As I sit here tonight attempting to write an interesting introduction to my labor of love blog I affectionately titled Tethered Mind, I would like to share with you what my vision is for this blog and what I plan for its future. First of all, tethered is of course the word describing a mobile device going online. I adjectivise mind with this word in order to express the future prospect that we may be able to "upload" our minds to the internet or a CPU that would allow us to effectively clone our consciousness.
The terms "mind uploading, cybernetic immortality, and transhumanism" all relate to the subject I am referring to. In the future, it is presumed that we will learn enough about the way in which our brains and minds work in order to reverse engineer them to the point of duplication. There are proposed biological duplication methods that have potential, but I am more interested in the cybernetic immortality aspect, as I see it more feasible and worthwhile.
Imagine a world in which one can, through a website (program), create a clone of their conscious. This conscious will have all of the user's (useful) memories, mannerisms, preferences, quirks, and effectively the same emotions as the user. Prospectively, from inputting the most important data about oneself, it could be possible that a virtual self could live in a virtual world, acting out one's life in that virtual world.
In my opinion, this is the only way to truly find the fountain of youth. Though we will eventually advance scientifically to the level of replacing dead and diseased cells with new ones and thus greatly expanding our life spans, it still does not remove us from the physical limits of our universe. If we are preserved in digital form, it would be much more difficult to terminate us as long as there is an energy-providing source.
There are people such as Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, Robin Hanson, and others who have tackled the prospect of mind uploading. Still, it is an emerging field in its infant (likely fetus) stage. Ethically and technically, there is still much to be learned about this technology. Science has always been about contemplating the possibilities until the desired goal or a better one is reached. I see mind uploading as no different, therefore I feel that contemplating and discussing its future is critical to human evolution. Welcome to Tethered Minds...