{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp06_four_proposal_generalization60_20260803","cell_id":"ritualized_meaning_and_commitment_enactment__human_computer_interaction","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_id":"hci_digital_memory_stewardship_observance_v0","proposal_index":3,"version":0,"title":"Digital Memory Stewardship Observance for Algorithmic Afterlives","problem":"When a person's account becomes a digital legacy after death or lasting incapacity, its posts, messages, images, inferred attributes, scheduled events, and recommendation triggers can persist under fragmented settings. Prior directives may be incomplete, surviving contacts can hold incompatible interpretations, and the people initially appointed to manage the account can leave or lose access. A one-time memorialization decision therefore may not govern later platform changes, automated resurfacing, new audiences, or continuing stewardship obligations.","actors":["Person whose digital legacy is governed, represented by their recorded directives","Legally authorized representative or executor","Platform-designated legacy contact","Family members, friends, colleagues, or community members represented in the account","People whose private communications or images appear in retained material","Memorial-page moderators or archivists","Platform trust, safety, privacy, and account-support staff","Grief-informed facilitator or independent safety reviewer"],"observable_state":"The authorized steward and affected contacts cannot explain which legacy materials remain searchable, recommended, downloadable, editable, or scheduled for resurfacing; a former steward retains access; a recurring notification or recommendation contradicts a recorded preference; contested material remains visible without an owner or disposition; or the memorial presents one authorized life narrative while affected people have no protected way to register correction, dissent, or nonparticipation.","consequence":"Automated interfaces can repeatedly expose private material, trigger unwanted contact or reminders, misrepresent the person or their relationships, and intensify conflict among survivors while giving no recurring occasion to reconnect remembrance with accountable data stewardship.","affected_objective":"Faithful, plural, privacy-aware, and operationally continuous stewardship of digital remains, memorial interfaces, and automated resurfacing across time, platform change, and steward turnover.","intervention":"Establish a governed Digital Memory Stewardship Observance at memorial creation, on a date selected by the authorized steward and affected circle, after a steward transition, and after a material platform or data-use change. Before enactment, a consent and standing review determines who may participate, witness, submit private input, or veto use of material depicting them. The memorial interface then enters a marked stewardship state: engagement metrics, autoplay, recommendations, and nonessential notifications are hidden or paused, creating an interval in which the account is treated as entrusted memory rather than active content. The facilitator states that the observance neither creates consent for the deceased nor requires a common account of their life. Participants encounter a consented, provenance-labeled set of legacy materials, followed by a bounded silence. Authorized stewards then renew, revise, decline, or transfer concrete duties concerning visibility, retention, access, scheduled resurfacing, moderation, correction requests, and contact with affected parties. Named witnesses acknowledge factual contributions, unresolved harms, and the resulting obligations without compelling public grief or disclosure. Closure produces authenticated platform requests, owners, deadlines, access changes, and an unresolved-matters register. A debrief captures divergent experience, while periodic audit, repair, and retirement paths prevent the observance or memorial from becoming compulsory, misleading, or detached from actual system behavior.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Explicit and contestable purpose","domain_realization":"The observance exists to steward digital traces and obligations faithfully; it explicitly does not establish one correct grief practice, life narrative, spiritual interpretation, or retrospective consent."},{"archetype_element":"Participant and stakeholder boundary","domain_realization":"Recorded directives, legal representatives, legacy contacts, depicted or quoted people, private correspondents, memorial participants, nonparticipants, platform staff, and witnesses receive distinct forms of standing."},{"archetype_element":"Legitimacy, consent, and exit","domain_realization":"Known directives and applicable authority constrain decisions, while living participants receive advance notice, private contribution paths, material-specific consent, support, and nonretaliatory exit."},{"archetype_element":"Recurring time and trigger","domain_realization":"The practice occurs at memorial creation, a deliberately selected recurrence, steward handoff, or material system change rather than being driven automatically by birthdays, death anniversaries, or engagement optimization."},{"archetype_element":"Symbolic threshold","domain_realization":"Pausing recommendations, metrics, autoplay, and routine notifications marks a transition from algorithmic circulation to accountable stewardship."