Have you ever looked back at photos from days gone by and wondered why you were, quite simply, so hideous as a younger human being? Ever secretly and ashamedly pondered that, were you ever to meet your end in some heroic, headline-grabbing way, you'd hope that the media would at least use a nice photo of you to publicise it? You know, one where you didn't have acne, or draw comparisons with Gothmog from Lord of the Rings?
Well, there are further reasons to fear, my friends. For, as Stephen Cave, author of Immortality: The Quest To live Forever and How It Drives Civilisation, explains in a piece for Wired magazine, ‘one day you’ll live on in an avatar’. I’ll let Stephen explain:
‘the complete contents of your brain would be scanned regularly and archived. Then, should the worst happen -- as it surely one day will -- the scan would be used to provide the personality for a humanoid artificial intelligence, preferably in a suitably shapely body. The result of this mind uploading would be an avatar with your memories, beliefs, hopes and dreams - an avatar that thinks it is you.’
Clearly my first thought after reading this was of the ghosts of Harry Potter. There are the departed souls who go on to ‘the afterlife’, and those who are too afraid, who end up haunting school toilets or teaching History of Magic. It that what we want? In case you were looking for a more scientific explanation, as Stephen puts it:
‘There is a fundamental reason that you can never live on as bits and bytes: it is that you are an animal, a unique exemplar of the species homo sapiens. Any animal comes to an end when its vital functions stop permanently. Building an avatar whose memories are based on yours would do as much to bring you back to life as would building a matchstick model of your pancreas.’
Well said, Stephen. Stephen also appeared on BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves last night, talking about the book. As was made clear, we all want to live forever. Particularly the kids from Fame. You can listen to it here, from 12 minutes 20 seconds onwards. As Elaine Storkey said, the book is ‘a riveting read...excellent’.