thanatechnology means Communication technology that can be used for death education, grief counseling, and thanatology research. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 95 out of 100.
Why this word is great
THANATECHNOLOGY — [Noun] The digital and communicative tools used to manage death, grief, and memorialization. From the combining form thanato-, from Ancient Greek θάνατος (thánatos, "death"), + technology, from Greek τεχνολογία (tekhnología, "systematic treatment of an art or craft"). Unlike thanatology (the academic study of death) or funerary technology (the physical craft of coffins and crematoria), thanatechnology traffics in the ether of memory and connection. It is the AI that composes a eulogy from a loved one's emails, the grief-support forum humming at 2 a.m., and the QR code on a headstone that leads to a gallery of a life—a quiet protest against the ultimate silence, building a shore against the tide of forgetting.
noun
- Communication technology that can be used for death education, grief counseling, and thanatology research.“Thanatechnology helps survivor(s) gain a sense of control in an experience that feels powerless (Moyer and Enck 89) and mitigates the potential of “second loss” (Bassett). Yet, while thanatechnology creates a curated digital afterlife that is relatively sustainable and can offer comfort to the bereaved, Debra Basset notes, “just as we are biologically mortal so we are digitally mortal: loss or del”