# Continuity Cutoff Problem **Domain:** Continuity / Historical Justice / Access **Doc Type:** Canonical Justice Problem **Maturity:** Evolving **Related:** [[Continuity Access Inequality]], [[Continuity Orphan]], [[Relational Continuity]], [[Reconstructed Person]], [[Black Mirror S3E4 — San Junipero]] --- ## Definition The **Continuity Cutoff Problem** is the historical justice problem created when preservation or post-biological continuation becomes available only after earlier people have died without the records, procedures or opportunity required to use it. The threshold divides not only populations but relationships. Later people may continue while parents, partners, children and communities essential to their identity cannot. ## San Junipero Context Kelly's husband refuses San Junipero partly because their daughter died before the technology existed. Kelly's own decision is therefore shaped by a relational world divided by technological history. Continuation can feel like abandonment even when it is freely available. ## Governance Context The cutoff cannot be repaired by declaring sparse reconstructions identical to the dead. Archives may support memorials or new [[Reconstructed Person|reconstructed persons]], but [[Continuity Evidence vs Continuity]] requires honest labeling of evidentiary limits. Relevant duties include equitable access near the threshold, preservation of records with consent, non-deceptive reconstruction, protection of grief and historical acknowledgment that availability arrived unevenly. Later continuants should not be denied life simply because earlier loved ones lacked access. ## Key Insight **The first generation offered continuity will inherit a future divided from many of the people who made that future meaningful.** ## Sources / Provenance - Developed from Kelly's family history in [[Black Mirror S3E4 — San Junipero]]. ## See Also [[Continuity Advance Directive]], [[Digital Afterlife]], [[Proof of Descent]], [[Continuity Economics]], [[Rights]]