Your Talking Cremation Urn

Digital Cloning: Rise of the Cylons?

"Somewhere between epically cool and downright creepy, you can create a digital clone that looks like you, talks like you, sounds like you and takes on your personality, so that future generations can find out all about you after your death. This Intellitar, or intelligent avatar, takes virtual life after death to an entirely different plateau.

"Think of it as a digital clone," Don Davidson, the founder and CEO of Intellitar, told Alabama Local. "We want to give users the gift of immortality while giving future generations a sense of connection to their roots." Davidson intends for Virtual Eternity to take genealogy websites to a whole new level.

Virtual Eternity explains, "Through your Intellitar you will be able to preserve and share your personality, life experiences, knowledge, wisdom and memories in a way never before available."

That's great if it were a family member or someone that you would wish to interact with, but what if it happens 50 years from now? It's not like you would know the name of a great-great grandson who you could give future access to your digital clone. What if your digital clone knows all medical or health history--not something you might wish for just anyone to know?"
"These avatars are meant to be dynamic and interact with people as if the digital clone is a living, breathing real person having a real-time conversation. "An artificial intelligent brain drives it," Davidson said. "It has the ability to capture and maintain a virtually unlimited amount of content." According to this report [PDF], "If you're talking to your grandfather's avatar and you mention your favorite movie is 'The Terminator,' his avatar will remember that and may bring it up in a future conversation." This reports also mentions that Intellitar has been working on a concept of e-Mom..."

I haven't got a clue what drives people to even think about such things, except maybe they want to make money and have a lot of time on their hands.
There's so much stupid involved in this it's embarrassing. But there seems to be a drive to push the envelope with ego stroking technology and I'm sure some people will think this will be absolutely wonderful. Just one question of many - because the virtual you will have the ability to absorb data over time and incorporate it into your digital personality, when does your Intellitar stop being what you were and resemble someone else entirely? Won't that negate the whole purpose?
Just like with the the crazies who have their heads cryogenically frozen, saner future societies will simply pull the plugs to save on the electricity bills.