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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 devlux on Thursday March 17 2016, @02:37AM
Sorry but your sarcasm detector appears to be damaged.
I believe what I believe that based on the fact we have documented religions cropping up including persecution of his worshippers.
Someone likely existed who had the name and developed a serious following. Enough of a following that this zombie cult spent the first couple hundred years of it's existence being fed to lions. This is documented historical fact. No one altered anything there and we have proof that eventually the roman pantheon fell to be replaced by Jesus and 12 of his buddies plus his mother and very likely his wife. (He is called Rabbi in the scriptures, you don't get that title unless you're married guys, sorry).
As for the scriptures themselves, quite literally Jesus offers a single command and that is to love one another. Everything else is just there to support his claim to be speaking on God's behalf. After his death you get all kinds of crazy hair splitting about doctrine specifics, but that's so each person can disobey the command to love one another, and do so in their own special way. :)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday March 17 2016, @08:50PM
That "first hundred years being fed to lions" is nonsense. There were occasional persecutions against Christians, as against anyone else who refused to worship the Emperor, but it wasn't anything consistent, and many high officials of the Empire were acknowledged Christians, including the General who lead the Roman forces to exterminate the Nazarenes...and I believe he did that on his own initiative.
Rebellious slaves were the ones commonly fed to the lions, and it's true that some of them were Christians, and used that as their excuse for being rebellious. But they were usually thrown to the lions for being rebellious, not for being Christians. Don't believe "Quo Vadis" or other historical novels, or, in fact, most histories written or edited by priests. (Some of them were devoted to truth, but more of them were devoted to their religion.)
FWIW the Emperor Constantine was in power from from 306 to 337 AD, so that puts an absolute limit on the duration of sustained persecution, and Nero was Emperor from 54 to 68 AD, and the fire was in 64 AD which marks the start of the major persecutions (which, as I said, were episodic). It's true that Nero needed a scapegoat, and chose the Christians as a group that could be scapegoated without doing much harm to the Empire. And he was corrupt, cruel, and probably suffered from lead poisoning. But he was only emperor for four years after the fire, and the succeeding emperors were much less interested with fomenting riots. Yes, that sounds like 200 years, but most of the time the laws weren't enforced except against those who the powers that be already had it in for. And many legions were predominantly Christian...at least in name. (More were Mithraists, of course.)
N.B.: The Romans were much more concerned with controlling rebellious slaves than they were with what religion anyone had. Second was concern with conrolling rebellious Plebians. Again, religion wasn't a concern, though it could be an excuse. This was before the time when controlling rebellious army troops ranked near the top. (I'm not sure how they felt about rebellious generals...but after Julius Caesar that had to be another major concern...which means during the entire Imperial period.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by devlux on Friday March 18 2016, @12:43AM
I want to believe you, but there are no citations. Sounds like a reasonable premise but I have decades of indoctrination to fight here.
Come on, throw me a link or two here :)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday March 18 2016, @06:29PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians [wikipedia.org]
That was from a quick Google search on christian imperial roman legal procedure. My original references were from books that have long since (20 years or so) been returned to the library, and probably wouldn't be accessible.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.