Thanks everyone for the input, I appreciate all the points.
First things first, and this is off-topic, but I feel like I need to address the Leeroy-Leroy issue. I forgot the "e." Sorry. I'll add to my signature that I forgot the e.
Anyway, another thing I wanted to quickly mention was that I'm sorry about the way I worded the OP. I've noticed that I seem to have struck a nerve with some people, and I want to make it clear that I didn't mean any disrespect to you or your deceased loved ones. I've never really experienced anything like the older members of this forum have (there I go again with the possibly offensive thing), as a fair number of people have already noted, and I'll be getting to that later. In addition, some of the phrases I used weren't exactly the most suited for the situation, with the "general silliness" thing being a an obvious one. I don't expect any of my excuses to mean anything, so I'll just admit that it was a screw-up on my part.
Into the meat of the actual debate, a lot of you brought up some very good points, and I'll try to get to all of them. The first one I'll have a shot at was the one about the historical importance of graves and cemeteries. I hadn't really thought about that in my initial analysis of their use. I've considered the data that can be gained from them before, but for whatever reason, it didn't occur to me when I was writing the OP. I understand that we can learn about the lives of past generations, perhaps analyze their diets or even judge the general wealth and value of people and materials based on their headstones, coffins, etc. Having had that pointed out to me, I've revised my original idea that they should be done away with entirely (eventually, I never meant in one go), to keeping and filling the current cemeteries at the very least. That, by the way, is what I actually want now, it's not just me grudgingly agreeing to what other people want.
With regards to what we should do to make future historians' lives easier, I would like to point out that we live in the Information Era. The artifacts we leave don't have to be just rocks, wood, and bone fragments. I think that a general movement towards having people actually documenting their own lives would give massive amounts of data to future researchers. If used in combination with their family members' and friends' biographies or writings about the person in question, as well as any files about that person's finances, education, etc. (basically any official data), historians and psychologists could put a picture together of our mental, educational, and economical, development. Much more data could be gained if we actually recorded it than if we just leave our successors to their own devices.
As dwise pointed out, it will take time for people to adapt to anything that provides a good solution. I'm not hoping for a massive leap to new developments anymore, but if someone started such an online program to record details about yourself that could be accessed by anyone in any generation, and even just a few people participated right now, the rest would follow eventually. That is, of course, assuming that the program and plan would actually make practical sense and work.
Another issue that a few people, but most notably (in my opinion) dwise, mentioned, was that of the emotional needs of the surviving family and friends. I'm young. I DON'T have much life experience, and I haven't had to go through too much death. Two grandparents, a great aunt, and her partner, are all the family members I know who have died. I can easily go to places that remind me of them that aren't cemeteries, so I've never really had to think about what it would be like if I didn't have that. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose a parent or sibling, so I apologize if I offended anyone who has. I'm getting a better picture of why people do go to cemeteries now, but I think that the thing I proposed, a database of every dead person, complete with their autobiography, pictures, and possibly other biographies of them, would be a very good thing to help people remember the dead. I understand that it wouldn't replace actually going to a place where you spent time with them, and I'm not going to pretend that it could.
The issue I have, as a sixteen-year old who has spent half his life in Toronto and half in one of it's suburbs, is that I haven't gotten used to seeing wide open spaces. Procedurally taller buildings are being erected around me all the time, so when I go to Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in the middle of an urban sprawl, I can't help but think of all the stuff that could be put there instead. I think of things as if the world is turning into Coruscant, when there's really tons of room. In the end, however, we will start running out of room at some point. It won't be for generations, but as has been noted, it takes us a lot of time to react to things. I ask you this: By the time the world has been urbanized, will we be developed enough to react quickly and remove anything taking up unnecessary space, or will we still be this slow? Will we even still need this planet, or will we have colonized other worlds (or killed each other off, that's another option)? I'm trying to solve this problem before it becomes a problem, and I can see why you guys don't like that. In my defense, it's been 155 years since Darwin published the Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection, and people still don't understand it. It worries me about our future ability to react to new problems and discoveries, and that's contributing to my reaction to cemeteries, which, in hindsight, is a bit over the top.
Theodoric writes:
Why waste the energy and contribute to pollution?
So onto the cremation-pollution correlation. I've never actually heard of that before, but it seems reasonable. I'm not going to immediately concede the point to you without having seen any evidence, so I was hoping you could perhaps provide some statistics or studies about it. I'm not trying to be lazy, it's just that I could search forever and not find it, but it would still be there, so I think it's better if you maybe provide some evidence first.
Overall, the opposition to me has made some excellent points. I'm hoping you could give me your opinions about the program I suggested. I'm actually going to start a Programming Club and a Robotics Club (not sure why I mentioned the second), and I'll see if anyone in the programming one would be interested in perhaps designing a program like the one I described.
"As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."
-George Orwell
"In my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated."
-Also George Orwell
"You don't need a formal conspiracy; when interests converge, these people went to the same universities, [...] they're on the same boards of directors, they're in the same country clubs, they have like interests. They don't need to call a meeting, they know what's good for them, and they're getting it."
-George Carlin
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