背景介绍：
随着科技的飞速发展，尤其是数字化时代的到来，人类与逝者之间的关系正经历前所未有的变革。100年前卡夫卡未发表作品的命运转折，映射出当代社会在处理逝者数字遗产时的复杂伦理挑战。在“后死亡世界”中，个体的数字足迹超越了生命的界限，持续影响着生者的世界。社交媒体、虚拟助手及聊天机器人的技术进步，让逝者的“存在”以新的形式延续，引发了关于数据归属、人性镜像及责任义务的深刻哲学讨论。
What happens
to your data when you die?
你死后，你的数据怎么办？
An individual’s digital footprint will long outlive them. That presents many quandaries
一个人的数字足迹远超他们的生命长度。这带来了许多难题
Franz Kafka died 100 years ago in literary obscurity. He had instructed his friend Max Brodto burn his unpublished works. Fortunately for generations of readers, Brod did not; he believed Kafka to be among the greatest writers of his time and instead edited and published his late friend’s writing.
100年前，弗朗茨·卡夫卡在文学界的默默无闻中黯然离世，临终前，他向挚友马克斯·布罗德托付了一个非同寻常的愿望——销毁其所有未发表的作品。然而，布罗德并未遵从这一遗愿，他的决定不仅成就了卡夫卡身后不朽的文学地位，更惠及了跨越时代的无数读者。
In other words, Brod decided that Kafka’s stories belonged not to the late author, but to the literate public.
换言之，布罗德深信，卡夫卡的作品超越了个体的界限，是时代文学的瑰宝，理应由更广阔的文学天地所共享。
Brod’s conundrum echoes today. People live online and generate far more data than they did just a decade ago.
布罗德所面临的道德抉择，在当今这个数字化时代，依然以不同的形式萦绕不去。随着网络的普及，人们生成的数据量之巨，远超往昔十年。
Everyone leaves digital traces behind when they die, either deliberately, in the form of social-media profiles and posts, or incidentally, with web searches, phone-location data, banking records and so on.
个体的消逝，不再仅仅是肉体的沉寂，更伴随着数字足迹的广泛留存——从精心维护的社交媒体个人资料到不经意间泄露的浏览记录、位置信息乃至银行交易记录，无一不构成了我们在网络空间中的“遗产”。
Unlike bodies, data do not decay. According to Carl Ohman, a Swedish political scientist, this condition makes the modern world “post-mortal”.
与生命之躯的脆弱易逝截然不同，数据以其不朽之姿，挑战着死亡的终极定义。瑞典政治学者卡尔·奥曼洞见深刻，将这一现象喻为“后死亡世界”的降临。
“The dead remain there for us in a way that has not been possible in pre-digital society,” he observes. As a result, “Living in the post-mortal condition is to constantly find oneself in the shoes of Max Brod.”
他指出：“在数字社会兴起之前，逝者无法以如此鲜活的方式继续与我们同在。”因此，生活在这个“后死亡时代”，我们无时不刻不在扮演着类似布罗德的角色，面对如何处置逝者数字遗产的复杂议题。
The digital era has reshaped humans’ relationship with the dead—as anyone whose Facebook account has reminded them to say “happy birthday” to a late family member can attest.
这一转变深刻地重塑了人类与逝者之间的关联纽带，其生动例证莫过于社交媒体平台如脸书自动推送向已故亲友发送生日祝福的功能。
That sort of reminder would probably never have happened before social media, because everyone who knew that person’s birthday also would have known that he was dead. Such reminders are poised to grow more common: Mr Ohman’s research has found that, on Facebook, the dead may well outnumber the living within 40 years.
在数字时代之前，这样的提醒显得荒谬且不合时宜，因为知晓逝者生辰的人，亦知晓其已逝的事实。而今，此类情景或将愈发普遍，奥曼的研究更预言，未来四十年内，Facebook上的逝者数量或将超越在世的用户。
Sophisticated technology enables a continued, ersatz relationship with the dead. In 2022 Amazon announced that it was developing a feature so its virtual assistant, Alexa, could be programmed to speak in the voice of a dead relative. It even made a video in which a boy asks Alexa to read him “The Wizard of Oz” in his late grandmother’s voice.
技术的进步更是让人类与逝者之间建立起了一种前所未有的持久连接。2022年，亚马逊的一则公告震撼人心，其虚拟助手Alexa正致力于一项革命性功能——模仿已故亲人的声音进行交流。视频中，小男孩通过 Alexa 听到祖母的声音朗读《绿野仙踪》。
Startups have used data to make chatbots of the deceased; no doubt more lifelike versions will come soon.
此外，初创企业亦不甘落后，利用大数据分析创建与逝者互动的聊天机器人，预示着更为逼真、沉浸式的交流体验即将来临。
Mr Ohman shrewdly points out that the chatbots will be designed to cement users’ commercial relationship with their creator firms and are thus unlikely to be grumpy, pick fights or do any of the countless irritating—but deeply human—things that people do over the course of long relationships.
然而，奥曼先生也敏锐地指出，这些聊天机器人的设计初衷往往在于巩固用户与企业间的商业纽带，因此它们不太可能表现出暴躁、挑衅等负面情绪，也不会做出那些在长期人际关系中可能引发的无数令人不悦但却又极具人性色彩的行为。
At the root of this quirky but thoughtful book is a series of thorny philosophical questions. To whom do the dead’s data belong? Are data something people create, or something that, in a sense, they are—a digital analogue to a physical body? If data are a digital counterpart, what obligations does that impose on the living?
最终，这一系列现象汇聚成一本既奇异又引人深思的书籍，其核心围绕着几个棘手的哲学命题：逝者的数据归属何方？数据，究竟是人类的创造物，还是我们自身在数字世界的镜像存在？若数据确为我们的数字化身，那么它之于生者，又承载着怎样的责任与义务？
After all, most cultures are averse to just leaving a dead body in the open to rot, even though it is no longer being used. Do data demand the same reverence?
毕竟，在诸多文化中，即便肉体归于尘土，人们亦不愿其曝露于野，任其风化。那么，对于承载着个人记忆与情感的数字遗产，我们是否也应怀有同样的敬畏之心呢？
