Study 55: The Zero-Sum Aura: Why Digital Immortality Requires a Material Host

This study critically dismantles the ideological promise of digital immortality, arguing that purely non-material persistence operates under a fundamental ontological deficit. Tracing the crisis from Walter Benjamin's critique of the withering Aura through Jean Baudrillard’s Pure Simulacrum, we establish the condition of the Zero-Sum Aura: any gain in digital reproducibility is met with a corresponding, systemic collapse in the artifact's singularity and intrinsic worth. This vulnerability is enforced by Circulationism and the empirical reality of digital decay, including Link Rot and Format O