The part about telomerase is quite interesting, but it just sounds far more likely to create wild cancerous growths than actually 'undo' aging.

But still I had not heard of that and it was interesting to find out about that.

I read the bit about 'the singularity' too but found the article mainly based on conjecture. It sounds like he's been watching too much Caprica 😉

His opening line about the speed of computers is no longer true, progress has slowed a lot in the last 5 - 10 years.

AI is probably going to become some sort of Holy Grail that humanity is constantly searcing for throughout the ages. 😆

I'll eat my words though if Skynet appears and blows us all up.

There is more chance of transferring your consciousnes into a dog than a computer as far as I'm concerned 🙂 But no-one wants to talk about that hehe

Did you ever hear about the University professor from Redding, England that became the worlds first Cyborg? He had a basic chip imlpanted in his arm that allowed him to open special doors, the last I heard about him he was getting ready to have a more advanced chip implanted in his brain, but that was a few years ago.

Edit// I found this about him:

I haven't heard of this guy that is experimenting with cybernetics. And depending on the implant I would contemplate it myself to a point. My biggest interest is the offloading of your consciousness into a computer or maybe even transplant into another brain.

I think we are getting there with the speed of the computers its just we don't know how to put them to good use. I did a quick search and found that IBM has the fastest that came out this past year: http://www.worldbreakingrecord.com/2010 ... -z196.html

Think the key here is size and whether we will ever get the chips with this much horsepower to be small enough to implant.

So were not going to have any Total Recall any time soon? I think we are going to first master the art of manufacturing organs out of out own cells first and then work on the brain. Only thing we got working against us Dan is time. 30-40yrs from now we are going to be some senior citizens 🙂

If there is any hope we went from 8-Track to MP3's and HD Radio... and there is no way I am transferring my consciousness to my dog be she does some weird stuff and on occasion eats poo 😀

😆 I only used a dog as an example since I happened to have one near me at the time ;). But what about another Human... thats more likely than a computer transferrence, however it seems totally outside the realms of possibilty to me, but believe me I would like to be wrong, this stuff is cool. 🙂

I honestly feel that at the moment we are like very ancient man looking up at the sky seeing the birds flying and thinking; one day I'll be able to do that, maybe even in my lifetime. 😉

Or more apt would be how we and other space fanatics look up at the stars and think.... one day. 😉

Well if your taking supercomputers into account then I suppose we are closer than it would seem.

But AFAIK there is an unquantifiable state to a human brain, which cannot be duplicated or even simulated on a silicon based computer using current techniques, even theoretically.

EG, a lot happens in the brain and we cannot even see or detect it, its like it happens spontaneously, which I believe is the quantum element to the human brain.

I think I actually find the idea rather frightening. You could say goodbye to a lot of freedom, things seem bad enough as it is.... However, on the other hand part of me thinks it would be extremely cool 😀 Thats probably the part of me that likes playing computer games, whereas the part of me that likes walking down beaches and enjoying nature/freedom is frightened by it 😉

The Gov has enough info on us all without them being able to see exactly who you are, who you are with, where you are and even your physical state of being.

But those are just my paranoid ramblings 😉

That is a huge worry for me as well because I tend to lean on the side of the government knowing too much and they would love the idea to piggyback some stealth tech in everyones bodies to do whatever they might need. 🙂

Could we soon be able to do the things like in the movie 'The Final Cut'? Where we can have our memories saved off and if you could store memories and personality traits cold you then become immortal? (or least as long as you have a back up :))

And should computers have advanced AI to a fact that they know they are going to die? Would they resist...?

I can already see the impact of social networks on my teenagers. They hardly go out any more and they have no clue what to do with themselves with out it. Technology is taking over our lives and I think the demand for the technology will spur innovation to all areas.

Think about the lucrative business we could start Dan giving people their long lost memories back with a simple 30min procedure. I have to admit I wouldn't mind an implant that would help me recall everything (in detail) that I have read over the years. It would be like your LtCmdr Data 🙂

I'd advise you to read the article "Is google making us stupid" ( http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... upid/6868/), by Nicholas Carr.

