Huawei Prepares For Robot Overlords and Communication With the Dead (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report on Bloomberg: Chinese technology giant Huawei is preparing for a world where people live forever, dead relatives linger on in computers and robots try to kill humans. Kevin Ho, president of its handset product line said his company used science fiction movies like "The Matrix" to envision future trends and new business ideas. "Hunger, poverty, disease or even death may not be a problem by 2035, or 25 years from now," he said. "In the future you may be able to purchase computing capacity to serve as a surrogate, to pass the baton from the physical world to the digital world." He described a future where children could use apps like WeChat (Editor's note: WeChat is a popular instant messaging app in China and other Asian markets) to interact with dead grandparents, thanks to the ability to download human consciousness into computers.For those unaware, Huawei is a major Chinese conglomerate. The company, known for its network equipment, last year got some spotlight for its Nexus 6P smartphone.

Comments

"..you may be able to.."

[kheldan]

In the future, you may be able to:

• Download your brain into a computer construct
• Step into a transport booth and instantly be anywhere in the world
• Have Starships that travel many times the speed of light and take you to distant galaxies
• Never age, never be hungry, never get a disease
• Live in a world without poverty, fear, or war
• Discover Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Gods are actually real, you can meet them and sit down and have a drink and talk to them
• {insert other utter fantasy here}

..but it's not very likely any of those things will happen.

Hurr, you have no imagination!

On the contrary, I have a huge imagination, it's one of the things that makes me good at what I do -- but I also have a firm grip on reality and know the difference between it and fantasy -- and this guy from Huawei is spinning fantastic-sounding stuff just to get some attention. I rate it's credibility just slightly above things you hear out of North Korea.

Fun to think about such things though. And, you never know.. but I'm not holding my breath, either; I recommend others do the same.

Re:Immortality

[kheldan]

One of my favorite authors is Larry Niven, and he's covered quite a bit about people who more or less live forever ('boosterspice'), and the effects it has on their personalities and the choices they make. Very often it isn't pretty; some would commit suicide, probably in some spectacular way; some would turn to crime; some would inevitably turn to a neverending quest for power. To be fair about it, some would turn to bettering humankind. But, when you've lived so long that you've managed to conquer and master every single interest you've ever had in your life, what do you do then? 'Idle hands are the Devils playthings' as the saying goes. Imagine someone like Donald Trump, except he never ages, lives forever, is essentially unkillable, and he's getting really, really bored as the centuries roll by; what do you think he's going to do? Don't know about you, friend, but the thought makes my blood run cold.