HUNTSVILLE, AL -- Have you ever wished to once again be able to talk with a loved one who has died?
Maybe say something you had wished you had told them?
Or even hear that something special from them?
A local company won't be able to make that happen but it can realize that opportunity for future generations.
The company, Intellitar, will be releasing Virtual Eternity on Wednesday.
"The whole concept is legacy creation and preservations," said Don Davidson, the founder and CEO of Intellitar."The idea is I can use a number of technologies available and create a living legacy."
Think of it as "a digital clone, if you will," he said.
A "digital clone" on your computer screen.
Davidson said Virtual Eternity takes genealogy websites, such as ancestry.com, to another level.
"What we're doing is extending that," he said. "We want to give users the gift of immortality while giving future generations a sense of connection to their roots."
The voice of the "digital clone" isn't a recording of your voice, either. It's synthesized and generates responses to questions.
"An artificial intelligent brain drives it," Davidson said. "It has the ability to capture and maintain a virtually unlimited amount of content."
"It" is an Intellitar. It's the name of the company and stands for intelligent avatar.
Davidson said it takes about three to four hours to synthesize the voice but just a couple of minutes to recreate your image. You can "train it" for the correct responses and continue to add information to the brain.
"It looks like me, sounds like me, acts like me and takes my personality," Davidson said. If someone asks a question, your Intellitar will answer - in your voice. And, there's no need to worry if your Intellitar doesn't know the answer.
"It will tell you it doesn't know the answer," Davidson said. "It will then record the question in a log and send the collection to the owner, who can supply the answer so the next time someone asks that question, the intellitar will have the answer."
Davidson said he envisioned entertainment applications for the Intellitar including gaming, social networks and interactive 3D family trees.
On the serious side, there's product and employee training for businesses.
"You can put it in a tutorial manner," Davidson said. "The employee would be getting their information from your Intellitar."
And education.
"Online training and education is a huge market," he said. "Think of virtual professors. It's available to interact 24/7.
"Imagine taking an economics class from John Kenneth Galbraith."
There are membership plans available for Virtual Eternity, including ways to upgrade your Intellitar with "expert brains," Davidson said.
"If I wanted to be an expert on fly-fishing, I can go out and purchase that expert brain," he said. "I plug that into my Intellitar and know all there is to know about fly-fishing."
And there's another vital role for the Intellitar to play in this hectic society: With your Intellitar, it is possible to be in two places at the same time.
Very handy.
Whitney Houston
Of course, we have no idea why Whitney Houston died last weekend. We cannot be certain about her state of mind or what toxins may have been coursing around her arterial route map at the time. All we know for sure is that she was found in a bathtub along with a towel, hair ties and a gravy boat. I suspect that the gravy boat is a clue. Because I had what might be termed a “session” the other night, and as a result I arrived back at home a little rubbery. My legs wouldn’t do quite what they were told and I have a dim recollection of having to repeat — several times — my address to the taxi driver.
Once through the door — this was tricky as there appeared to be many locks, none of which would stand still — I needed many things. Beans on toast was a big priority, along with a can of Coke, or as a friend of mine always calls it, the “black doctor in the red ambulance”. This, I hoped, would settle my tummy, which appeared to be entirely full of sick.
I also needed my chilled floor tile. This may sound a bit strange but I have kept such a thing in my fridge ever since I realised that when you are in a bad way, it’s refreshing and comforting to place your face on a cold floor. The trouble with doing this, of course, is that you usually fall asleep and wake in the morning feeling terrible. That’s why I keep a floor tile in the fridge. So I can have the feeling of a cold floor while being in bed.
Ah, bed. That’s what I always want most of all when I’ve had a few. Crisp, cool, cotton sheets, quietness and a sense that soon the spinning and the nausea and the pain will be buried deep under a comforting, numbing cloud of unconsciousness.
At no point have I ever thought, “Right, what I need now is some gravy.” And even if I did have a hankering for a spot of Bisto, I’m not certain I’d have the gumption to decant it into a boat.
And even if I did, I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t then think, “Mmm. I know. I’ll go and eat this in my bath.”
Mainly this is because we know from Jim Morrison that taking a bath when you are the worse for wear is jolly dangerous. You would be better off climbing into a hornets’ nest or playing slapsy with a venomous snake. No, really. I have in front of me a chart showing some recent figures of how those who died unexpectedly in America went to meet their maker, and it’s surprising.
We know from Jim Morrison that taking a bath when you are the worse for wear is jolly dangerous You might imagine that since the soundtrack of American life is gunfire, that many people die in a hail of bullets, and you’d be right: 230 people were shot by baddies and 270 by the police in the same year. Then there were 55 who were pushed, fell or jumped from a tall building, 185 who died while jogging and 36 who went west as a result of a foreign body entering their being through a “natural orifice”. In other words, 36 people died with a vacuum cleaner up their bottom.
A predictable 26 were killed by dogs, 395 were electrocuted (not by the state), nine were killed because their nightclothes melted, and 55 by coming into contact with hot tap water. As you might imagine, the list is long and amusing, but there is one sobering fact: 341 people died in the bath.
Since the bath is warm and relaxing, we have to assume that few of these died from heart attacks. And I presume too that those who decided to share their bath with a toaster or an electric fire would be listed under “suicides”, which means that the vast majority of the 341 must have drowned.
I’m sorry. But how is that possible? It’s not like the surface is very far away or that you can become entangled in weeds. Nor are you likely to be swept away from the edge, by currents. Unless you are Donald Trump, perhaps.
So how does it happen? Do you fall asleep and slip under the water? I find that hard to believe because most people wake up when their ears hear a rustling outside or their noses detect a funny smell. So it stands to reason we would come to if our lungs noticed that instead of air, we had suddenly started inhaling water.
Of course, when we are drunk we lose many of our senses. Young girls lying half-naked on the streets of Cardiff on a Saturday night testify to this. But not noticing that your knickers are on display is a far cry from not noticing that your lungs are filling up with soapy water. I suspect, therefore, that to die in the bath you have to be massively drunk. Monumentally out of it. So far gone that you have somehow mistaken a gravy boat for a bar of soap.
We can therefore speculate that Whitney Houston was intoxicated when she climbed into her bath last weekend. And judging by various reports, she was in this sort of state quite often.
Which brings me on to all the things her friends have said since that fateful night. They’ve all talked, with watery eyes, about how honoured they were to have known her and what good times they had together. And I must say, as I sat through the Grammys, listening to all of them weeping and wailing, I thought, “Hang on a minute. If she was such a good friend, how come you allowed her to get into such a state that she was bathing with a gravy boat?”
And it’s not just Whitney, either. Michael Jackson. Keith Moon. Jim Morrison. John Bonham. Phil Lynott. Elvis Presley. The list of superstars who’ve died, fat, drunk or alone in a puddle of effluent is enormous.
Nearly as enormous, in fact, as all the people who eulogise about them afterwards. People who claim to have been friends but who simply can’t have been. That’s the sad truth about superstardom, I guess. You end up with a lot of money and a lot of drugs and a lot of staff. But no one to make sure you’re okay.