Noll 1
Chelsea Noll
Dr. Gabriella Coleman
Hacker Culture and Politics
26 November 2008
Extra Credit Response
Ine Poppe wrote Necrocam, a film shot in the Netherlands in 2001, after she overheard her son and his friends discussing the idea of placing a webcam inside of a person’s coffin. The film follows the friendship of two friends, Christine, Xeno, Go, and Bivak. Christine has cancer and decides that since she is dying, when she is buried she wants a webcam, named a necrocam, placed inside her coffin. Christine is then told that her treatments have worked and that she is currently cancer-free. On their way to celebrate with their friends, Xeno and Christine are racing down the street when Xeno is hit by a car and killed. The friends then attempt to convince his parents to honor Xeno’s wishes to also have a necrocam. They vehemently oppose the idea, but the friends proceed to install one anyway, along with a temperature gauge, allowing visitors to their website to either increase or decrease the temperature within the coffin to either slow or hasten the decaying process.
This idea explored by Poppe is not only gross, but also a huge invasion of privacy. Whether or not it was Xeno’s wishes, in a case such as this, when something would be put on such mass display, it is an invasion of his family’s privacy. In our discussion of privacy and its relation to technology, we have openly dialogued about the capabilities technology allows us to avoid previously regarded social norms of privacy. Now, not only can we look up the phone number and address of any person we choose with detailed directions of how to get to their house and satellite picture of it, we can even watch their body decay inside of its sealed coffin.
Privacy is obviously a controversial issue, especially with regards to technology. But just because we have the technology, does it mean we should do it? I don’t think so. I think that steadfast cultural norms, such as the rituals surrounding death (typically private, at least in the way that you don’t broadcast the decay of the body) and the privacy often associated with mourning, should be respected and left out of the equation. Just because it is possible, does not mean it has to be enacted. I think it's another form of netiquette. Whether or not it was that person’s wish, it should ultimately lay in the hands of his/her loved ones that are left behind, whether or not they want to go through with it. They are the ones that must deal with the aftermath of that person’s invasive technological decision.
The idea addressed in Necrocam is not just one of privacy, but of the possibility of uniting two of society’s greatest fears, technophobia and thanatophobia, the fears of technology and death respectively. The combination of the two is an interesting dichotomy that is capable of being explored by interested hackers with the advanced technology of today. But just because they can, doesn’t make it right.