From this week's New Scientist magazine:
High-tech messages from the grave
10:07 08 July 04
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition.
Inventors usually try to come up with things that will change people's
lives. But Robert Barrows is hoping to make an impact after their
death. He is patenting video-equipped tombstones to let cemetery
visitors watch messages from the dead.
Barrows, of Burlingame, California, has filed a patent application for
a hollow headstone fitted with a flat LCD touch screen (US 2004/85337).
It also houses a computer with a hard disc or microchip memory that
allows the deceased to speak from the grave through a video message.
They might just relate their life stories, says Barrows, or worse: they
could confess to lurid indiscretions. "It's history from the horse's
mouth."
The tombstone would draw its electricity from the cemetery's lighting
system. And to avoid a grave's soundtrack clashing with the one next
door, people can also listen through wireless headphones.
Barrows is not first to come up with an electronically enhanced
tombstone. Scott Mindrum, president of Making Everlasting Memories in
Cincinnati, Ohio - which hosts memorial tributes on the internet - has
a patent on a gravestone that displays a collection of the deceased's
photographs, alongside tributes from their friends.
If his patent is granted, Barrows hopes that when people make out their
will, they also leave a parting video with their lawyer. They could
also choose how grandiose to make their video monument: a standard
flat-screen TV or perhaps a high-definition plasma screen in a more
extravagant mausoleum.
Gary Collison, professor of American studies at Pennsylvania State
University in Pittsburgh, thinks video tombstones are a natural
progression from outsize monumental stonework.
"Cemeteries are places where people try to outdo each other, display
their wealth and power. This would certainly be a new way to do that,"
he says.
Anna Gosline
--
My 15 minutes of fame: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3253588.stm
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