Pupil: ‘What should I do for a living?’
Teacher: ‘Well, people will always need to eat, and people will always die.’
It’s one of those conversations that happen at school when you’re about 15, and you’ve realized you don’t want to be a train driver anymore.
It’s true though. Death is guaranteed.
And it’s become a bit of a problem in some places.
Take Hong Kong for example.
Real estate there costs more per square foot if you’re dead than if you’re alive. Burial plots and graves are in such scarcity that the costs have rocketed. A ground burial plot in Hong Kong can cost anywhere between $3m and $5m Hong Kong dollars.
But money aside, just finding space is a problem. And populations are aging.
In Hong Kong and China, it’s traditional to visit a loved one’s ashes in memorials called a Columbarium, and many residents still want to practice that tradition. But that requires space. So, in 2012 Hong Kong began plans for a cemetery in an ocean liner, known as ‘Floating Eternity’. It was designed to hold 370,00 sets of ashes but is yet to materialize.
Burial Goes Underground, Again
To get around a similar problem, developers in the Holy Land of Jerusalem have built a hi-tech underground cemetery.
Situated below the city’s biggest Jewish cemetery, Givat Shaul, the catacomb opened towards the end of 2019 and comes complete with a lift, LED lighting and golf buggies to help people with limited mobility get around the extensive underground pathways.
When You Say ‘Robot Minister’…
Technology has crept into every part of human existence, and the business of death is no exception.
Meet Mindar, a priest at the 400-year-old Kodajji temple in Kyoto, Japan.
But Mindar is a robot, who can move around and interact with the temple’s worshippers. It can store a lot of information, and while the temple’s Buddhist Priests will eventually pass on, Mindar is immortal. So far Mindar has only been programmed to deliver a Heart Sutra but will be given robot learning capabilities.
Then there’s Pepper who can be employed to deliver Buddhist funeral ceremonies; Pepper chants sutras from four Buddhist sects and can bow when it’s right to do so.
The Worldwide Web and the Funeral Service
Places of worship in India and China have experimented with robots and religion. But the nature of its acceptance depends on the nature of the religion. Mindar has mostly met with positive responses, perhaps because the nature of Buddhism is to follow Buddha’s path, not Buddha as a god. But it may be different if a religion requires a human’s intention to deliver the messages as part of the worship.
But can this still be done over the web? One of Pepper’s skills is to live stream funerals.
And it’s actually not uncommon to attend a funeral virtually these days. When loved ones can’t be there in person, they can instead be there at the end of a laptop. Cost and health are both factors as to why someone may not be able to attend a funeral in person, but streaming allows people to pay their respects. And companies that specialize in funeral streams provide privacy and security, such as private codes to access the ceremony.
But how about your deceased loved one giving their own eulogy? Ok, they could make a video that gets played at the service… but what about a hologram?
One company in the US has developed technology that allows the deceased to make a holographic recording before they pass on. So, for example, if the deceased was a keen pianist you might get one last tune.
So, along with everyday things such as funeral music, funeral directors who offer finance and flowers these hi-tech additions might become part and parcel of every ceremony.
Leading the Tech Revolution
While other countries have adopted the use of funeral-tech, Japan is leading the way. The fully automated Gobyu in Tokyo is home to the ashes of 7,000 people. Visiting relatives access one of the eight mourning booths by passing a swipe card over a reader which activates the automatic delivery of the loved one’s ashes. The booth also contains fresh flowers and running water, while a tablet displays different pictures of the deceased.
The facility is managed by a nearby Buddhist temple and has proved so successful that two more facilities have been built in the area. As with Hong Kong, the cost and availability of burial spaces led to the Tokyo Gobyu, which is cheaper and more convenient for many families.
But in general, space is at a premium on this planet. And with an underground space like this if you need more room you just dig down further.
