Archive:Video-Enhanced Grave Marker

In 2002/2003 I submitted my idea for Talking Tombstone, to several online contest that promised 25,000.00 to get your invention on the market. This man that now claims to have invented Talking Tombstone, did not even bother to change the name I gave it. I wish he would have contacted me and I would have loved to work with him. Instead, he stole it! Claimed he created it. He is lying. Robert Barrows did not invent, Talking Tombstone. I Did, Jacquelene Lively. I wrote him an email asking why he stole it. I have never had a reply. Robert Barrow, do what it right. It will not be difficult to prove I am telling the truth.I Am The Inventor of Talking Tombstone!

A Video-Enhanced Grave Marker (VEGM) is a Western-style tombstone equipped with weatherproofed video playback that would be initiated by remote control. Through sound and video, VEGMs would, in theory, make visits to graveyards an interactive experience.

This idea is very similar to the 1981 science fiction short story Walpurgisnacht by Roger Zelazny, and the foreword in the 1983 collection Unicorn Variations mentions an unexpected contemporary invention of a 'talking tombstone'. The 2004 film The Final Cut also features a similar idea, video-enhanced tombstones which play recordings extracted from memory chips implanted in the brain of the departed. Rudy Rucker has discussed a similar idea which he calls "lifeboxes," - devices that record information about people's lives and can carry on conversations after they die. James Joyce's 1904 novel Ulysses features Mr. Bloom contemplating an audio-only version of such a gravemarker:

"Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well, the voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather. Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn't remember the face after fifteen years, say."

The VEGM, invented by Robert Barrows of San Mateo, California, would allow its owner to record messages to be played to loved ones or to any visitor to the site with a remote control. The stones would be equipped with weatherproofed video playback and recording devices plus memory systems and a television monitor placed within a weather-proofed, hollowed-out headstone. Template:As of, Barrows estimated that the costs of the VEGMs might start at about USD$8000 to $10,000.

Template:US patent was issued on The Video Enhanced Gravemarker on August 8, 2006. Barrows commented soon after its invention: "I envision being able to walk through a cemetery using a remote control, clicking on graves and what all the people buried there have to say. They can say all the things they didn't have the opportunity or guts to say when they were alive."

To overcome noise pollution objections, the audio can also be transmitted to wireless headsets, made available by the cemetery's office. Commenting on the threat from thieves or vandals Barrows adds "There are very strict laws against vandalizing tombstones, and if you are going to vandalize a tombstone, you'd better hope there are no such things as ghosts."

The issue of censorship would likely be of concern with VEGMs. How high a level of free speech would be offered to the eventually deceased or epitaph producer is undecided.

References

• Toronto Star: "Ideas of the Week: Talking Tombstones". Toronto: Torstar Publishing. May 8, 2005

External links

• Video Tombstone: Dead Can't Dance — But They Can Talk
• Company Plans Video-Playing Tombstones
• U.S. firm creating video-playing tombstones