Digital Immortality – Worth It or Not?

In 2045, I will be 91 years old, if I should be lucky enough to live that long.

But reading this article just gave me a lot more incentive to do just that, because living that long might amount to living forever.  2045, according to some scientists, is about when we will achieve “digital immortality,” that is, the ability to download everything that’s in our mind, our memories, our emotions, our tastes, our id, our ego, our superego, whatever all that means but, in essence, ourselves into a little, bitty flash  drive or whatever, and then we will just be stored in the great group mind, become a living unit of the internet, take up a digital room in the longest term old age home ever built.

It actually would look nothing like this at all

Of course, some people might say, that’s not really living.  To be completely incorporeal means you will no longer feel the sun and the wind, you will no longer taste, or even eat, but still.  You’d be able to talk to  people, much in the way I talk to most people now, and keep up with current events and the latest developments in science and the arts.

And, someday, they may be able to plug Flash Disk You into a robot, or a clone, or some other artificial body which is a reasonable facsimile of the original, so that would give you something to look forward to.

On the down side, it would draw a line between those that opt for it and all generations that have gone before.  But that line is going to be drawn somewhere, the  only choice is will  it be drawn between me and my parents, or between me and my children.  Because eventually, digital immortality will be standard.  Then the population will explode like crazy but since nobody will need to eat or drink, it will be O.K.

Also, of course, there is the possibility that after a few more hundred, or a thousand years, you would get bored with life.  No worries.  You can always change your mind.

Of course,  nobody can ever live forever because even if you live a hundred million years, you won’t be able to say you have lived forever, because forever will still be ongoing.  So, living forever is still a pretty abstract concept.

But it’s an abstract concept I like.