Can Technology Help Our Grief? New Developments of Amazon's Alexa

ABC News has published this article from the Associated Press about Amazon's latest development with their personal assistant device Alexa.  Excerpt:

"Amazon’s Alexa might soon replicate the voice of family members - even if they’re dead.

The capability, unveiled at Amazon’s Re:Mars conference in Las Vegas, is in development and would allow the virtual assistant to mimic the voice of a specific person based on a less than a minute of provided recording." 

I'm not sure what to make of this.  Personally, I'm not sure it would do much to help with my grief.  To me, hearing someone or some thing pretending to be my mother is not the same as hearing the actual voice of your loved one, even if it's from years ago.  But who knows?  Maybe there's another perspective here that I'm not aware of.

Using Technology to Contact the Deceased: Thomas Edison

Communication with the dead is a subject that immediately generates controversy.  Adherents of many of the world's major religions suggest that attempting to contact the deceased falls under the realm of "not possible" at best to "strictly prohibited" at worst.  And yet, there are many who have been curious to know whether it would be possible.  Many who claim to have made contact are spiritual mediums utilizing the method known as a seance.  Many of these people were later exposed as frauds and charlatans, although  others might not be so easy to debunk.

Still, there are others in the scientific world who have wondered if it is possible to contact our deceased loved ones using other means -- namely, through technology that many of us could eventually utilize on our own.  One such person who was interesting in making contact with the spirit world was none other than Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931).  Best known for his work and inventions concerning electric power, motion pictures, and sound recordings, Edison also apparently was intrigued with inventing a device that could communicate with the dead, as he told an interviewer of American Magazine in 1920.

A young Thomas Edison with one of his inventions, the tinfoil phonograph, sometime around 1877.

 

At first glance, Edison would seem an incredibly unlikely candidate to explore such a venture.  But, as this article from Reliable Planet points out, radio and motion pictures allowed people to hear the voices and see moving images of people who were no longer living.  Direct communication with the deceased, in Edison's mind, likely would seem the next logical step.  While there were many who dismissed Edison's idea as a joke or even a scam, Philippe Baudouin, a French radio host and philosopher, discovered a copy of Edison's diary in a thrift store in 2015.  This edition, unlike the others, contains an additional chapter laying out Edison's ideas and theories on how communication with the spirit world could be accomplished.  This article at Phys.org gives some more background, but alas, no one has been able to find Edison's detailed plans or schematics, if in fact he ever did get that far. 

Edison died from complications of diabetes in 1931.  Interestingly enough, he appears to have had a deathbed vision.  His last words, apparently spoken to his wife as he drifted in and out of consciousness, were: "It's very beautiful over there."

 

Depicting Grief in Art: Pablo Picasso

In his lifetime, Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973) created over 13,000 (!) paintings.  That does not include the thousands upon thousands of other works of art to his name, including prints, engravings, ceramics, and sculptures.  One of these paintings is the "Weeping Woman", created in 1937.  Tate, the British art institute, gives us some background to this Picasso work:

 

"Weeping Woman is based on an image of a woman holding her dead child. It is taken from Picasso’s anti-war mural, Guernica. Picasso painted both works during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). It was in response to the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica. The attack was carried out in April 1937 by Nazi Germany’s air force, in support of Spain's Nationalist forces."

 

Articles Worth Reading: "12 Insights into Grieving After the Death of Your Loved One "

Over at DignityMemorial.com, Dr. Therese Rando, a clinical psychologist in Rhode Island here in the United States, has written an article: "12 Insights into Grieving After the Death of Your Loved One".  Among her insights: "It Takes Time" -- even though many of us have this preconceived idea that our grief is automatically healed by the 6-month or 1-year mark.  Also: "Grief is Personal and Unique" -- everyone has their own individual relationship with the deceased, and everyone processes grief in their own way.

One particular excerpt from her article really stood out for me:

"In our society, there is a curious social phenomenon. On the one hand, we have relationships with dead people all the time. We learn about dead people in history, are influenced by them in philosophy and are moved by them in the arts. We celebrate holidays to remember them, dedicate buildings in their honor and visit museums to see how they lived. In virtually all aspects of our lives, we are in a 'relationship' with the dead.

However, on the other hand we are told that we have to 'get on with life' and 'let go and put the past behind.'  It seems that in Western society it is acceptable to have a relationship with a dead person as long as you didn’t know that individual personally. This is why you could be criticized for displaying a certain photograph of your departed loved one, but it is permissible to have Princess Diana's face on a memorial plate hanging on your wall. Clearly, there is a double standard."

Dr. Rando brings a lot of insight and wisdom to the subject of grief, and the whole article is absolutely worth reading in its entirety.