As a follow up to a recent article of mine you can read HERE about the possibility of the combining of consciousness with technology, Director of Engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil predicts exactly that in our lifetimes.

In an article in The Daily Mail

We’ll be uploading our entire MINDS to computers by 2045 and our bodies will be replaced by machines within 90 years, Google expert claims

Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, believes we will be able to upload our entire brains to computers within the next 32 years – an event known as singularity
Our ‘fragile’ human body parts will be replaced by machines by the turn of the century

And if these predictions comes true, it could make humans immortal

By Victoria Woollaston, PUBLISHED: 09:22 EST, 19 June 2013

In just over 30 years, humans will be able to upload their entire minds to computers and become digitally immortal – an event called singularity – according to a futurist from Google.

Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, also claims that the biological parts of our body will be replaced with mechanical parts and this could happen as early as 2100.

Kurweil made the claims during his conference speech at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York at the weekend.

Beyond his work with Google, Kurzweil’s Bio has this to say:

Ray Kurzweil has been described as “the restless genius” by The Wall Street Journal, and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” and PBS included Ray as one of 16 “revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries.
Ray is the recipient of the $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize, the world’s largest for innovation. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology, the nation’s highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. And in 2002, he was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame, established by the U.S. Patent Office.

He has received nineteen honorary doctorates, and honors from three U.S. presidents. Ray has authored seven books, five of which have been national bestsellers. The Age of Spiritual Machines has been translated into 9 languages and was the #1 best-selling book on Amazon in science.

This prediction is largely based upon the projection of Moore’s Law which predicts continued exponential growth of computer processing speed.

This presumes that materials science can keep up

Of course this idea has been a mainstay of the CyberPunk genre. If you want to go so far back, the idea of a disembodied consciousness appears in horror fiction from the 19th and early 20th century.

But would you WANT to live in an environment where someone could literally “pull the plug?” What is the lifespan of the average family car? How often do you buy a new computer? We can barely keep our current computers free of viruses, spam and adware. Should we foresee advertising replaced with the basic desire for something placed directly into our consciousness by a computer virus?

Along side of Moore’s Law potentially opening up digital existence to our consciousness, we are also developing more sophisticated Artificial Intelligences. At what point do we decide an artificial entity is our equal, and why not? At what point do we simply stop reproducing ourselves because it is simpler to just program new selves?

When do we stop being human?

And when do we stop Being?

[email protected]

One day you will just have to think it, but today please Visit our FaceBook Page, and Like us for updates.