},{"archetype_element":"Symbolic frame and plural narrative","domain_realization":"Provenance-labeled materials represent entrusted memory while corrections and incompatible interpretations remain visible instead of being flattened into a single celebratory account."},{"archetype_element":"Recognizable script and roles","domain_realization":"The stable sequence is standing review, system pause, purpose statement, consented encounter, silence, stewardship renewal, witnessing, practical closure, debrief, and handoff."},{"archetype_element":"Meaningful participation and nonparticipation","domain_realization":"Participants may speak, write privately, appoint a representative, request removal of material involving them, remain silent, or decline the occasion without their absence being interpreted as assent or disrespect."},{"archetype_element":"Recognition and practical consequence","domain_realization":"Witnessing recognizes real care work, correction, or unresolved harm, while closure converts recognition into access changes, moderation duties, retention decisions, and authenticated platform requests."},{"archetype_element":"Emotional-safety envelope","domain_realization":"Materials are previewed, graphic or intimate content is excluded by default, exposure is time-bounded, support and exit paths are visible, and nobody must perform grief, forgiveness, reconciliation, or praise."},{"archetype_element":"Memory and stewardship handoff","domain_realization":"A minimal versioned record preserves directives, provenance, decisions, open obligations, revisions, and authorized-role transfers without storing unnecessary testimony or sharing passwords."},{"archetype_element":"Drift, repair, and retirement","domain_realization":"Audits compare the memorial's claims with system behavior, and authorized procedures can correct representations, apologize for misuse, transfer obligations, disable ritual markers, archive the account, or end the memorial."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"ritual_design_canvas","role":"Co-locates recorded directives, purpose, stakeholder standing, material provenance, sequence, emotional limits, system actions, evidence, and retirement rules.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a shared design surface, the observance could assemble moving content and formal gestures without revealing conflicts between memory claims, consent, platform capability, and practical duties."},{"mechanism_slug":"ritual_access_and_consent_review","role":"Creates pre-enactment veto points for standing, depicted-person consent, private correspondence, accessibility, grief exposure, recording, employment or family pressure, and exit.","counterfactual_removal":"Without it, invitation, kinship, prior platform access, or presence in the memorial could be treated as permission to expose material or require participation."},{"mechanism_slug":"opening_marking_and_threshold_gesture","role":"The temporary suspension of metrics, recommendations, autoplay, and routine notifications separates stewardship time from the platform's ordinary circulation of content.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a marked transition, the activity risks becoming another content-browsing session governed by the same prompts and engagement cues under examination."},{"mechanism_slug":"silence_reflection_and_lament_interval","role":"A framed and exitable silent interval holds grief, ambiguity, dissent, or remembrance without demanding speech or a shared interpretation.","counterfactual_removal":"Without it, articulate or institutionally powerful participants may define the deceased person's meaning before others can privately form a response or choose not to respond."},{"mechanism_slug":"collective_commitment_renewal","role":"Living stewards periodically renew, revise, decline, or transfer their own concrete duties without claiming to renew consent on behalf of the deceased.","counterfactual_removal":"Without active renewal, legacy access and memorial duties can continue as stale defaults after relationships, capabilities, platform behavior, or authorized stewards change."},{"mechanism_slug":"witnessing_and_public_recognition","role":"Consenting witnesses acknowledge factual stewardship work, corrections, transitions, or unresolved harm within the bounded circle and make resulting duties socially recognizable.","counterfactual_removal":"Without witnessing, responsibility can remain an informal private intention that other contacts and successor stewards cannot recognize or hold to account."},{"mechanism_slug":"role_rotation_and_stewardship_rite","role":"A scheduled or event-triggered handoff transfers the authorized platform role, open requests, decision record, contacts, and operating knowledge through official account procedures.","counterfactual_removal":"Without an explicit transfer, a nominal successor may inherit a title while the former steward retains access, contextual knowledge, or de facto interpretive control."},{"mechanism_slug":"after_ritual_meaning_debrief","role":"Compares intended stewardship with participant experience immediately afterward, including unwanted exposure, narrative distortion, missing standing, accessibility, and follow-through owed.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the debrief, the official record may preserve only agreed settings while erasing discomfort, exclusion, ambiguity, and the reasons the next enactment must change."},{"mechanism_slug":"ritual_drift_and_harm_audit","role":"Periodically tests for rote commemoration, narrative capture, coerced grief, privacy violations, steward concentration, engagement optimization, and divergence between settings and actual resurfacing.","counterfactual_removal":"Without skeptical audit, an emotionally persuasive memorial can persist even when its representations, permissions, or platform behavior contradict its stated stewardship claim."