The Steam, Water, and Ice of Modern Communication

Like my religious friends, I too would like to live forever. The thought of
there being an end to my learning–a point at which my lifelong tool
sharpening goes to waste–is not a happy one. Here’s the only way I can see
it happening (and I don’t think it’s too farfetched, either).

We simply have to make it far enough into the future to be able to map our
brains–to some acceptable degree–into digital form, which could then roam
the world virtually, interacting and growing as it goes. I have roughly
50-70 years (depending on how good science is at extending life) for this to
become possible.

Something like this would provide a relatively smooth transition for those
about to pass. You spend the 50K (or whatever it costs), go into the
lab/company that’s going to do it, and spend the next day or week getting
scanned.

You could then spend time with your digital self, confirming that it feels
like “you”. Ask yourself questions, see what you find humorous, see what you
find attractive, etc. You’ll also spend time customizing your new
appearance–which is how you’ll be viewed in the various real virtual
worlds you’ll interact in, e.g. dating sites, etc.

After some period of tuning and optimizing you’ll declare this entity to be
enough like you that you won’t feel as if you’re truly dying. At that point,
you, and hopefully your partner, will have a great meal and lay together in
your bed to sleep–never to wake–which will be much easier to do when you
know that some significant part of you remains behind.

You can even have one of your partner back there in the virtual world as
well–both of your remaining eternally together to explore the world.

Some will say that this would be a hollow existence, with no capacity to
experience simple tactile pleasures, such as holding hands, or drinking
coffee. But I disagree. I think that since all those senses are ultimately
chemical in nature, they too can be emulated in the virtual world.

This, of course, presents a myriad of issues. If it’s all digital, that
means someone is controlling the pleasure and pain each avatar receives.
There essentially has to be central management of the experiences being
pumped into each persons’ interfaces, and that responsibility (and power) is
nothing less than godlike.

Still. This is, without any doubt in my mind, an eventuality. It will
happen. Not just so people can escape death, but also so people can become
different things. People will have presences in the other world long before
they physically die, in fact. And they’ll be coaching them along and growing
them their whole lives.

So when it comes time to die, you accept physical death a lot more readily
because–in many ways–you’re actually more alive online than you were
physically. You’ve done more things there. You’ve met more people there.
You’ve been the person you wanted to be.

I’m not sure 50 years will be enough time to see this happen, but I can
hope. ::