April 21, 2011 • 32 mins
Is it possible that human evolution is on the verge of transcending its organic roots? And, if it is possible, how could it actually occur? Join Robert and Julie as they explore the mind-blowing concept of cyberimmortality.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And uh,
you know, Julie, I had an an interesting, uh experience recently.
I mean it was other things too, but there were
(00:24):
aspects of it they were interesting. Um my father died um,
which of course comes with a lot of shock and
a lot of emotional um turmoil. But but the technology,
modern technology seems to make these things flow a little different.
Like after I talked to him on the phone like
(00:44):
earlier in the day and then I got this call
that he was dead, and uh and so, I mean
no knowing that I knew he was dead, but I
picked up my cell phone and I, for you know,
some reason, I pulled him up on that and I
called him, and of course it went straight to his
answer machine and I heard this electronical way message this
question posed to me, you know, out of the void,
(01:07):
and then I I left my response. You know that?
And uh, you know this in the sense is you know,
it's the same message I've heard when I've called him
and missed him. Uh, you know, or you know, or
called him when I was in the middle of something,
you know, many times before. Um, but there was this
strange feeling, you know, of of conversing with the technology
of a person that lives on after that person is gone,
(01:28):
like this technological remnant of your Yeah, like little like
technological pieces of my father, you know, insignificant pieces, to
be sure, but but pieces all the same. So, you know,
since I've like I've saved the messages that he'd left me,
I've and I you know, and I found myself wondering
things like, oh, what have I recorded our last phone call?
Because you know, I have this recording device. I could
(01:50):
have done it. I do it all the time for interviews.
If I had you know, if i'd only you know,
had any inkling and uh. So it's you end up
questioning what if what if I could What if I
could have done this? What else would I have done?
What if I could have preserved him digitally in some way?
You know? And uh and then the other question is
(02:11):
there any sense to that at all? Is that just well,
I don't know. I mean, we have been documenting ourselves,
you know, since since we I think became aware of ourselves.
You know, how to put it best, but I mean
if you think about the you know, the the Dagara type, right,
you know, all of a sudden, it was photographs were
widely used, and that was a different way of remembering
(02:35):
our loved ones and going back to the memory which
has been so important to us. Um. So it kind
of makes sense that as we are, you know, smack
dab in the digital age now that we began to
layer these different pieces of our chiving together. Yeah, A
couple of interesting examples come to mind. Um. I mean,
(02:58):
for starters, of course, any time someone has written something
or created something, most of those creations continue to exist
in some form after the the author or the artist
has passed away. So you know, a book becomes a
remnant of the person. Um. You know, a song they
wrote becomes a remnant. Um. I cannot but think of
Mark Twain's biography or the volumes in his bot biography
(03:19):
that are coming out a hundred years after his death
right that stipulation that it could not be published until
one hundred years after his death right, which which on
one hand, that's pretty uh, you know, pretty ballsy to
be like, yeah, a hundred years from now, they're still
going to be craving me. So, yeah, that's Mark Twain, right,
but but but also it feels kind of eerie. It's like, hey,
Mark Twain has a new book out. He's been dead
(03:41):
a century, but here's here's this new book and her
words that next to no one has heard before from him, right,
and and a different understanding of him because I guess
he felt comfortable in and sharing that information only one
hundred years after his death, which is pretty interesting. Yeah.
And the example that comes to mind, and this one
is also non electronic. Uh. Happened on a recent episode
(04:06):
of This American Life, the NBR radio show Slash podcast
uh and it was titled parent Trapped with the episode
and there was a segment about a sixteen year old
girl named Rebecca and her mom died of cancer. But
before the mom died, she wrote the series of letters
to be delivered each year after death, one uh, one
(04:26):
for for each birthday that Rebecca would have in the
years afterwards years thirteen years, and then one letter to
be delivered to her on the day of her her wedding.
So and and this is this was just a fascinating
study until like into these you know, these missives sent
off from you know, in a way, from beyond the grave,
(04:46):
because like the first the first one she receives a
year after um after her death, and it's you know,
it's emotional, it's but it's comforting somehow, you know, you're
hearing from this person. But as the years roll on,
they become less comforting, become these grief bombs that go
off each year to the point where she's kind of
dreading them. Um and the and the mother that is
conversing or there is still this mother of you know,
(05:08):
five years ago, six years ago, seven years years ago,
talking to a version of her that doesn't really exist
anymore because we change. You know, the person I was
a year ago ago isn't the person I am now.
The person I'm going to be in a year isn't
the person I am now. So you get this this
increasingly disjointed conversation across time, uh, because it's like her
mother's projections of who she wants her to be, right,
(05:30):
and she's evolving as a person, and that's not matching
up right, right, So we bring we bring these examples
then into a discussion of cyber immortality or digital immortality,
and the idea that the more technological, um, stuff that
we pile onto our being. Uh, the more it becomes
possible for that stuff to live on after we're dead,
(05:54):
and then what does that mean? And how do we
process this and when what good does it do ultimately? Well?
