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Download Your Brain

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the gonna-need-a-bigger-drive dept.

Nicholas Roussos writes "Futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson predicts that death will be avoidable in the year 2050 by downloading your brain to a computer. Unfortunately, he is also predicting that the process will be only available to the wealthy for years after its release. I guess we should all start saving our pennies now."

5 of 1,147 comments (clear)

  1. BS by astro_ripper · · Score: 5, Insightful
    As Penn and Teller have stated before:

    He picked those numbers for his theory because he'll be dead by then.

    The end.

  2. Not for me by e_AltF4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    NEVER do a backup without a working restore !

  3. self centered by spectrokid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    After I have gone, young people will come with new ideas, new dreams, new problems. They will require the (intellectual) space fat ass rich guys will claim for their eternal life. I do not believe I have achieved enough in this world for my mind to persist past my body. All good things come to an end, and this includes me!

    --

    10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then

  4. Yeah, whatever. by jd · · Score: 5, Insightful
    You may be able to download the electrical state - but that is FAR from certain, as the brain is very noisy, electrically - but how would you download the chemical state? Seratonin levels aren't exactly going to be trivial to scan, remotely.


    And once you have the chemical composition and the electrical composition, you ALSO need to know the wiring - the wiring between the neurons is unique to an individual, and isn't going to be easy to determine.


    Ok, so now you have all of the core information. Is it still useful? Well, no. You now need to know the physical layout of the brain - all the folds, the exact proximity of A to B, that sort of thing.


    Ok, is THIS enough? Still no. You still lack information on sensory input. You need to know what the range is on different nerves, because the brain is going to adjust to what the nerves deliver. If you don't know what the nerves deliver, then you don't know what sort of data the brain is expecting.


    NOW, is that enough? No. You need to know what the data is that is being fed into the brain. For example, those with tetrochromatic vision will be getting data in a whlly different format from those with trichromatic vision, and both will be different from those with bichromatic vision.


    Once you have all of this information, you MAY be able to reconstruct a person's brain well enough to be able to function identically. The keyword is MAY. As technology improves, our knowledge of the brain is improving. It is still seriously incomplete, but it is improving. There is so far no proof that we will ever know enough to actually duplicate the brain, although there is also no proof that we won't. All we have proof of, right now, is that we can't, right now.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  5. Re:It's a copy by h4rm0ny · · Score: 5, Insightful


    A sad scientist was once heard to say,
    To upload my brain, I have found a way,
    But my memory contains
    Things not public domain
    And I'd violate DMCA.

    Hello alcohol, goodbye Karma. 8) Seriously, I just got this image of the RIAA breaking into the lab 'cause the cloned brain remembered the Happy Birthday lyrics.


    --

    Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.