Originally published June 4 2005
Computers could download entire contents of a person's brain by 2050, says scientist
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Dr. Ian Pearson, head of the Futurology unit at BT, claims that we will be able to download our consciousness into computers by 2050. He believes that humans will achieve virtual immortality by saving their consciousnesses into computer hard drives. According to Pearson, if the rapid rate of technological innovation persists, computers will be capable of storing and processing as much data as the human brain. The question, it seems, is not whether computers will be powerful enough, but if it is possible to emulate consciousness. To this Pearson explains that, "we don't know how to do it yet but we've begun looking in the same directions, for example at the techniques we think that consciousness is based on: information comes in from the outside world but also from other parts of your brain and each part processes it on an internal sensing basis. Consciousness is just another sense, effectively, and that's what we're trying to design in a computer." But even if technology could perform the intricacies of the human brain, should we do it? Pearson says we need a global debate about the ethics of the �smart� machine.
The wealthy will be able to download their consciousness into computers by 2050 - the not so well off by "2075 or 2080", claims futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson, head of the Futurology unit at BT.
The 44-year-old spent 4 years working on missile design and the last 20 working with optical networks, broadband network evolution and cybernetics.
He thinks that today's younger generation will benefit from the advances in technology to the point that death will be effectively eliminated.
"The new PlayStation is 1 per cent as powerful as a human brain," he said.
Consciousness is just another sense, effectively, and that's what we're trying to design in a computer.
'It would definitely have emotions - that's one of the primary reasons for doing it.
If I'm on an airplane I want the computer to be more terrified of crashing than I am so it does everything to stay in the air until it's supposed to be on the ground.
He believes that before the creation of these new "smart" machines, there should be a national debate.
Whether we should be allowed to modify bacteria to assemble electronic circuitry and make themselves smart is already being researched."
'We can already use DNA, for example, to make electronic circuits so it's possible to think of a smart yoghurt some time after 2020 or 2025, where the yoghurt has got a whole stack of electronics in every single bacterium.
We're talking about video tattoos as very, very thin sheets of polymer that you just literally stick on to the skin and they stay there for several days.
Why not just get a stack of little self-organising chips in a box and they'll hook up and do it themselves.
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