It's a bit like that episode of Black Mirror San Junipero, where the elderly can visit a simulated reality and eventually, when death comes, be uploaded to the Cloud to live there permanently. Yeah right...
Well actually, yes this could be possible. Serious money is being invested into a project operated by Nectome that sees your consciousness being uploaded to the Cloud. About £1 million in funding and a £900,000 federal grant from the US National Institute of Mental Health, in fact.
Nectome aims to achieve this feat by using a high-tech embalming process to preserve the human brain. However, in order for it to work (in theory) you have to be euthanised first.
The company's plan is to connect a living person with a terminal illness to a heart-lung machine, so they can then pump the embalming chemicals into the carotid arteries that reside in the neck.
The benefits? The chance to live forever in digital form. The idea is that scientists in the future will scan your brain and create a computer simulation of yourself.
However, the process is described by the company itself as ‘100% fatal'. Also, as no successful trials have been completed, it’s probably best to wait and see.
Another fair warning, just to sign up for the waiting list you have to put down a £7,600 deposit.
While this may sound completely unbelievable, here’s what Google’s director of engineering, Ray Kurzweil, had to say: “We're going to become increasingly non-biological to the point where the non-biological part dominates, and the biological part is not important any more.
"In fact, the non-biological part -the machine part -will be so powerful it can completely model and understand the biological part.”
Another company researching into ways humans can live on via digital consciousness,
according to ABC Finance, is the Terasem Movement Foundation. This organisation is looking to create ‘mindware’ which would be used as part of a ‘nanotechnological body’ (a robot essentially) and allow you to live without the constraints of pesky things like death and old age. Crikey. For now, it's all research, discussion etc., but it's somewhat shocking to think that billionaires are investing in projects to lengthen their lives. Well, actually it's not. Immortality is something that (some) humans have long sought after. But the idea that such a feat could be made possible, well it sounds like the work of a Black Mirror episode. Oh wait... I guess, we'll have to wait and see if ever-lasting life ever becomes a (simulated) reality - and whether it will ever become one available to the mass.
