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While many tech moguls dream of changing the way we live with new smart devices or social media apps, one Russian internet millionaire is trying to change nothing less than our destiny, by making it possible to upload a human brain to a computer, reports Tristan Quinn. "Within the next 30 years," promises Dmitry Itskov, "I am going to make sure that we can all live forever."
It sounds preposterous, but there is no doubting the seriousness of this softly spoken 35-year-old, who says he left the business world to devote himself to something more useful to humanity. "I'm 100% confident it will happen. Otherwise I wouldn't have started it," he says. It is a breathtaking ambition, but could it actually be done? Itskov doesn't have too much time to find out.
"If there is no immortality technology, I'll be dead in the next 35 years," he laments. Death is inevitable - currently at least - because as we get older the cells that make up our bodies lose their ability to repair themselves, making us vulnerable to cardiovascular disease and other age-related conditions that kill about two-thirds of us.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35786771
Horizon: The Immortalist, produced and directed by Tristan Quinn, will be shown on BBC 2 at 20:00 on Wednesday 16 March 2016 - viewers in the UK can catch up later on the BBC iPlayer
Dmitry Itskov, Founder of 2045 Initiative
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday March 16 2016, @06:58PM
No, the idea is not "copying". The idea is that at some point people will exist directly connected to "internet" 100% of the time with their processing capacity say 99.9999999% on the net. The old body will be in storage somewhere. Is that body still exists? Who cares? Especially if one can have 1000 perfect bodies attached and they are still under 1% of total sensory capacity. Will there be a personality split? It's a question, but probably not.
That's the idea.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @06:36PM
Mind is not consciousness. Mind is an abstraction and cannot experience anything. Consciousness is the experience of existence (movement etc) and the mind is part of what the consciousness experiences. Copying a mind does not copy the physical consciousness.
Until they can figure out how to isolate the physical substance of consciousness and transfer that then a copy of the mind portion of a being is only that. It could be a useful tool for others but the original/actual person will still be completely in their original body and die with it.