Maybe it was a little sad
to say goodbye to your physical body,
but, at least you still have your
consciousness, your mind, and your memories
stored safely in the cloud.
And in the virtual world,
anything that was once
real, physical, and finite,
can simply be replaced.
But,
Is eternal youth and everlasting life
all that it's made out to be?
Or is there a dark side
to cloud consciousness?
The science of being able to
digitize your brain and upload it to the cloud
is highly controversial and,
ultimately, inconclusive.
Some experts say
the technology will never exist,
but others promise that we'll have it by 2050.
In fact, there's already a waitlist.
An American startup called Nectome
claims that through a process called
they can preserve both the external
and internal structure of your brain
in perfect microscopic detail.
They do this by replacing
the blood flow in your brain
with embalming chemicals,
basically turning your meaty processor
into frozen glass.
And if you have haven't already guessed it,
you can't survive this procedure...
...at least, not physically.
In theory, you'll "live" forever, but,
but that's only if Nectome figures out
how to upload your brain to the cloud,
and then revive it.
Let's assume they do.
Benjamin Franklin once wrote that,
"In this world nothing can be said to be certain,
except death and taxes."
But it turns out,
immortality might come at an even higher price.
Opting to be uploaded into the cloud
might have some unforeseen consequences.
Today, the cloud is pretty much
just virtual storage.
You pay a company a monthly fee
to store all your family photos
so that their awkwardness
doesn't slow down your computer!
But now we're talking about you;
and all your unique traits,
and special qualities, and
all the wonderful things
you have to offer the world,
being uploaded to a server which
probably isn't powered by a benevolent
and somewhat scary-looking
bearded man in the sky.
More likely, your eHeaven
will be run by some tech giant,
who will have access to
your life's worth of data,
along with everyone else's.
Your continued existence
would be subscription-based,
requiring you to pay for storage and
maintenance on some high-tech server.
Your new home, and,
I suppose your identity as well,
will look like this.
Because this is really what the cloud is.
It's basically a wide interconnected network
of warehouses that are filled with hard drives,
and spread across multiple locations
so that your data can be stored
in several places at once;
just in case one of these warehouses
were to go offline.
So unless you were rich enough to build
your own little private network of hard drives,
the term "home office"
takes on a very dark meaning...
Would the company you subscribe to
be able to profit from their access
to your mind, memories, and talents?
What stops you from being copied
and coded as some kind of A.I.?
And then,
what if we got into androids or surrogacy?
If technology advances to the point
where we can cheat death,
why not cheat age or health?
For the first time ever,
you could have the body
you always wanted.
Forever!
But if you couldn't afford
a top of the line model,
what might you be forced to settle for?
But actually, what's far more likely
than you becoming an android,
or having your brain stored in the cloud,
is having your brain stored in a box!
Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov
is currently developing
what he calls a happiness box.
It's basically a computer that
can send sensations to your brain,
just like your body does today.
In fact, the happiness box is being developed
to replace your body.
If you don't totally get it,
think of the movie The Matrix.
That might be the closest thing
to immortality.
So what would you choose?
The red pill?
Or the blue pill?
Right now, we don't need to worry about it!
Without knowing if the technology will exist, or
when it will become available,
the most important question
we should be asking ourselves is
how to make the most
of the limited time we have.
Need some ideas?
Come back soon for more 'What If.'