Just seen a news story that I thought was an April fool, but it's not.  A crematorium in Southampton is offering a pay-per-view service for mourners to be able to grieve from home.  No, no, no. 
This is ridiculous. 
There are many things that you can and should do on line: shop, blog, social network or email friends, even watch TV programmes.   But I think that keeping in touch via the internet is not instead of seeing friends in person, it's a new added dimension enabling you to keep in touch with a bigger pool of people.
But saying goodbye to someone you care about is something that you should share with people who feel the same way, so that you can support each other.  Being together helps the process, the sense that life goes on, that the person who died was part of something bigger.
Paying to watch a funeral from home might be a useful service for those physically unable to get there because they are physically disabled or a long way away, but it risks becoming funeral as entertainment, to be observed but without participation, an unhealthy outlet for the morbid and depressed.  
It offers none of the comfort of touch that hugging people you care for can bring, none of the release that being together can bring, and doesn't really give the opportunity to say goodbye any more than saying it quietly by yourself. And taking it one step further, and allowing interaction would still not really solve my fundamental issue with this (text messages to say "BYE M8" or similar would just be hellishly trite).
Being together is the natural state for human beings, from the African savannas to co-workers at the water cooler, and being alone is one of the problems of our society, society itself is being erroded by people no longer getting together in person and therefore losing their common bonds.  So let's be there in person when it really matters, especially to say goodbye.