The video at the top of this post is one of the most moving, emotionally powerful uses of technology I\u2019ve seen in a long time, and there\u2019s not a lot of context you need to know in order to imagine the full weight of what the mother must be feeling in the clip above. Basically, what you see in the footage, from a South Korean documentary that aired a few days ago, is the product of a team that worked to recreate the likeness of a seven-year-old girl named Nayeon who died in 2016. They used virtual reality technology to recreate her face, voice, body, and movements.<\/p>\n
The fact that you can see tears streaming down the mother\u2019s face, even from underneath the VR headset she\u2019s strapped on to see what the team produced, tells you how profoundly moving the experience of encountering a digital yet lifelike version of her daughter must have been. Per the Korean news outlet Aju Business Daily<\/em>, the production team worked on this project for eight months. Attention was paid to the smallest detail, even the park-like surroundings through which young Nayeon first scampers into view to greet her flabbergasted mother. The mother can be seen stretching out her hands to try and hold the avatar of her daughter one more time \u2014 the child she loved so much that she tattooed her name on her body and wears a necklace containing some of her ashes. In Korean, the virtual version of her daughter strides right up to her mother and asks, according to an English translation, \u201cWhere have you been, Mom? Did you think about me?\u201d<\/p>\n The footage comes from a documentary shown by Korea\u2019s Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation, or MBC, and in it we can also see the young child\u2019s other close relatives including her father, brother, and sister watching on a screen what the mother sees playing out through her headset. It\u2019s truly heartbreaking to see the mother try and stroke her daughter\u2019s hair, her hands desperately reaching out, which some commentary has already speculated makes this project feel emotionally exploitative. It also raises questions that deserve answers before this technology becomes truly mainstream \u2014 such as, how does this affect the closure portion of the grieving process? If you had an opportunity for one more encounter like this with a dead loved one, would you agree to it? It\u2019s certainly incredible that VR technology, regarded as an uber-geeky, not totally mainstream sector of the industry, has progressed to the point that it can elicit such a visceral, tearful response like this from a mother.<\/p>\n I understand completely how some of you watching this might feel like this is a step too far, that you wouldn\u2019t want to subject yourself to the wrenching pain of seeing your loved one again, only to also lose them all over again. Make no mistake, however. This technology is not going away, and we\u2019ve written here about startups that want to popularize the concept of a digital avatar, of a digital self. If it were me, all I can say is I would be right there with the mother, strapping on the headset to have that one final encounter, no question. \u201cI met Nayeon, who called me with a smile, for a very short time, but it\u2019s a very happy time,\u201d the mother said. \u201cI think I\u2019ve had the dream I\u2019ve always wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\tAndy is a reporter in Memphis who also contributes to outlets like Fast Company and The Guardian. When he\u2019s not writing about technology, he can be found hunched protectively over his burgeoning collection of vinyl, as well as nursing his Whovianism and bingeing on a variety of TV shows you probably don\u2019t like.\t<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n![](\"http:\/\/ww-vb.mine.nu\/w108\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/1580530133_630_All-four-major-US-wireless-carriers-are-suffering-outages-right.png\")
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