Module 5 Cover Letter
<p>Continuing to play is in a way the theme of this final mailer. When a game converges towards a natural conclusion, you enter a death-and-resurrection liminal passage. In her essay, “Good Death,” Sarah Friend explores the protocols of death, both physical and virtual, and examines what it has meant to die across time and cultures and what it might mean in the future. Turns out, it isn’t as simple as you might think. And as the virtual world gets more artificially intelligent, embodied, and complex, the death of our online avatars, bots, and the worlds they inhabit all become matters for creative construction and yes, protocolization. Accompanying the essay is Sarah’s beautiful and provocative set of design fictions, “The Order of Protocological Death,” exploring a fictional monastic order devoted to stewarding the death processes of worlds…</p>
Editors: Venkatesh Rao
Part of: Summer of Protocols