DATA FUNERALS

Data Funerals is a design fiction project exploring speculative rituals to cope with data loss and failing data-driven services... By embedding questions in fictional products, we aim at helping to foster critical thinking on trends that will shape our futures. The provocative and reflexive scenarios as well as the related debates with stakeholders are decision-making tools to face uncertainty and complexity. We work for public and private organisations as well as on self-commissioned research... Over the last decades, data have become the essential building blocks of our so-called digital-driven society. However, they remain these still fragile, volatile and vulnerable pieces of our digital self even in an era of generalised backup. Leaks, hacking, misuses, startup bankruptcy, even if data are seen as immaterial and then eternal, they are exposed to a wide range of existential risks. What do we do when they cease to exist, leaving us without their binary complexity?