From Facebook to Instagram, we spend an increasing amount of time documenting our lives on the internet.
Now there’s a service that claims to allow people to set up an ‘online tomb’ so they can create their own web-based memorial to show themselves in the best light after death too.
The satirical service, called EverTomb costs from $1 a month and lets users add new features so the digital tombs will ‘evolve to a great and probably creepy memorial of your online existence.’
The Amsterdam-based start-up’s website says that tombs can also be used during their owner’s lifetime.
It reads: ‘Your tomb lets followers connect with you in the social afterlife and make some beautiful offerings.’
Essentially, it offers users the chance to make a memorial for themselves, despite being alive.
Currently there are no examples of what these tombs may look like, but 202 people have signed up so far.
The satirical site includes instructions, such as: ‘Let people know that you died online or just prepare for the afterlife like a great digital Pharaoh.’
It adds: ‘You don’t want to be remembered with a boring memorial page. Act first and build the greatest and most creepy tomb out there.’
Wiel Menger, from the firm, told MailOnline: ‘We are working on different digital tomb designs to choose from and this could later be open for other designers to create awesome tomb templates for others to use.
‘Other features we are working on are the use of music and video, tomb followers, tomb location and possibly a service to plan the disclosure of messages and video messages to your tomb followers or a certain group.’
There is even a possibility that tomb owners could monetise their final digital resting place by asking for offerings.
The company says that the service could be used in many ways, including as a joke to creep people out or to ‘show greatness like a god of the internet and even use it as a resume to really get that new job.’
AND MEMORIES AND PERSONALITY COULD BE UPLOADED TO A COMPUTER
It may be possible to live forever by uploading your memories, thoughts and personality onto a computer within the next ten or twenty years, according to a leading pioneer of the technology.
The technology, which is similar to that seen in the film Transcendence starring Johnny Depp, is being developed by entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt.
She has already created a disturbingly realistic robotic ‘clone’ of her wife Bina that she hopes will be a prototype for the technology.
An entrepreneur who has already created a robotic ‘clone’ of her wife (shown in the video) is developing technology that could upload an individual’s memories, thoughts and personality onto a computer in the next 10 to 20 years
The robot apparently shares the ideas and personality of Bina by creating a database of her memories, beliefs and thoughts, along with information taken from social media interactions and blogs she shares.
This allows the robot, called Bina48, to express opinions and interact in conversations like a real, living person.
Mrs Rothblatt, 60, an internet radio entrepreneur who lives as a transgender woman, believes the these ‘Mind Clones’ could eventually be used to help provide social interactions for people living alone and even help recreate the personalities of people after they have died.
Mrs Rothblatt, who lives in Florida and is one of the highest paid female chief executive officers in the US, said that eventually people may be able to carry around clones of their own minds on their smartphones.
Speaking to Bloomberg, she said: ‘Mind clone is a digital copy of your mind outside of your body.
‘Mind clones are ten to twenty years away. The mind clone will look like an avatar on the screen instead of a robot version.’
Mrs Rothblatt first began developing Bina48 five years ago to replicate her wife, who she married 30 years ago.
Mr Weil said that the idea for EverTomb was born in the middle of the night.
‘One of us jolted awake and wrote down the idea…next morning he told me and we found out this could be really something with endless possibilities to make this a fun and useful thing where users can decide on the level of creepiness themselves.
‘We think that building a tomb always was the ultimate tool to leave your mark on the world’s history so this could be true for the online world as well.’
It will cost $1 a month to preserve the memorial, meaning that arrangements may have to be made after death for it to survive.
But the first 500 people to sign up will get an ‘everlasting memorial’ within the EverTomb ‘cemetery’.
The team plans to present the first working version of EverTomb this spring.
While the service may be largely satirical, it may cause some people to think about the permanence of their presence online.
Serious proposals to manage an individual’s online presence after they die, include appointing a ‘digital executor’ to manage social media accounts and using a password manager service to keep all pins under digital lock and key, so when the time comes, they can all be accessed.
