Posted on 04/05/2013 9:53:28 AM PDT by null and void
This article was posted on 04/01/2013
Technology may be advancing, but it doesn’t change the fact that the human body is limited. Eventually, human beings die.
Maybe immortality sounds like science fiction, especially when thinking about cyborgs, avatars, and robots, but for one Russian man, living forever in a machine’s body is the future, and it’s not so far away.
After Dmitry Itskov made a fortune as founder of a web publishing company, New Media Stars, he began thinking about the meaning of life and consciousness. Last February, Itskov gathered 30 top Russian scientists and created the “2045” Initiative in an attempt to make sense of it all and overcome the limitations of the human body.
The 2045 Initiative plan. (Image via 2045 Initiative)
The goal of the 2045 project is cybernetic immortality in about 30 years and features a number of “life-extension” projects.
The first phase of the avatar project is to create a humanoid robot, or avatar, along with a state-of-the-art brain-computer interface system. Then, a life-support system for the human brain needs to be developed and connected to the avatar. Next, the team of scientists needs to create an artificial brain to transfer original, individual consciousness into the avatar. A final goal that is a further off is the creation of hologram bodies that the 2045 initiative refers to as “bodies of light.”
The avatars will comprise software packages of artificial intelligence so the development of consciousness will really involve updating software.
The brain transplant will not be the final solution to immortality, but will provide time for scientists to further develop technology and make it possible for a person’s consciousness to transfer to a fully non-biological carrier. In the meantime, it could benefit those with disabilities. (Imagine a paralyzed person regaining the ability to walk or a blind person seeing).
Itskov and supporters envision a life where these avatars can be used to replace humans that work in dangerous professions such as policemen and firefighters to eliminate risk of death.
According to the 2045 website, one day technologies such as phones and computers that currently exist outside of the body could be included right inside of the avatar.
Your avatar existence may actually be affordable, too. The group plans for mass production that will make them as affordable, efficient, and cost effective as today’s cars.
The 2045 Initiative envisions futuristic possibilities similar to those in the James Cameron movie, Avatar.
The project is based on studies by the Russian scientist Vladimir Deikhov, who specializes in organ transplantation.
Last month, Itskov wrote a letter to the United Nations, asking for support in this initiative.
“We believe that to move to a new stage of human evolution, mankind vitally needs a scientific revolution coupled with significant spiritual changes, inseparably linked, supplementing and supporting of each other. The vector of future development provided by technological advancement should assist the evolution of the consciousness of humanity, the individual and society, and be the transition to neo-humanity,” Itskov stated in the letter.
The 2045 Initiative will a hold a two-day conference in New York on June 15-16 to address the new strategy for human evolution. The conference will showcase technologies that are not yet available to the public.
Learn more about your future immortality on the 2045 website.
Read more about the goals of 2045 in the UN letter. Download it below.
And an Army of Freepers who never die to whine about Bill and Hillary!!!
I would take Option B, until my human brain kicked the bucket, then my soul would go into heaven, but before my brain died I would take weekly backups so I (my memories etc but not soul) would be re-born as a souless robot that would exist to stick a fork into the eyes of every liberal robot i cam across :)
I think we should embrace this tech it would make colonizing places like the moon VERY VERY easy!!! Imagine a suburban setting where you look up and sky is black and there is no air (so you have to use short range radio to emulate sound) and people and family are all robots working on the moon going about their lives and maybe building habitats for the more squishy still living humans that have life support systems!
I like this idea, but if Robot “reborn” humans have voting rights we better embrace this tech or the dims will take over for good, we need to be thinking about upgrading the freepers!
There is no need to remove the brain from the head and no need to transplant into a robotic body.
The critical thing is connecting the brain to external computer gear. What good would extended life be without sight/hearing/touch/taste/smell ? We don't have the tech just now to handle the interfacing but it's coming along quickly.
A brain could be kept alive for a time now without a body... but without I/O there is no point.
At some point it will be possible to grow a new body and place the brain within it. Nanotechnology will enable such things. Surgical skills are far too crude to connect a brain to a new body..it will take nano robotic skills to do such things. Human hands are much too crude and slow for such advanced work. Once nanotech enables working at the cellular level then almost anything is possible...nerve repair, organ and limb rebuilding..etc.
