Having lived life digitally (ultra-sounds, birth, youth, life as a grown-up, family reunions, and funeral: everything is recorded), our digital lives from now on continue even after death. At Dutch cemetery Larikshof in Rhenen there is a tombstone with a small TV-screen on which images of the deceased can be seen: the digizerk (digital tombstone). Relatives and friends can show pictures and videos on this screen. According to supplier steenhouwerij Rijtink, this is the first digital tombstone in the world. The screen now operates on a battery, but the company is working on tombstones operated through solar cells (sr, Dutch). Pictures and videos are virtual representatives of people's real lives. In a next step, these screens are connected to the internet. Relatives then can consult our social-network pages through the tombstones, watch the video of the funeral and the condolence register, listen to their favorite music, and see where friends will be buried later. And we can still interact with the avatar, the virtual representative of the deceased. Like our voice mail today, these virtual representatives keep reacting. The contact after all stays. And it will show behavior that will be an awful lot like the behavior of the deceived. A different world, that's for sure.Video clips on tombstones
Having lived life digitally (ultra-sounds, birth, youth, life as a grown-up, family reunions, and funeral: everything is recorded), our digital lives from now on continue even after death. At Dutch cemetery Larikshof in Rhenen there is a tombstone with a small TV-screen on which images of the deceased can be seen: the digizerk (digital tombstone). Relatives and friends can show pictures and videos on this screen. According to supplier steenhouwerij Rijtink, this is the first digital tombstone in the world. The screen now operates on a battery, but the company is working on tombstones operated through solar cells (sr, Dutch). Pictures and videos are virtual representatives of people's real lives. In a next step, these screens are connected to the internet. Relatives then can consult our social-network pages through the tombstones, watch the video of the funeral and the condolence register, listen to their favorite music, and see where friends will be buried later. And we can still interact with the avatar, the virtual representative of the deceased. Like our voice mail today, these virtual representatives keep reacting. The contact after all stays. And it will show behavior that will be an awful lot like the behavior of the deceived. A different world, that's for sure.