},{"mechanism_slug":"ritual_retirement_or_repair_ceremony","role":"Provides a transparent procedure to acknowledge misuse or obsolescence, correct the record, release memorial marks from required use, transfer unresolved duties, and archive or close the memorial.","counterfactual_removal":"Without legitimate repair and ending, survivors may be trapped in an inherited observance or the memorial may disappear without discharging privacy, access, preservation, and notification obligations."}],"causal_chain":["Recorded directives, platform behavior, data provenance, active access, affected parties, and unresolved requests are assembled into a bounded stewardship record.","A standing and consent review filters the invited circle and the materials that may be encountered, challenged, or withheld.","Suspending algorithmic circulation creates a recognizable threshold in which legacy content becomes an object of collective accountability rather than engagement.","Provenance-labeled materials and bounded silence reconnect fragmented digital traces to memory, relationships, ambiguity, and possible harm without imposing one narrative.","Authorized stewards explicitly renew, revise, decline, or transfer duties instead of allowing legacy access and automated behavior to persist by default.","Consented witnessing makes valid contributions, corrections, and open obligations recognizable across the stewardship circle.","Closure translates enacted commitments into authenticated access changes, visibility and retention settings, moderation actions, owners, and deadlines.","Debrief, versioned memory, role handoff, skeptical audit, repair, and retirement keep the memorial answerable as participants and platforms change."],"baseline":"A platform offers a one-time memorialization request, static legacy-contact setting, account deletion process, per-recipient controls for hiding reminders, and case-by-case support. Estate documents or informal family agreements may supplement these controls, but they do not necessarily create a recurring, plural, consent-aware cycle connecting digital remembrance, changing platform behavior, steward succession, and executable obligations.","nearest_rivals":["Static digital-legacy directives or estate instructions: stronger for recording the account holder's prospective authority and preferences, but unable by themselves to inspect later platform behavior, coordinate successor stewardship, or hear affected living data subjects.","A memorialization, deletion, or archival form: stronger for completing a discrete account-state change, but it does not govern recurring resurfacing, narrative conflict, role turnover, or continuing moderation duties.","Individual controls to hide reminders or recommendations: stronger for giving each recipient immediate relief, but they leave the shared memorial, other audiences, access rights, and unresolved stewardship obligations unchanged.","A grief-support group or commemorative gathering: stronger for emotional support and remembrance independent of a platform, but it need not inspect data flows or translate commitments into authenticated technical actions.","Professional digital-estate administration: stronger for legal and operational execution, but it may treat the account as an asset or records problem without providing plural symbolic recognition, consented witnessing, or reflective renewal.","A collaboratively edited memorial page: supports multiple contributions, but contribution alone does not establish legitimate standing, protected dissent, recurring re-consent, system audits, or a retirement path."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The proposal does not claim that ritual resolves grief or determines legal authority. Its contrastive hypothesis is that a governed recurring observance can connect plural remembrance and witnessed stewardship to changing interface behavior and executable digital-legacy obligations in ways that static directives, individual suppression controls, and one-time account-state forms do not structurally require.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"Known directives from the account holder and applicable legal or platform-recognized authorities govern account disposition. Depicted people and correspondents retain standing over their own participation and requests concerning their material where applicable. The facilitator controls only the sequence and safety envelope; witnesses confer no legal authority. Platform staff execute only authenticated actions permitted by policy and law.","authorized_first_step":"Living volunteers may conduct a prospective rehearsal using a redacted export or synthetic replica of their own account, their recorded legacy preferences, and designated contacts. The rehearsal may test standing, material selection, emotional boundaries, role handoff, and mock closure actions without memorializing, deleting, publishing, or changing the production account.","excluded_actions":["Inferring the deceased person's consent from survivor agreement","Overriding a valid recorded directive through ceremony or majority preference","Publishing, deleting, transferring, or memorializing production data during the initial rehearsal","Sharing passwords or bypassing official authentication and succession procedures","Exposing private communications or images without