A company called Quiring Monuments has recently begun marketing augmented tombstones that are designed to assist smartphone-carrying visitors in accessing digital information about the deceased. On these tombstones, qr codes are given the kind of prominence once exclusively reserved for a person’s name, dates, and epitaph. The qr codes link users to individualized sites that contain information about the person being memorialized. This means that part of the memorializing process now includes constructing an enduring Web presence for the deceased.
This raises a few questions. How important to the memorializing process is being in the physical presence of a the body? Will crystallized bits of memory in cyberspace deepen, or even eclipse, the memorial experience found in physical graveyards? Facebook has already adopted a policy for memorializing accounts (also discussed in the official blog). Are graveyards becoming redundant?
For more, see Bellamy Pailthorp’s NPR story, “Technology Brings Digital Memories To Grave Sites.”
Comments 3
Jenny Davis — May 31, 2011
I think this will remain an augmented phenomenon, rather than evolving into an entirely digital one. I think that the the ritual of physical burial and physical visits, and the bodily emotion brought on by physical proximity to deceased loved ones will keep cemeteries in business for awhile. To throw out a blatant value judgment, I would be genuinely sad if such a replacement did in fact take place.
*Note on the blatant value judgment: Physical burial is actually really bad for the environment...so on a practical level, I would find some solace in this fact if physical burial sites became obsolete.
replqwtil — June 1, 2011
In all seriousness though... I find the whole thing kind of macabre and a little weird. Weren't we just talking about zombies...