Digital Minds: Life after death?
Scan the memory stored in the neural network could mean immortality in the near future. Neurotechnologies new sciences are those that analyze and control the brain and human nervous system. Recent advances allow the use of special electrodes that can connect the brain with electronic systems, make replicas of neural models, and manufacturing equipment to record and measure neural activity.
At present, no longer surprises us too the use of applications by which we can control a computer or a wheelchair through the interpretation of signals from our brain. A BCI ( Brain-Computer or Brain-Machine Interface ), is responsible for translating the user’s intentions, actions allowing you to run through their brain activity alone, ie without using the peripheral nervous system and muscular system.
But imagine an environment in which the words were not necessary to communicate, and it seems a dream of science fiction. However, despite the disbelief that it can create, there are technologies being tested is aimed at the transmission of thoughts, feelings and emotions through signals neuroelectric.
Telepathic Social Network
Some scientific groups have begun to develop projects to create connections between brains that allow them to communicate. Michael Chorost, offers in his book World Wide Mind, the projection of a future network of interconnected human brains, which would replace the existing social networks, and even to their own World Wide Web for a global mind or Internet neurological the World Wide Mind.
The main materials required for this telepathic connection would be: nanowires connected to the brain capillaries through the arterial network, which act as receivers, transmitters of information, and optogenetics: laser can activate and deactivate individual neurons through the length of light wave. Experimentation with nanowires was carried out successfully in the brains of mice and optogenetics, meanwhile, has allowed to activate memories and cause certain behaviors in these animals.
Chorost says that the technology would produce much more intense sensations that physical contact, to convey emotional and sensory ranges greater length and complexity, allowing even the sexual act as an interface programmed. All this would be possible through a controversial merger between body, mind and consciousness.
Marshall McLuhan and other great theoreticians of communication, Internet pioneers have interpreted this merger as a step towards creating a collective consciousness on a planetary scale, as the model suggested by the theologian Teilhard de Chardin, who said:
“Someday, after mastering the winds, waves, tides and gravity, the man achieved channel the energies of love, and then, for the second time in history, man will discover fire.”
Future artificial or human avatar
Other companies have already taken the first steps toward creating an avatar or digital clone conscious, able to collect all the digitized data and processing of a brain, which would produce a simulation of the human being died.
IBM’s proposal “Cognitive Computing through Sinaptronica and Supercomputing (C2S2) “develops an inquiry today, in areas including sinaptronica, material science, neuromorphic circuits, supercomputing simulations and virtual environments. It also facilitates the storage and preservation of living cells in a sample collected and preserved in liquid nitrogen for an indefinite period. These files, mental and biological, could be implanted in a bionic body by genetics, with future technologies. This will ensure a life sentence. Other researchers raise the integration of vital signs such as heart rate, to provide basic emotional environment.
The human robot is not science fiction
In principle, anthropological studies have identified three key points that this entity bionic should meet to act as closely as possible as you would a living person: human appearance, the ability to speak, and the empathic response. The physical appearance would fall into the hands of designers who will create an attractive image, whether virtual or material.
Have developed speech recognition systems and automatic response generation by identifying key words, allowing the artificial human being to simulate a real understanding of language. Empathic responses would be more complex, achievable through a combination of muscle movements, facial expressions and body language combined.
But this is just the beginning, since the incorporation of awareness of these virtual entities will be another challenge to be met by neurotechnologies. Maybe it’s time to be optimistic and go for an indefinite extension of our consciousness and intellect. For now, this is a sneak preview of a perhaps not too distant future.