And what's so interesting to me too, is that it
does become like an afterlife for us, right, I mean
we you know in the biblical sense that there's there's
the heaven and afterlife right there where you continue to
exist in another form. You know, essentially, if you've got
(06:16):
cyber immortality, you're existing in another form, right, And it's
interesting to break down, um. And we're gonna take this
is a very scientific uh look at it and a
psychological look at it. Um. So you know, we're just
discounting religion for a second here, um, and we're going
to talk about why do we have this idea of
a soul and indeed, why do we have this idea
(06:39):
of a mind? And psychologist Paul Bloom argues that humans
imagine that we have souls because the human brain has
no awareness of its own functioning, Right, we falsely perceive
ourselves to be separate from our bodies, I mean, our
brain can we've discussed in the past how our brain
can wrap itself around everything except itself. So we have mind,
(07:00):
so we have souls. I mean the bulk of our
brain's processes exist outside of what we can experience and
what we do experience. We experience that a slight delay.
So um, so we have to compartmentalize at someone would
we end up viewing ourselves as being outside of our bodies.
So along with this argument, according to science author William
Simms Bainbridge, religion enables us to turn the idea of
(07:23):
the soul um turned to the idea of the soul
to achieve highly desired rewards that are unattainable in the
real world, like living forever or being becoming reunited with
loved ones and friends that we've lost. Yeah, and it's
very interesting that in the Bainbridge article from the futurist
Um I think that was from two thousand and six. Yes,
pretty prescient stuff, right, because there he's talking about how
(07:47):
it's very possible that technology could supplant some of the
ways in which religion is used. And again there's that
idea of the afterlife, this idea that there's an assurance
that there's meaning to our lives that there's some sort
of flicker of our existence that extends beyond our mortality, right, um,
and then create an archive of our memories that we
(08:10):
could transfer to AI surrogates. He talks about this. Articles
like robots, avatars and distributed intelligence would essentially do that job.
Or like a virtual world that you might you know,
jack into where it's your you know, it's your childhood
living room and there's your father or your grant or
your uncle or or whoever, um, that you might converse
(08:32):
with them again Yeah, yeah, And I don't want to
jump ahead too much. But of course we know too
with the Blue Brain project that we are trying to
map our brains. There there are scientists that are trying
to do this with computer models and are doing with
a wrap brain right now. So we're trying to get
to that point where we understand how our brain works
(08:53):
and actually maybe see our consciousness in action. Right And
and of course we're obviously we're we're putting more and
more profiles out there, like our our Facebook profiles are
Twitter feeds, um, all these things, I mean, even our
cell phones are are various accounts are Flicker accounts. Um.
It kind of like the way I end up looking
(09:14):
at It's kind of like this exoskeleton that we build.
And uh and when the person inside that exo skeleton
goes away, you still have this this at least faint
form of them. It's kind of like a shade or
a ghost Stephen. Uh And and because what is the
Facebook profile or the blog of a of a dead
person but but a but a ghost and an electronic
(09:35):
ghost that's still out there. Uh. It may not be
interacting with us anymore, but to a certain extent, we
can interact with it, and we can. It's still there
as if they are alive. Right, there's there. You have
had some sort of trace of yourself uh on the
web right in cyberspace, which is it's fascinating to think
of that. And you actually sent me a really interesting
article about a company called Virtual Eternity, which is offering
(09:58):
an avatar that take the results of your Myers brig
personality test. Right, So, assuming that you're doing all of
this work while you're alive, right, um and then along
with all your memories and photos uh and and it
actually has a computing process that has an endless capacity
for data acquisition of you. Um. And it can then
(10:20):
interact with others and will share specific memories depending on
the clearance level of a family member or a friend.
So it's really interesting that you could set up this
avatar of yourself, fill it with all of your memories,
give it whether whatever information you want to give it,
and then you live on for your relatives you know,
(10:41):
who knows, I guess forever for as long as the
Internet is alive, right, And and certain people have different
access two different emotions or information, which is kind of
creepy if you think about hackers, right, yeah, I mean
it's it's weird. I mean you could that's that's a
huge concern um because the more and more information one
(11:03):
puts into something like this, because because Bainbridge, he even
argued that the online memorial, like a website honoring someone
who's deceased, is in a sense of precursor to cyber immortality.
And then this avatar that we've just discussed is even
an even more robust model of it. And it's this
can if this continues to evolve, you know, you'll reach
(11:23):
the point where to create a to create a more
and more accurate simulation of a person, you'd have to
put more and more information to the point where you'd
have a lot of sensitive information because I think of
the things that make us who, that make us who
we are. There's a lot of stuff in the in
the architecture there that we don't want out in the public. Uh.