affected-party review","Requiring grief, praise, forgiveness, reconciliation, disclosure, or attendance","Treating kinship, invitation, platform access, or silence as sufficient standing or consent","Using generated reconstructions, voice clones, avatars, or inferred statements as testimony from the person","Turning participation or memorial visibility into an engagement metric","Replacing legal review, privacy controls, account security, archival practice, or grief care with the observance"],"halt_rollback":"Any participant may leave, pass, withdraw material they supplied, or switch to private input without explanation. The independent reviewer must halt for disputed authority, coercion, acute distress, inaccessible participation, unconsented content, security failure, or conflict with a recorded directive. Rollback exits the marked state, cancels pending mock actions, restricts sensitive records, restores only the verified prior production state, refers urgent welfare or legal issues to existing qualified authorities, and preserves open technical obligations without retaining private testimony unnecessarily."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Recorded directives, ordinary platform controls, authenticated succession, individual reminder suppression, and professional administration already keep legacy content aligned with authorized preferences and affected-party requests across platform and steward changes, while survivors report no missing collective standing, recognition, memory, or repair function.","problem_falsifier":"A bounded audit finds complete and interpretable directives, verified alignment between settings and actual recommendation behavior, current authorized access, resolved depicted-person and correspondent requests, clear succession, and no recurring narrative or stewardship conflict requiring collective renewal.","intervention_falsifier":"The observance overrides directives, pressures participants into grief or praise, privileges one family narrative, exposes private material, or produces closure actions that cannot be authenticated or verified. It is also falsified as the appropriate intervention if static directives and individual technical controls resolve the observed gaps while the symbolic, witnessing, and recurring elements add no necessary stewardship function.","risks":["The observance could sanctify one flattering or powerful group's account of the person.","Emotionally charged material could cause distress or involuntary disclosure.","Survivors could mistake collective agreement for authority over the deceased person's directives or another person's data.","Platform recommendation behavior could differ from the visible settings reviewed.","A facilitator or legacy contact could become a permanent interpretive gatekeeper.","Recognition could reward visible memorial labor while ignoring private care or dissent.","Generated or edited content could blur provenance and be mistaken for the person's own expression.","Recurring dates and notifications could impose remembrance on people who wish to disengage.","Ceremonial repair could substitute for deletion, correction, security, or restitution.","Minimal records could still reveal sensitive relationships through access and objection patterns."]},"next_evidence_step":"After the prospective rehearsal passes safety review, run one complete sandboxed cycle with a small number of living volunteers and their designated legacy contacts using only participant-controlled, redacted account replicas. Test whether the process correctly distinguishes directives, living-party consent, legal or platform authority, narrative interpretation, and steward duties; verify every closure item against simulated platform behavior; collect optional private experience reports immediately and after a short delay; and require an independent proceed, adapt, hold, or retire verdict. Treat this as a feasibility, mechanism, and safety test rather than evidence about bereavement outcomes.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Proposal 1 concerned a product team's prospective accountability for user-impact commitments before software release; its causal path joined professional renewal to release artifacts and owners. Proposal 2 concerned current multi-person consent for ambient sensing inside a shared home; its causal path joined spatial boundary enactment to live device configuration. Proposal 3 instead concerns the long-term stewardship of a person's digital remains, plural memory, algorithmic resurfacing, and authorized succession after death or incapacity. Its intervention suspends ordinary content circulation to create a recurring memorial-governance observance, and its causal path runs from fragmented legacy traces and contested remembrance through consented witnessing to authenticated access, retention, representation, and retirement actions. It is independently adoptable as a digital-legacy governance service and neither extends release review nor household sensor management.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Materially different digital-legacy problem","Distinct memorial-governance intervention and causal path","Explicit separation of remembrance, consent, and legal authority","Operational closure through authenticated platform actions","Emotional, privacy, security, repair, and retirement safeguards","Explicit diversity from proposals 1 and 2","Bounded prospective evidence without general effect claims"],"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"evidence_changes":[],"claim_changes":[]}}