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Uploading the Mind to a Computer

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday March 16 2016, @05:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the ghost-in-the-machine dept.

AnonTechie writes:

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

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @06:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @06:36PM (#319654)

    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.