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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: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 17 2016, @03:19PM
Maybe there is something in the afterlife? Quite possibly. Will it be better than here? That's probably a certainty. I partly suspect that where we are now, is actually hell. All of us are in hell, and the purpose of life here is to understand the true value of heaven. It may be possible that we already in the afterlife being punished, as I find it sincerely hard to not view my life here as a punishment for some mortal sin elsewhere. I honestly wonder sometimes how I offended God so fucking much he sent me here.
Not much of a punishment, is it? Even if I were to buy into your mental outlook, the answer is obvious. God made something imperfect. So things will be imperfect. Not a point to getting worked up over it.
Further, I think imperfection would be baked in to anything God created, else he would be copying himself which would be impossible to do in a reality where only one perfect being can exist.