Once the modern digital computer was conceived we were set on a path to immortality. Thanks go to these two guys :-)
The computer is an amplifier for the human mind... it will allows us to do amazing things...the technology is still in its infancy.
With the way this country is going I am glad I have an expiration date.
Increasing the distance between your atoms is not equivalent to killing you. Such an increase happens whenever you take a deep breath.
One could say that the totality of those atoms will cease to function as a biological, sentient computer. But this also happens every night, when our bodies switch into mental regeneration mode and are no longer under our control. Is a sleeping man alive? If yes, he is just as alive as grass.
By the way, one of ST:TNG episodes is entirely built around the idea that humans retain consciousness while in transport.
It reassembles an exact copy that, if it is alive, has no human soul and no intelligence.
If the copy is exact then nothing will be lost. If something is lost then the copy is not exact.
As matter of fact, most cells that human bodies are built with do not live forever. They have very short lifespan after which they are replaced with their copies.
In this aspect it is interesting that in ST:TNG transporters are used for transportation, but never for medical purposes. It would be very attractive to make changes in the pattern buffer before reconstituting the person. This would allow to heal *anything* in a second. ST:TNG stories carefully steer around long term storage of human patterns, but the issue did arise in a couple of episodes. It may be that the pattern is of holographic nature, where every bit is affected by all atoms and affects all atoms of the object - so it is computationally difficult to make targeted modifications.
Look up the story "Think Like a Dinosaur" -- it covers this exact topic (minus any reference to Star Trek).
“I think they already did this with Jimma Carter.”
The best thing a politician does is die. Imagine a world where every Senator and dictator lived forever. Imagine a world where liberal actors continue to instruct us on how to live forever. Imagine Jimmy Carter assaulting Israel and embarrassing the United States for the next 300 years. Would young Marines continue to volunteer to fight and die for leaders who will live forever?
I’m a programmer by trade and I can say one thing, no one creates any software without “removal” functionality. While you are in testing phases, if you are testing the creation process, you need functionality to remove the test creations. Once a system like this is up and going, the chances that they disable the “removal” functionality is next to nil. I wouldn’t ever trust something like that. Just another plan by Dr Evil to control people.
What could possibly go wrong?
Didn’t I read somewhere that no part of your body is more than 8 years old? In the time span, all of your living cells from that point in your life will have died and been replaced by new ones, in most cases many times over. Effectively, we ‘die’ and regenerate several times in a lifetime....
There is one episode of the New Generation where Dr. Crusher uses the transporter to cancel the effects of some sort of subspace illness that causes its victims to age quickly.
That's all I remember.
Star Trek started getting too silly near the end with all of the deus ex machina that were laying about to solve all of the problems in an instant: replicators, transporters, tachyon beams. Star Trek Voyager was especially keen on using tachyons to reverse time in order to cancel the effects of a disaster and get them out of impossible situations.
Curing all diseases by transporting a person with all of his parts but just minus the disease (e.g. cancer cells, etc.) would eliminate all of the drama.
My take on the star trek transporter:
It breaks you up into billions of pieces, effectively killing you. It reassembles an exact copy that, if it is alive, has no human soul and no intelligence.
This explain Captain Janeway, No Soul!
I like me some Gits!
Then there’s that last bit of the New Generation (or was it Deep Six Nine?) that had two versions of Riker due to a transporter accident.
That's the main reason I gave up on ST:V early in it's run.
The overly-PC crew? Fine, whatever, this is Roddenberryverse, so it's par for the course.
Janeway summoning all of her indignation to produce... a bleat? Whatever.
Resolving the crisis of the week with "temporal anomalies" two ****ing weeks in a row??? Now you're just insulting me.
I don’t understand that.
Yeah, you’d never get to find out what happens after you die.
Sheldon Cooper calls it “The Singularity” ...he was working on it as well.
It's related to why a large portion of atheists are atheist. They are terrified that God exists because they knowingly and gleefully are evil and refuse to change their ways. Therefore they decide to "believe" that there is no God.
If someone never dies they will never need to stand before the Lord and be held accountable for their actions.
You really believe that?
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