Born in 1912, Dean was just two months old when the ship sank. She was traveling with her family to Kansas, where her father hoped to open a tobacconist's shop. But her father did not survive the disaster, and her family's emigration was aborted when they were returned to England. Dean didn't know about any of this until she was eight, when her mother decided to remarry. The last survivor with actual memories of the ship, Lillian Asplund, died in 2006.

Dean avoided discussing the Titanic for much of her life — after seeing the 1958 movie A Night To Remember, she refused to watch any other Titanic-themed films, including 1997's Titanic. But after the wreck of the Titanic was discovered in 1985, she began attending Titanic-themed conventions. When she could no longer pay her nursing home fees, she even sold her mementos of the disaster, including clothes she was given after her rescue, and a letter from the Titanic relief fund. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet also promised to donate to pay for her care.

The strange thing about Dean's life and death is that her fame came from a tragedy that she often seemed to want to forget. Though late in life she cheerfully signed autographs for children, she also said she was glad sh had no memories of the disaster, and that she hoped the wreck was never raised from the ocean. "I don't want them to raise it, I think the other survivors would say exactly the same," she said. "That would be horrible." Though she seemed ultimately to embrace it, and it brought her monetary help at the end of her life, her celebrity was still based on a horrible event that claimed her father. That people the world over were eager to get her autograph and buy her old clothes speaks to humans' fundamental curiosity, but also to an enthusiasm for other people's suffering that's a little unsettling. Hopefully all the interest in her tragic infancy helped her more than it hurt her.

Last Survivor Of "Unsinkable" Titanic Dies At 97 [AP]
'Titanic' Stars Help Ship's Last Survivor [USA Today]

Because if this is the end of the magazine era and of the DVD era — both fairly well-regulated businesses in terms of performer conditions — and, as Bob Guccione himself notes, the traditional media outlets are having difficulty figuring out how to compete with the Internet (no one said that an old guy can't catch up with the times eventually, it's just many of them die trying), is unregulated amateur the real future of porn? How can that be monetized in order to compensate performers — or can it be? Are women still exploited if they're doing in in exploration of their kinks (like, say, exhibitionism) and not for the financial profit of anyone at all? If there are no business records or even businesses, it'll get more and more difficult to track down those in "charge" of making the pornography or the women (or men) appearing in it to make sure that STI testing is done or that the performers are of age.

Lots has been written — some of it by former performers like Linda Lovelace and Tracy Lords— about the days of porn before which is was a semi-legitimate business enterprise. Say what you will about pornography, objectification and exploitation, the growing legitimization of the pornography industry — which led to much more government- and self-regulation — also led to a significant decrease in the kind of exploitation described by those performers as well as increased opportunities for women to participate in the higher-earning aspects of the production. If the era of professional production is leaving us and the performers, it's fair to ask what we can do to make sure the porn we choose to watch is made with the consent and pleasure of the participants.

Rise And Fall Of The Pornography Barons [Financial Times]
The Future of Media: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying That the Internet Will Consume Print [Huffington Post]