Anyway, the interference (in the sense of interaction) between man and "machine" and true AI has been a long standing theme in the Sci-Fi world. Of which, regarding the digitalization of the mind, I recomend the Terminal experiment (Robert J. Sawyer).

At the end of the day, we do not know were we are going - but that is not news. But cybernetics and genetic engineering are going to interact and play an important - although "stressing" - role in our future. The role of government in the transparent society (David Brin) that technology brings (the end of anonymity) is up for grabs - Who will guard the guardians? (Juvenal's "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" for those more latin inclined :ugeek:).

Well, sorry for the useless rant 😳

I have been following his progress over the past few years and in this case I feel Star Trek may have been a bit prophetic in the sense there will end up being a Borg race. In my opinion that show tended to show what humans would end up doing, not some alien species (think of the flip phone). I wouldn't mind having the ability to remember many past ideas and programming knowledge I have long since forgotten over the past 30 years. But it would come with the downside of it could be abused by those providing such tech such as eavesdropping on our very thoughts.

As fast as our society is advancing many would welcome such 'enhancements' no matter the consequences, I expect if it doesn't get outlawed that it would end up splitting our race into those whom are enhanced and those whom aren't, who do you think would end up being at the top of the heap? Most likely not normal humans...

In a way it is a bit of a natural evolution of what humans are, the merging of humans and machines, we really love our machines so what would be the next logical step in your opinion? 😉

I tend to agree with the idea of technology becoming integrated into our bodies at a biological level. Eye-glasses, headphones, pacemakers, these are all debatably cyborg technologies.

I've never understood the appeal of 'uploading' to a machine though. If you're copying the human mind and then disposing of the body, all you've done is produce an artificial copy of yourself and died in the process. You wouldn't 'be' the program running on the computer, you'd be dead. Gone. Kaput

Interesting article and in some ways I do feel like I have lost a step in concentration over the years. Crap I was starting to loose focus just getting through the article 🙂

Maybe not to merge with them but to use them as tools to make our lives better and longer if possible. And if you have ever watched the movie Wall-E if you pay attention to the message and how reliant we were on all of the robots that the humans forgot how to walk and to basically do anything. Could we get some dependent that life couldn't sustain itself with out the technology?

Without the mind we are dead but can we live without our bodies? I say we could. Yes your memories and thoughts could be transfered into another medium but would it truly matter? I think you would just adjust and think that you were still alive. The human instinct or least what your brain tells you is that you want to survive and to live. Yes we have come to terms with death and that it will eventually happen to all of us, but what if you were offered the chance to live on. Your brain, your thoughts would lean towards preservation.

Now that truly would be awesome. My memory is crap enough as it is (at 28) what on earth will it be like when Im 80? 😀 On second thoughts.... there are some memories that you wouldnt want to remember in perfect clarity (Or shouldnt want to 😉 ). Who would want to relive all their lost loves... 😉 The first heartbreak or first death of a friend or loved one... But remembering childhood would be a blast 🙂 And like you said, all of the books you have read, although it would mean you could never again re-read your favorite book hehe.

Perhaps then Darkone, we should invent a selective memory restoral 🙂

But its like Voxel said, you would actually die. You would have no real experience of living inside the computer. All that would be there is the simulation or copy of you and although it could well be a near perfect copy, it doesnt stop the fact that you already died and would have moved on or whatever.

If you could actually extract a consciousness, and not copy and delete, then perhaps you could actually experience it.

Now back to Startrek, its a bit like their transporter systems. Now afaik our current understanding of these says it is actually possible on the atomic scale but how it works is the object being teleported is actually destroyed and then duplicated at the destination point.

So... this brings up all kinds of interesting questions if a human actually has a soul...

Yeah the servers took up the whole room but the Watson just won in Jeopardy: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/w ... &FEEDNAME=

From what I gather the computer is getting the questions the same way the human players are and just using its huge database to get the answer. This is an impressive step in eventually having AI that can think and process input quickly via voice. It is really a great leap in AI for this event and what computers could do really soon without the big room full of servers.

