Digital tombstone not selling like hotcakes

The Vidstone "Serenity panel" is an electronic altar to the departed, designed to be propped up on top of a grave. It's not doing that well, maybe because it's a product that inherently contradicts itself.

What would Marshall McLuhan say? The medium is the message. In many people's eyes, digital video technology speaks of the electronic future, while traditional granite and marble reference the geological past. Honoring those gone before us is normally a backward-looking activity. The Vidstone seems antithetical to the aesthetic of monuments and memories--a digital scrapbook, with its delicate electronics, is not exactly impervious to the elements over the years--it's ephemeral, rather than lasting.

Of course we'll be eating crow in a few years when every headstone has one.

Read the full AP story at CNN: "Death goes digital: The electronic tombstone"

[felixderkater]

Is this shortage of sales surprising? For one, we are not to the point where we want multimedia presentations in one of the few sacred, peaceful places we have left. Secondly, the tombstone is something meant to endure time. This device is not going to stand the test of 10 years, much less 100 or more. It's just another way to draw a bit of money out of the grieving and vulnerable. Finally, imagine the interactions when there are multiple people coming to pay their respects at different sites. "Could you turn down the volume on your tombstone? We're trying to pray."

[Rikekor]

Give me a break. First of all, media presentations? You make it sound like the grieving are their for fun. I think watching someone deceased in my family,listening to them, reading letters or accomplishments of that person is a hell of alot better than looking at a rock! Unless your from West Virginia, this idea will soon catch on! Of course I concur with the question of longivity of the products, I mean a rock lasts longer than a T.V,thanks for sharing that point. I think that is common sense. Look. The people who have come up with this idea beleive more can be said than "Rest in Peace John Doe" along with dates. No one is trying to think of it as taking money from the mourners. As for the volume thing, I doubt it as surround sound bose system. I do know they have an input for headphones anyway. Great idea. I see it catching on. The device by the way according to tests from Kodak have proven it to last far more than the 10 years you have stated.