internet bring us closer to immortality, or take it away?

As Dr Kasket reveals, there’s no better illustration of the control and power that big tech companies have over your information, and your identity, than looking at what happens to your data when you die. Once you understand the digital afterlife of your personal data, you’ll change your mind about how you want to live – both online and off.

About the Author

Dr Elaine Kasket is an HCPC-Registered Counselling Psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She is a writer, keynote speaker, and public intellectual and a visiting lecturer at multiple universities. Speaking about life, death, privacy rights and the power of big tech, Elaine has appeared in various media, including Psychology Today, Daily Telegraph, The Observer, the Times Literary Supplement, BBC television, ITN Channel 4, the Today Programme, Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4’s Digital Humans, Der Spiegel, The New Scotsman, Visão, O Globo and the Irish Times. She lives in East London with her husband, daughter and a revolving cast of troublesome chickens.

For more information, please visit www.elainekasket.com