Throughout history, humans have chased the dream of eternal life. From explorers hunting for the fountain of youth to today’s scientists developing technology to prolong our lifespan. Some even speculate about preserving a terminally ill person indefinitely until a cure is found. But what if we could take a different approach and preserve our consciousness by uploading it into a supercomputer? This mind-blowing concept is known as mind uploading, and there’s already a startup working on it. But hold on, it comes with a catch – the process is fatal. Intrigued? Let’s dive in.
Humans have an insatiable desire for immortality, and this dream isn’t just fantasy anymore. Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that by 2045, we might upload our entire minds to computers, with our bodies completely replaced by machines by the century’s end. While this might sound overly optimistic, many believe it’s just a matter of time. Before we can upload our minds, several technological hurdles need to be overcome: scanning, processing power, and storage space.
The quest starts with brain scanning. The ultimate goal is mapping the complete connectome – a comprehensive map of the brain. So far, we’ve only achieved this with a tiny nematode, which has about 300 neurons. In comparison, the human brain boasts over 80 billion neurons interacting through about 100 trillion synapses. Beyond neurons and synapses, there are also neurotransmitters, proteins, and hormones to consider. Current imaging technology is just not up to the mark. We have methods like slicing the brain into millions of pieces for detailed electron microscope scans, but this is destructive.
Then comes the issue of processing power and storage. A cubic millimeter of mouse brain tissue, which is roughly the size of a grain of sand, requires about two petabytes (two million gigabytes) of data storage. When you scale this up to the entire human brain, you’re looking at around two million petabytes, or two thousand exabytes. To put that in perspective, all of Google’s storage combined is about 15 exabytes. So, you’d need over 100 times what Google currently has. This would cost an astronomical amount—around 10 billion dollars per month for a single brain!
Despite these daunting challenges, technological advances are not slowing down. Moore’s Law predicts computing power doubles every 18 months, making this feat more achievable with time. Robert McIntyre, an MIT graduate, founded Nectome, a company aimed at backing up your brain. For a fee, you can join their waiting list to have your brain imaged and stored in the cloud. The major caveat? The procedure is fatal. The journey to digital immortality involves making the ultimate sacrifice.
Unlike traditional cryonics, which might damage brain tissue, Nectome has developed a method called aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation (ASC). This technique preserves the brain at a nanometer level, including the entire connectome, for potentially thousands of years. The idea isn’t to revive the brain physically, but to extract the information within.
Imagine your brain gets backed up and uploaded. Your consciousness continues digitally, possibly forever. You could live in a physical body or a mechanical form, feeling, loving, and experiencing just like a human. Alternatively, you could inhabit a simulation, living out any fantasy or world you can dream of, endlessly customizing your existence.
But immortality raises many questions. Would you still be human? What happens if a digital mind is corrupted or hacked? The potential to suffer eternally with unchecked issues like paranoia or psychosis is terrifying. Even in a perfect scenario, would infinite life eventually bore us into wishing for true death?
Right now, digital immortality remains a distant concept. So, it’s best to cherish our tangible lives, filled with irreplaceable, real-world experiences and human connections. After all, maybe it’s the very fact that life is finite that makes it so precious.
Stay curious, live fully, and appreciate every moment you have. And if you’d like to continue exploring these fascinating topics, don’t forget to like, share this post.
