The Would-Be Holographic God
Russian mogul Dmitry Itskov thinks he can upload his brain to a holographic avatar that can support his entire consciousness – and in the next 33 years.
To acquire the funding he needs, Itskov has written to other rich business people around the world inviting them to get in on the act. In a letter published in Forbes Magazine, he writes: [readon]
Unfortunately, modern medicine is still the medicine of a hundred percent mortality – the best it can do is to temporarily delay the process of human aging.
… Human life is unique and priceless. It is only when we have to part with life do we realize just how much we have not done, that we have not had enough time to do what we really wanted or to address something we’ve done wrong. Everything that we have cherished and loved all of a sudden becomes unreachable.
… I am ready to prove the viability of the concept of cybernetic immortality by arranging an expert discussion with a team of the world’s leading scientist working in this field. … You have the power to support and create a new industry of immortality to make revolutionary change that will forever reverberate through the pages of history.
He signs off with “wishes of health and limitless life-span.”
Leaving aside the question of whether Itskov will be any more successful than the pharaohs of Egypt, the First Emperor of China, or the fictional Dr. Frankenstein, the irony inherent in all this is that humankind’s much vaunted technology is not leading to anything remotely close to immortality; it is, rather, creating mass extinction, along with all the byproducts of our modern that place our own species in ever-growing peril.
The world’s moguls would be better advised to put their resources into limiting and mitigating the perils they and we have created, rather than figuring out how to live on as holographic gods in a dead world.