Before we had YouTube and home video recorders, prior to social media and voice recordings that could be stored online, there were few ways to connect on a personal level with your deceased friends or family members. You might be able to look through old photos or visit the cemetery to help you in your grief. Personal belongings might also contain memories and—if it hasn’t been too long—may even retain sensory impressions, like the lingering scent of favorite cologne. These sorts of connections to the past are important in the grieving process and go a long way in helping people cope with their losses. However, technology is taking things to new levels these days, allowing you a more interactive way to connect with the deceased. Whether or not this is beneficial in the long run has yet to be determined, but if you’re part of the growing trend toward a tech-heavy daily life, you may be able to fuse technology to help feel a little closer to your long lost loved ones.
So, other than your traditional physic medium, there does seem to be other means to stay in touch. Some of the more conventional ways that are just aided by technology include a new trend towards interactive graves or living headstones. They provide a way to turn a grave into a sort of Facebook page or archived website where users access “information you and friends add about your loved one, such as: an obituary, family heritage and history, photos, comments by friends and relatives and even links to share content on popular social sites.” The technology is literally built into the headstone (and maintained through solar powered panels) so that it is accessible on a public level. In this way, it’s possible to access more information about the deceased than the typical date of birth on a headstone.
Although living headstones are available now, other hi-tech mourning platforms are in the works as well. The website http://www.eterni.me is one such online option. This technology takes interactive graves to the next level by creating an actual online artificial intelligence digital avatar whereby you spend time initially inputting all of your thoughts, stories and memories of the deceased and then the system will curate everything to compile an interactive digital avatar that you can interact and talk with creating a way for him or her to come to “life”, so to speak, for a conversation.
Also, for people who are missing the smell of their lost loved one, there is a French company currently working on making a custom perfume that will capture the scent of the person passed away. Though the exact technique is secret, the company is saying all you will need to provide them with is a piece of the person’s clothing from which they extract the few hundred distinct molecules that make up their scent, just enough to provide a bottle of human scent perfume.
With that in mind, there are several companies currently working on a using the technology built into VR (virtual reality) headsets called Project Elysium whereby they would collect all of the video, audio, and photos on the deceased and from there create a world whereby you can interact with them in a virtual environment using their virtual headset – something very similar to the Oculus VR technology currently available.
With more of a futuristic twist in mind, Google has patented a system for creating different robot personalities, based on a person’s preferences, personality, and habits so in the future when robots are viable you might have a robot behave or act like a deceased family member.
Also, you’ve got Cryogenics, which is the technique used to store a persons body at an extremely low temperature with the hope of one day reviving them. This technique is being performed today, but the technology behind it is still in its infancy with no way to bring a person back from cryonic suspension yet.
With that in mind, there are technologies currently available where people have been able to communicate directly with a lost loved one. Back in 2012, a grief-stricken electrical engineer believes he has found a way to communicate with his dead daughter eight years after her death. Using his expertise to design and build a series of electromagnetic detection devices, Gary Galka claims to have even recorded his eldest daughter Melissa saying, ‘Hi Daddy, I love you.’ It’s based on the premise that our conscience lives on after the death of our bodies and that using sensitive electromagnetic recording devices may be one way to tap into that dimension. It seems like most of the ghost hunting shows on TV today also use this technology as well.
Adam Ostrow – TED TALK