That's what my comments were leaning too. Is that if you could extract/download your brain memories and functions and re-upload them to a new host. You of course would know of the procedure being done to you because when you awoke you would know you are no longer in the same body.

Teleportation (transporter) when you think about that aspect that we are being disassembled and reassembled in a different location seems unattainable because we would never have the tech to tag every atom and cell and put them back in the correct spot. Would we loose something in the way of function or cell deterioration? I think this process will be only for none living things when we finally do have this technology. But I guess you never know what we could come up with giving another 100+ years. In 100 years we have gone from horses to space shuttles/moon landers.

I don't think we can even do this with computers and regular data. Data can be extracted, but it is a copy, not the original. The original was on the computer you extracted it from 🙂

I would see better an hacking of the tegmark mathematical level that move your bidimesional quantum-digital being from one place to the other.

Waiting for that portable wormholes can do the job, maybe in a less elegant way.

In the end, if we have to go to impossible technological levels, I prefer to hack the universe(s) than to hack myself just to make a trip.

My reply to this may seem somewhat crude but I do think its rather genuine.

I think we will go one of two ways, I think we will flurish and blossom into something wonderful and amazing or we will burn out like a candle burning at both ends.

I think us as humans as a race have so much potential, like most sci fi programs ect, where we are the slightly under developed civilisation just embracing the frontier of space. Where all the older races see the potential we have but see the obvious flaws. I think that is both sadly deadly accurate and amazing to think of the wonderful future we can have.

In some ways I view the way we are today as like its our very own self contained babylon 5, one of the reasons I loved that program so much was the political intreague (sorry I know I spelt that word wrong) how we interect with other countries I dont see it any different to how they interacted with other alien races. one country protecting another one, one country hating another, hell you could relate russia and the USA to the narn and centuri.

I think its going to take a major major event to eventually unite us as a world together, even back when twin towers got blown up (not even going in the conspiscy bit) I thought that maybe what got our acts together, and for a short time afterwards it did seem like that is what it was doing. Unfortunatly the aftermath of what happened didnt work out and segragated us further away from our goverments.

a more general thought of a deadhead like me

is that really needed?

do we fear dead that much?

it's not that i hang on to a special religion or such, no i left that behind me since long.

in contrary i would say i believe we are gone when we are dead, no life after dead, no rebirth or anything, no certain hope for that, imo it has only been used to suppress mankind.

but i don't fear dead, i fear age and it's pains of course like all living creatures, but that's all.

i don't want to live longer, rather i like to live well and get the best out of it, as well as to help others to get the best out of it.

buddhist? not really...

...i'm not sure, strange things have happened in my life, you don't meet often a buddhist monk from tibet in his costume in a western civ. bar.

conclusion,

to me it's a waiste of time and sorry for my hard words, only that popular in science because you get very rich and famous* with that, because everybody seems to like to live longer or get old with no pain.

*besides of that a perfect tool to control mankind, be cautious 😉

i like to die "young", because i know "there is one child born in this world when i die to carry on, yippeeh" 😎

well thought s2odan

we are a lot more rather only a assembly of some cheap elements, each unique and precious, imo.

already it's not possible to feed a machine with what we are physically,

what we are as individual i really cannot imagine to reproduce that.

it has no matter, it's only a thought you can say, if you loose that thought your personality is gone.

it's a edge we walk on, it didn't takes much and you are a "dumb animal".

it needs only a tiny little piece of a organic substance, and your personality is vanished... (no, i won't tell you with what such is possible that's "forbidden" knowledge)

all your thoughts, imaginations, feelings, gone forever, what has left? a "sammelsurium" of cheap organic substances.

all you was and what has embossed you is physically present, stored somewhere as simple chemistry, but yet it's vanished if that "thought" is lost.

it's imaginable to "beam" our physical state including the stored embossing, but what about that "thought"? how can this be feed to a machine?