ethos

13 NOVEMBER 2005
In grave
A trip to the dentist or a solicitor's office is pretty much the same experience. Nice chairs, potted plants and reassuring tones. Even the pain levels are similar; extracting sizeable sums from shallow pockets, as my recent visit to both proved to be.
Both occupations (they prefer professions so occupations it is) were not only concerned with my current state of health but were also keen to delve into my future.
The dentist projected the possible path my teeth were on and the likely pitfalls that lay ahead, with gentle, signposted warnings on the ravages of time. The solicitor's crystal ball was concerned for that time up ahead when maybe my teeth wouldn't be my own.
Operating under the motto of 'where there's a way, there's a will', it wasn't surprising that the conversation inevitably moved to... well death. There are other gentile, less fraught and subtle ways of mentioning it, such as 'taking care of loved ones', but calling a spade a spade is apt as far as dying is concerned.
Before computers and the internet, whatever possessions someone accrued in their life were dispersed, frictionless or otherwise, and that was that. Now there's a new dimension to the hereafter, where huge amounts of information gathered by the deceased is stored on computers or the internet.
We are entering an age when a computer can reveal far more about a person's life than photographs, letters or newspaper clippings ever could. If the information is not on a computer somewhere, it may well be drifting on the web like some cyber Marie Celeste.
The court cases are starting to sprout. In the US, lance corporal Justin Ellsworth was killed in Iraq and when his parents asked Yahoo! for access to his email account, they were refused. Yahoo!'s policy was to terminate the account if the account holder died. The account details were eventually handed over to the family following an order from a probate court.
I didn't dare ask the solicitor, for fear my mental state might become an issue, on what the legal ramifications would be if I willed my computer to one person but left certain files on it to someone else? Would ownership of the computer entail all the files on it?
And what about my website? I like to think that the site could continue long after I have, so how do I go about ensuring that happens? I even entertain the notion of getting www.ethos.org engraved on my headstone.
If that sounds wacky, then you haven't seen the plaque on a grave in Dublin which reads:
ÔGo home you fools and have your tea.
For before you know it,
You'll be down here with me'
I can see a business opportunity for maintaining the sites of the dead. Cryogenics for urls. Like insurance premiums, you pay while alive and they look after the site when you're gone.
People have been buried for centuries with cherished keepsakes alongside them in the grave. Photographs, wedding rings, football pennants, alcohol and food. Archaeologists can piece together strands of a person's life when finding such items.
What then, will they make of the news that people are starting to be buried clutching their favourite electronic gadgets. Mobile phones are top of the list.
Funeral director Seamus Griffin said he has "seen it a few times. It's not a big trend but it is going on. I've seen people buried with all kinds of things, even a pager.
"The trend away from a highly religious ceremony at funerals in favour of a more personal approach, is also making the practice of burying unusual items more acceptable."
Keith Massey, another funeral director, has noticed that "especially young girls, live their lives by their mobiles and feel it's part of them.
"Some other people may be terrified they'll wake up in the coffin, so they take along a mobile to ring for help to get them out. I'm sure it's happened that the phone has gone off in the coffin but most turn them off."
To hell with the mobile phone. I'm bringing an exact plaster mould of my teeth, which the dentist made to fit a crown I needed.
That will give the archaeologists something different to chew on.

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