The idea of digital immortality as a symbol of a new attitude toward death

The article analyzes the idea of digital immortality, which is one of the components of the emerging culture of information society. The paper shows objective impossibility of realizing the idea of digital immortality as a «transfer» of human consciousness into digital reality and a potentially limitless existence of consciousness in this reality. This is impossible from a philosophical, mathematical, and specifically scientific points of view. Meanwhile, it is precisely this understanding of the idea of digital immortality that is being developed in many publications, which the article considers as an expression of a new attitude of modern man to death and immortality. The article identifies the epistemological and psychological prerequisites for the formation of faith in digital immortality as one of the processes characterizing the formation of culture of information society. Anthropomorphism in relation to information technology products, the development of digital identity, the need to overcome the antinomy «death is inevitable, but I am eternal» in the minds of modern people, the rapid growth in the number of those hyper-connected to the Internet — all these are objective grounds for the formation of deeply subjective beliefs that the idea of digital immortality is objectively feasible. Noting the denial by modern man of traditional symbols and meanings of death, the author of the article looks at the idea of digital immortality as at the establishment of one of the symbols of information society’s culture and also regards it as a form of manifestation of a person’s digital self-identification. The article substantiates the hypothesis that the process of forming faith in digital immortality is a new field of research for philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, and religious studies.