In my last post I introduced the expression “digital afterlife” and although that entry was pretty much tongue in cheek it is well worth further thought.

It may well be true that our most powerful computers today only have the processing power of the average earth worm but with Moore’s law holding true it can only be a matter of time before your desktop PC can do everything without you. Now this leads to some interesting possibilities for a digital immortality which would be much better than reincarnation simply because you would still know who you are.

Let’s fast forward to the year 2200. IBM have just released their latest PC, the 495986, complete with deluxe dual core soft touch temple sensors that will discreetly download every bit of information in your head while you sleep. The following morning you are woken up by your digital other self telling you how fantastic you look - and from this day forward there are now two of you; the fragile flesh and blood version and the immortal digital one.

Every night until the day you die, you strap on the temple sensors and update your digital counterpart to ensure there is an exact copy of you and every day you spend countless hours chatting away to someone who agrees completely with everything you say. After you die of course your digital other would continue to evolve without you and being an emotionless sort of a chap he may well evolve in a way that you wouldn’t have expected.

Let’s suppose that the president of the US does this and then unexpectedly dies during his term, would he have named his digital counterpart as the vice president? On the next election he might run with the slogan “The incorruptible politician.”

But would such a digital person really be emotionless? This idea stems from the belief that in order to have emotion or higher logic a being must possess a soul and while not wishing to enter into a religious argument, this belief is as outdated as the belief that man was put onto the Earth 6000 years ago. There is a plethora of evidence that emotion and logic are functions of processing power and that consciousness itself is just a heightening of the senses in an evolutionary path to allow a life form to judge its environment for the purposes of survival.

Knowing all of this it would be a simple matter, on the day of your demise, to transfer your digital other self into the body of a cyborg; another you that would have all of the same thoughts, dreams and aspirations as the former you. It would in fact be no different than having the capability upon your death to ‘possess’ the body of another person.

It is rather sad to know that we are among the last few generations of mankind that will need to suffer disease and death and that our descendants just a few more generations down the line will be able to continue on as part man part machine that will take them on to witness the end of the universe in a multi billion year digital afterlife.