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: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 17 2016, @02:58PM
What's wrong with the termination of any semblance of self? Is the ego even designed or suitable for immortality? That's really a philosophical discussion as I truly see myself as an immortal being already. Just one with an infinite number of faces, over a spiraling space-time, that all happened in a single moment :) This one little ego speaking with your one little ego isn't that big of deal in the face of the infinite existence out there. I'm more than EdIII, which is just a pseudonym anyways, that is also more than himself too. My "adventure" with death, isn't. I never said I believed in death as oblivion.
I deem it wrong. And if ego is not "suitable" for immortality, then I'll have plenty of time to find what is, or alternately, find ways to end my existence. And your beliefs in death don't mean a thing to me.