How long until our data is mined to give us a kind of afterlife? Creepy or beautiful, avatars of the dead are already here Welcome to A Future World – Dazed's network, community, and platform focusing on the intersection of science, technology and pop culture. Throughout April, we're featuring conversations and mission statements from the people paving new pathways for our planet: activists, inventors, fashion pioneers, technologists, AI scientists, and global youth movements, alongside in-depth editorial exploring the new realities for our future world. I recently spoke to a man who has decided to constantly record their grandparents before they die. “The reason for 24/7 capture is that it's quite easy to capture video of people,” he said over Zoom, lifting a little camera up to the screen to show me the kind of technology he had installed. “Audio is harder though. My grandparents don’t speak very much, particularly my grandfather. In the future I don’t know how much data I will need. Today I might only need 4-5 minutes of video, to create a pretty realistic digital approximation of them. But in the future what if I need more? It’s best to collect as much as I can.”