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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 bitstream on Wednesday March 16 2016, @08:20PM
If you have time on your side then you also have way more opportunities to figure out how to break free.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday March 16 2016, @10:53PM
The solution to be free is simple. Kill the 1%. However, I don't want to do that. Immortality in a possible Utopia just isn't worth the karmic debt I believe I would face. Deep down, I don't believe in immortality anyways. I might best push off the fires of hell for a million years, maybe a billion if really lucky, but the odds are simply not in my favor for infinite existence. Infinite existence still seems like a curse, even in a Utopia, too.
We don't need immortality, or we already have it. Immortality is the fact we are a species in this together. I see our immortality as a function of our gestalt being; All humans together make an immortal entity. Our children are our immortality, and the solution to be free and immortal is simply loving each other more. As new age and sappy as that might sound, it's still nonetheless true.
Breaking free? You can't. This planet is effectively getting smaller all the time, and the influence and power of the 1% ever increasing. Distance between somebody and the 1% is directly proportional to their effective levels of freedom. There are simply some human beings that are intolerable to live with, and only be removing your interaction do you succeed in finding peace.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:03AM
Immortality is the fact we are a species in this together.
That's worthless to me as an individual, so who cares.
All humans together make an immortal entity.
The human race is far from immortal.
Our children are our immortality
They're certainly not *my* immortality, unless I can take over their bodies somehow. Not that I would want to do that anyway. Also, if you were not referring to children making the species "immortal", plenty of people don't have or want children.
As new age and sappy as that might sound, it's still nonetheless true.
No, it's just new age nonsense. Love won't make me literally immortal. Besides, I thought you didn't want to be immortal?
Distance between somebody and the 1% is directly proportional to their effective levels of freedom.
That doesn't mean it will continue. A few hundred years ago, we had slavery in the US, but it ended eventually. also, women couldn't vote, we had Jim Crow laws, and all sorts of other nonsense that we overcame. Improvement isn't impossible.
and only be removing your interaction do you succeed in finding peace.
You can't decide what does and doesn't help others find peace.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday March 17 2016, @05:47AM
You're the person that needs to die then. The reason this planet sucks so fucking much, is that you in particular are on it. Along with millions of worthless sacks of shit who think like you do. Flamebait? Hardly. Deathbait, and I'm serious.
If you refuse to see yourself as part of a greater whole, then you're the problem. It's your narcisissm that refuses to see our human civilization as a group effort, and therefore, IT ISN'T.
So just fucking die sooner please so the rest of that are still alive do live life committed to the rest of us, and that we really are all in this together. I for one, sure as fuck, don't want to be on the same planet as an asshole like yourself. After all, the only thing that matters is what affects you positively as an individual correct?
No, that's an assumption. The SUN is far from immortal and will one day die in a spectacular fashion. Humanity may well have moved to Sirius if we can manage it. About the only concession you will get out of me is the heat death of the universe, and even then, that just means that NOTHING is immortal.
There's some semantics for you :)
We've already stipulated that other people's well being means precisely dick to you. I'm not surprised that don't care about the children or our collective progeny.
No, you're just being a fucking dick with poor reading comprehension. I never said love would make us immortal, only that love could provide the foundation for it. Something I don't feel the need to explain further, since you made your spectacular level of narcissism quite clear. What could you understand about love, if you can't understand we are in all in this together?
Through treating each other better, you know with love, that will literally put you in Heaven on Earth, depending on your level of commitment. Which I realize for you, that everyone else being happy, prosperous, and immortal might not be your heaven.
Your snark aside, I stated that I was ALREADY immortal. What I also stated was that I was completely unwilling to enjoy biological immortality in my current human body while also being forced to enjoy it alongside the rest of you. Slight difference there.
My immortality comes in many ways, all of them I'm sure new age nonsense to you. However, what's not new age nonsense, is the idea we live forever through our children. That's an idea you will find throughout literature throughout history. It's something we've long decided to tell ourselves to deal with death. So you can call me a new age moron if I talk about certain kinds of reincarnation and whatnot, but otherwise? Dude, these are ancient fucking concepts.
You're correct. Things will improve for the 1% because only their interests are represented. Also, the slavery deal? You conveniently forget it took civil war for it to end. In other words, a lot of 1%'ers will die before improvement comes.
Improvement is not possible now, because that's how much the 1% improved it for themselves. This system we have now is terminal, and cannot be changed from the outside. It can only die and be replaced with a newer or modified system. That always occurs through bloodshed. So don't begrudge me my biological death, when to enjoy immortality it requires me to kill quite a number of people before I can spend my life in peace with the rest of you. If you actually converted me over to your side, I would just start killing people in a very discriminating and quiet manner. Why not? I'm immortal and the only person that matters is me. Therefore, for my convenience, I will kill a great many of you. Thankfully, I do believe otherwise, which is why I don't have a problem dying. It's ok to die.
The 1% are laughing their asses off at that statement. Yeah, they can, and often do, decide what can and can't help others find peace. Even literally. Much of the 1% has been involved with wars of conquest. I'm pretty sure they've been doing a brisk business in fucking up other's peace for quite some time now.
In other words, ask a Syrian if he feels others cannot influence his sense of peace in the world.
P.S - Please remember that part about dying sooner than the rest of us. I have no animosity towards you (truly), but we are all much better off in your kind just dies in a fire. It's because I know that probably won't happen, that I'm content and grateful I get to die and get away from you guaranteed. I have no interests in eternity with beings that will only live for themselves.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 17 2016, @03:54PM
You're the person that needs to die then. The reason this planet sucks so fucking much, is that you in particular are on it. Along with millions of worthless sacks of shit who think like you do. Flamebait? Hardly. Deathbait, and I'm serious.
If you refuse to see yourself as part of a greater whole, then you're the problem. It's your narcisissm that refuses to see our human civilization as a group effort, and therefore, IT ISN'T.
So just fucking die sooner please so the rest of that are still alive do live life committed to the rest of us, and that we really are all in this together. I for one, sure as fuck, don't want to be on the same planet as an asshole like yourself. After all, the only thing that matters is what affects you positively as an individual correct?
Why should I listen to someone with such a poisonous outlook on life? First, you rant about killing the "1%" and now, someone has disagreed with you and should die. There is an obvious solution here.
Change your beliefs, bleed yourself of this poison. If I want to kick around for 100,000 years and you don't, it's no matter to either of us. If I'm not into continuing the homo sapiens thing, what is it to you? If you believe in an afterlife and I don't, so what? My flaws are not so dire that you should be so concerned about them as to want them stamped out forever.
The Hell within him, for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step no more then from himself can fly