This Text is a Monument

Visit his memorial here.

Ethereum22See Ethereum white paper: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper. is an open-source, blockchain-based, distributed computing platform. It is the underlying framework for Ether, an emerging publicly traded global crypto-currency. What makes Ethereum different from other blockchain protocols such as Bitcoin is that it allows users to generate cryptographically secure “smart contracts,” which verify and enforce credible transactions between one or more entities without the need for third-party validation by a financial institution. Ethereum’s collaborative infrastructure guarantees the viability of smart contracts, ensuring that no centralized authority can unilaterally suppress, delete, or alter data held therein. Information found in an Ethereum smart contract cannot be censored unless access to the entire network is restricted.

Dr. Li Wenliang was one of the first medical professionals to publicly warn Chinese citizens that Wuhan was facing a very serious outbreak of a new infectious disease. Shortly after he spoke out, his comments were removed from online platforms and he was reprimanded by government officials for speaking out in a manner critical of the state. After he died from COVID-19 on February 7, 2020, Chinese authorities attempted to suppress the incident and moved to restrict information about the doctor, his work, and his death. Dr. Li might never have received a public memorial had two anonymous users not written all of this information into the unique Ethereum smart contract that now serves as his virtual tombstone.

The purpose of a memorial is to bind an event, identity, or ideology to a specific geographic site indefinitely. It is important in most cultures that people should reside somewhere after they have passed—we want our ancestors to be in a place we can go to remember them. People often talk about their need to lay loved ones to rest in order to find closure for their grief. It is not unusual for families to engage in extraordinary, sometimes risky efforts to retrieve the remains of a relative so that they can be “properly” interred in a knowable place. A memorial locates the deceased in time; it stops them from being completely lost. Whether survivors visit the grave is not as important as knowing that there is a place where the dead can be found.

It seems inevitable that our survival will become more fraught as the negative effects of climate change and population growth intensify. As we adapt to the future, memorial traditions will also have to evolve.

One can imagine a scenario where urban cemeteries would be pressured to close and redevelop due to a logic of “productive” or “optimized” use of scarce city space. In such a scenario, how could ritual situate the memory of an individual at an indexical virtual “place” online? As the current state of lockdown persists globally, projections suggest that our lives will increasingly be lived within a digital public sphere. Can we bind identity, memory, or ideology to a specific location within a virtual space? Social media platforms such as Facebook have attempted to do something like this by allowing a deceased user’s profile to be converted into a “memorialized account.” This means that Facebook prevents data from being removed or added to the timeline of the deceased while still reminding their friends to wish them a happy birthday or anniversary. These “death pages” do serve as a kind of living memorial in the short term: they preserve all of the things that an individual chose to share about themselves and they are publicly viewable—but the question is, for how long? The existence of these sites is wholly predicated on whether Facebook continues to maintain them and whether the platform itself will survive in the long term. Anyone who has lost content to a system update or technical glitch knows that all of the information saved to the network remains there solely at the discretion of Facebook.

This is what makes the monument to Dr. Li so interesting. His tombstone was created on a specific date, at a specific time, and has been situated in a unique virtual “place.” Barring server failure or technological obsolescence, it cannot be lost, altered, or deleted without the consent of its creators. Just like real tombs situate an individual within the landscape, this memorial is sited within a network whose design makes it as stable and unchanging as possible. If we are moving into a future where the majority of our public lives unfold in dynamic virtual environments, can we rely on these kinds of strategies to create islands of certainty within the digital stream? Though it consists of fewer than 150 lines of text, this monument does what its physical antecedents do: it situates the memory of Dr. Li in an unchanging public context where he can be mourned by anyone who chooses to visit.