Trend Dying, memorialisation and the disposal of remains are being taken over by services and software

Summary

This trend describes dying, remembrance and the handling of remains shifting into the realm of paid services and digital tools. Sitra's Weak Signals 2025 imagines a future self-help column on the final departure, offering advice on digital death cleaning, archiving one's life and curating personal data for a virtual afterlife. The same column covers choosing a personal death doula and options for the final disposition of the body. It is built on signals that already exist today, from Finnish death doulas and posthumous chatbots to scheduled messages from beyond the grave. Alternative disposition such as human composting, water cremation and drone scattering of ashes also features. Together they raise the question of how our relationship with death changes when technology lets people, for example, talk with the dead through AI.