Feng Pan

Design Futures (MDes)

10042601@network.rca.ac.uk

The main visual for "Heirloom 2065". It depicts an eye with a futuristic interface, suggesting enhanced intergenerational communication through digital means. The overlay of hands reaching out signifies connection and continuity between past and present family members.

The Future Roadmap illustrates the projected technological, social, policy, and economic changes in China over the next 40 years.

The "Anatomy of Digital Family System" infographic details the processes and stakeholders involved in the 'capture', 'process', and 'communicate' of personal data for creating a comprehensive digital family legacy. The "Unified Utilization Mechanism of Heirloom 2065" illustrates the technological framework supporting this system, emphasizing key activities and ensuring data security and accessibility.

About

As China faces a rapidly aging and increasingly childless society, the traditional large family structure is gradually dissolving. In the foreseeable future, and even now, more people are choosing not to have children, potentially becoming the last generation of the family. This project is focussing on this ‘last generation of the family’, exploring how they can maintain interactions with their families in a relatively lonely situation, even as family members continually pass away.

Heirloom 2065 explores a future where digital families—AI-driven replicas of ancestors—are integrated into daily life, enabling real-time interaction, emotional support, and memory storage. This project envisions integrated technologies to better communicate with digital families, creating new rituals and offering a warm, new perspective on life and death values for different generations in Chinese families.

If digital families become the norm in people’s lives by 2065, how will individuals cope with the emotional, ethical, technological, and societal challenges posed by such dynamic intergenerational communication?

Find more about the project:

https://digital-family-heirloom.com/

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