I am not a hologram.
Yet.
As Jordana Divon, a Yahoo! Canada Shine On blogger, wrote on Wed, 1 Aug, 2012;
On his website, entitled 2045, “Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov… claims he has assembled a team of top scientists to work on… a six-stage project that would ultimately see our brains housed in a fully functional holographic human avatar by the year 2045.
Itskov claims his idea will “free” the majority of people on the planet from “disease, old age and even death” through advanced neuroscience, nanotechnology and android robotics.
To fund his ambitious endeavour, Itskov has written an open letter to the world’s wealthiest flesh-and-blood denizens by appealing to what he hopes are their own delusions of grandeur. “Currently you invest in business projects that will bring you yet another billion. You also have the ability to finance the extension of your own life up to immortality,” he writes.
According to a diagram on Itskov’s website, the process will involve creating an artificial brain, a mind transfer into a completely artificial body, the development of a hologram body and finally, a mind transfer into said hologram body.”
—
Uh… if this sounds bizarre to you, you really need to check out the website.
Yesterday I watched a seven minute promotional video posted there that made me feel like I was watching the original Total Recall. No kidding. I vacillated between “Oh wow, this is bizarre,” to “no, this must be an elaborate joke,” to a cotton-mouthed “This is terrifying,” to “I need to post this on my blog.”
The thought that whatever makes us human could be reduced to ones and zeroes uploaded into a mainframe that could project your consciousness and personality into a holo-body… is… is…
Some Yahoo! Commenters:
DNR: Maybe they should concentrate on finding cures for the diseases we have…not wasting time on this rubbish. Who really wants to live forever?
Jim J: I’d go for it as long as I had a space ship, my stratocaster, and they floated my brain in single malt scotch whisky.
M: What would be the point without love, sex and human touch, tingles, emotional warmth communicated physically and emotionally through the physical realm? Unless we were able to grow our own skin, bones and blood and feel things in a better body.
DarkBlonde: Blah. I want to die eventually.
In all seriousness, watch the video. I’m all for reaching our potential and all, but this is so “tower of Babel-ish” that I wonder what hellish fallout we’re dabbling with here. Didn’t they watch Prometheus? Jeez…
Does this freak you out, or is it just me? What makes us human? How does the image of God factor into all this?
Despite the misguided attempt of epic proportion, I wonder if this says something about human nature: We secretly know death is unnatural. We were never meant to die. But without God, it’s no wonder we seek out our own horrible methods to live forever.
But wait, wasn’t Jesus always describing himself as the Tree of Life? I wonder if this is exactly the need He was addressing.
Itskov is trying to offer the same thing, “don’t you want to live forever?”
True. Human attempts at the divine are, at the best, creepy… and at their worst, evil. Even when our quest is to answer a question planted by God himself.