NFC breathes new life into tombstones An American outfit has started selling RFID tags for embedding in headstones, making life easier for the next generation of the Time Team. A 'Personal RosettaStone', utilising technology from Objecs as reported by NFC World, will set you back something between a tenner and two hundred quid depending on how long you want people …
Judging by the example one shown in the pic, John Doe was a family man living in the US, who carried a shield, either spent most of his time leaning forwards at an improbable angle or once put his foot through a staircase. He also apparently banged wooden stakes into things with his bare fists? and, had some form of nuclear-based super powers?
I hate C# because the language's authors keep renaming things ("serialization" comes to mind), but calling the interred an "archived individual" is just ludicrous. Just what compression algorithm was used here, and does "tar xf wormfood ; chmod 777 soul" bring them back to life?
Well, I supposed that God is root, after all...
What a strange choice of name... The Rosetta stone is famous for giving us the ability to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs, not for containing any directly useful content. I guess it just sounded cool.
Then again, thinking forward a few hundred years, maybe the name is a good choice, it took years to work out how to read the Rosetta stone!
Pity the EMP from the first shots of WWIII will fry the little chip.
... the technology lasts and can store enough data for an instant website right there, no further networking required. I mean, seriously, that would be obviously useful... as long as the technology lasts. As for duration, well, most graves here don't seem to last more than fifty years. But Western Europe is a lot more crowded than North America.
Yeah, digital data has such awesome longevity compared to words carved into solid granite or marble, doesn't it? Those ProWrite files I have on Amiga-formatted floppies are SOOOO much easier to read than the inscription on my granny's headstone which dates to about the same time period. Digital makes everything BETTER!
Actually the problem this solves, and solves quite effectively, is that age old one: how to separate fools from their money more quickly.
Hmm gravestone equipped with a holographic projector, where the deceased could leave a video about themselves and their experiences would be interesting and useful for ancestral research purposes. Also a message of "Stop standing on me!!" to stop people walking on graves would be quite useful too.
Only issue would be powering it, solar would get dirty too quick and struggle to provide the energy, nuclear.....could be a goer, plus fringe benefits of supplying any excess to the grid, post death carbon footprint reduction? ;-) Of course the average UK "man / woman on the street" would freak about "killer nukes irradiating our dearly departed"
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