Echoes of a life in the undiscovered country

Death is an odd thing in this day and age.

This 21st-century Web 2.0 world can be fast at getting the word out — and certainly a great many people who cared found out within minutes of the news breaking — but the odd traces left just before it happened create something I like to call “death dissonance.”

I coined the phrase some years ago while I was in my final year at the University. A student had died somewhat unexpectedly, and I managed the word fairly early in the process. For reasons I cannot remember, I went to her facebook profile. It seemed as though word was not spreading anywhere close to quickly, because her friends were still posting mundane messages after the fact.

“Hey, that movie is coming out this week. I think there’s going to be a midnight showing on Thursday if you wanted to catch it.”

Was but one of several wall posts before the eulogies began to pour in. Thus, the dissonance.

“Death dissonance” in Steve Jobs’ case occurred because his passing was announced the day after he was absent from an Apple product launch, so bloggers and reporters had already been writing about him all day. And reading these prices typed mere hours before the world was told after the fact, that created the dissonance.

Take, for example, This article reporting Apple fans organizing a “Steve Jobs Day” for a week from today. While the project started late last month, this report was published hours before Jobs was dead.

Or how about an editorial on Jobs that ran on CNN that morning entitled “What we really owe Steve Jobs”, which was an interesting note on his lesser-known influence on computer typography. It read like a oddly specific eulogy piece then, and has since been updated with a new title and lead paragraph to make it official.

Death can be so fast to take over the Web… but at the same time, so slow.

Related posts:

Weekly News Roundup for 09/07/08 A Technology Titan Passes On