Headstones Get Interactive With RFID

The notion of immortality has been redefined in a world rife with archived digital information. Everything from daily tweets to personal bank records lives online long after we’re gone, with some data being more public and readily accessible than others.  But where the sum total of all this leads – if someone were interested in digging it all up – is forming a fairly accurate portrait of an individual’s life, albeit with some obvious gaps. Still, as we look at the formation of identity in a digital age, it’s interesting to consider what reflection of ourselves begins to emerge from a pool of activities that are more or less intangible. The evolution of this phenomenon, finds a bevy of web services now being offered that enable people to plan the eventual fate of their online personas before visiting the great beyond, but how do we ensure that our loved ones and anyone else can easily locate this curated picture of ourselves?

One solution for bridging the gap between the physical and the virtual suggests making our final resting places more interactive with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Each ‘RosettaStone‘ is a specially-crafted RFID tag that can be embedded on or within any headstone and store various personal information. Simply holding any NFC-enabled mobile device next to the tablet activates selected text or images on the screen, creating a memorial designed to last up to 3,200 years – depending on which model you select. Prices range from $12.99 to $225.00.

[via The Register]