When will you die? Im the internet ill tell you!

We all wonder when we will die. How will it happen? Will it hurt? What happens next? (If anything) will I be old?. These questions, we have all at some point naturally contemplated, and perhaps it is these questions that are the catalysts for our fear of death. Or maybe, its not the questions but rather the lack of answers.

But then came along the wonderful world wide web offering us various sites that claim to hold the ability to tell us not just our day of death but even the exact time (http://www.deathclock.com) (http://www.findyourfate.com/).

Have a go! All you have to do is answer a series of questions on your diet, lifestyle and health . Then the omniscient computer will calculate the day of your death, to the very second !. The popular death clock has been online now for nearly ten years doing its part to take the guesswork out of dying, yet the techniques used to determine the exact time of death are less than scientific. Its actually quite simple when I type in that I do smoke rather than I do not, I get an extra few years added on. Makes sense to me ! So are the sites telling us anything new.? Or even anything relevant?

I have always thought that you can never predict ones death, well unless your in the position of aiding them in it, or pointing a gun at them. So how would these sites know such information based on my basic lifestyle. They don’t know if I am going to be hit by a bus tomorrow. My date shows ( when I answered the questions honestly) October 12th 2067. That’s fine with me, ill be a senior citizen by then. But what about if it didn’t say that , if it said tomorrow or next week? Would I quit my job, tell my boss what I really think of him, not do my homework, throw my dissertation in the river and many other things. And then what if I never died on the day predicted?. Not only would I be left feeling somewhat foolish, I would have a lot of making up to do. In this sense the site becomes very dangerous. The computer claims to be God and this itself is enough to outrage any religion. It is taking away our vulnerability of not knowing and asserting a hierarchal state of knowledge. Why would God tell death clock when I am to die and not me? Death for many people is a serious issue and surely its not right that the internet and such sites have the authority to exploit and mock a topic that to many is very agonizing and profound. Its all very insincere !

Not only will such sites remind you of how short life is , it is the hour glass of the net, a morbid and pointless underbelly. The death clock does assert, right at the bottom of its page that ‘ this is for entertainment only, and we are strongly against anyone taking serious actions based on the result-date of death’ - Yet who is getting entertainment out of this? The producers maybe, laughing at a nation so consumed by their fear of death, that they play on it and ultimately profit from it.

Many sites will additionally predict the deaths of well known celebrities. Others will give you the opportunity to guess the date of their death and view other pre-condolences (http://www.whenwillamywinehousedie.com) (http://www.whenisbritneygoingtodie.com). Is there such a thing as prediction of death? Doctors predict the day a baby will be born so why not why they will die? The answer - unlike birth death is unpredictable, it can creep up on you at any time with little if any warning. When I looked at these sites, I felt sorry for the celebrities at the brunt of the producers jokes, I wouldn’t like hundreds of people to guess when I will die, and why would they want too? .