For those people seeking some long-term postmortem respect, you could always go the route of the Royal Tenenbaum epitaph and have your hyperbolic greatness engraved upon a headstone. But we all know weather eventually gets the better of those words, and besides: Why settle for one measly sentence when you could speak directly to your descendants from beyond the grave?
The Objecs company has the answer: RosettaStone “technology enhanced memorial products,” which, preloaded with your autobiographical information, will attach to your grave. From Discovery News:
When your great-great-great granddaughter stops by sometime in the next century and wants to know who you were, she’ll touch her NFC-RFID enabled cellphone (or whatever device we’re using by then) to one of those symbols on the granite iPod-looking device on your headstone and she’ll get your note.
NFC stands for “near-field communication” which is a subset of RFID – “radio frequency identification.” You’re probably using this technology already. RFID is what allows you to pay a toll while driving 30 mph by way of the little box stuck to your rearview mirror.
As the above passage notes, the practicality of RosettaStone depends on it working with the cellphone technology of the future that will probably be directly implanted in your head, or perhaps that someone will care enough after you’re gone to drop by the cemetery and upgrade your headstone.
Still, it could work. So please, no stupid text abbreviations in your autobiography. This is for posterity.
Related Content:
Discoblog: “Gravestone Project” Takes Citizen Science to the Cemetery
80beats: Egypt Finds Tombs of Pyramid Builders, And More Evidence They Were Free Men
Image: Objecs LLC