You know, we might, um, you know flippantly say oh
(11:45):
I wish I could take that memory away or or
that weird thing that I do away, But it makes
us who we are, and it's all a part of
the of the finished product. You know. We can't pick
and choose and then keep the form. You know, we
can't see the joinery in all things. Well, I mean
I look at it and I think this is something
that you can edit. This is a version of yourself
that you can edit and put out there and people
(12:06):
can visit, and then it's not really you. It's not
really you. But also we we all know the amount
of information that we're sharing online. So there's this different
picture of us that could be forming depending on access levels, right. Um.
I mean if you have a criminal record and uh,
and if that were released, that would certainly be information
(12:28):
that people could access. Um. So again there's this like
there's this idea of who we want to be in
our cyber immortality and whether or not that's attainable. Right, Well,
then you get into issues because remember it's kind of
like funerals, um. Uh, they're they're always This is tug
and pull um of where one you know that someone
(12:49):
might be well, so and so wouldn't have wanted this
to happen. But then it ultimately comes down to what
does the family want to happen? But then maybe there's
the what the immediate family wanted of this, uh, the
ceased individual, and what the uh the the friends wanted
or what other parts of the family wanted. So would
you reach a point where you had several different versions
of this person that were memorialized in some sort of
(13:10):
virtual setting, um, right, If nothing else, it just comes
from the fact of like like which which version in
the past? Like do you want the like? Some people
work may have been closer to John Doe a year
before he died versus people who knew him two decades ago,
and that's a very different person uh to have a
connection to yees. So I guess the question is could
you really get to the point where you could establish
(13:31):
those sort of complexities to to give a full picture
of who that person was, and like he said, everybody
has different relationships with people and um, and it brings
out different aspects of that person. So is that fully represented?
Is it possible? Again? From the article that you talked
about with Bainbridge, that's called Battle to Save Our Souls
by William Sims Fainbridge from the Futurists UM from two
(13:54):
thousand and six. Uh, he says, somewhat farther in the future,
we can expect the development of rigorous means for recording
and classifying all of the persons, perhaps fifty episodic memories,
that is, memories of specific events and feelings that accompany them.
A memory of the past event may exist as a
network of mental associations linking images of a few of
(14:15):
the people and things in a particular scenario. So he's
he's imagining this database and lo and behold. According to
The Daily Galaxy, the National Science Foundation has awarded a
half million dollar grant to the Universities of Central Florida
and Illinois at Chicago to explore how researchers might use
artificial intelligence, archiving, and computer imaging to create digital lifelike
(14:40):
versions of real people. And they're also using video game
type technology. So UM to your point, like, you know,
can you can you construct this this avatar of yourself
in your living room? Yeah? As possible. I mean, what
they're talking about is taking UM. The folks you know
at that National Science Foundation are basically talking about taking
this virtual eternity offering that this company does and really
(15:04):
sort of amping it up in terms of matrixing matrix
ng your emotions UM and your personality Myers Briggs, so
on and so forth, and and trying to have a
fuller representation. Wow. But the more full that representation becomes.
It also you see arguments about whether UM robots, computer
ais will eventually reach the point to where they have
(15:27):
rights of some kind, but where they're can considered UM
at least corporations if not people, you know, in terms
of the rights afforded to them. So like, do you
reach the point where who has the authority to say
copy that program that is the simulation of you? Or
if or ultimately, if you if you remove some some
(15:47):
more of the the ideas of the soul and you
get down to the idea of of who we are
is information in our brain, then you're then then what's
the difference between that and this version and the computer
as it grows more and more perfect, Who has the
right to copy it? Who has the right to delete it?
Is deleting it? Murder? Um? Right, that's the right to
talk mean to it? You know? Is that I mean it?
(16:08):
Should we feel ethically, um crappy if we if we
pull up a program of our uncle Carl and we
just go in and tell him how elpset we are
when he uh, you know, didn't eat the neat loaf
we prepared, uh, you know six Christmases ago. Well, and
even if you could perfect it and you had this database, um,
basically of of a loved one, um, and you could
(16:32):
you could take let's say, the response to a questionnaires,
a bunch of questionnaires if that person filled out, and
you could feed that into an automated decision support system
so that it could interact with you, and uh in
a way that felt realistic. It's still as as we
talked about, um with the letters. You know, this this thing,
(16:52):
this person that you knew, is now interacting with you
at a much later date, and you're a different person.
So it's still not going to be the person you
I thought was the person, right, because they can't recognize you,
they can't recognize change. Presumably this, this type of technology
isn't going to be that complex. Yeah. And if you
were to take the simulation of you know, say you know,
(17:14):
a deceased parent and put them in like a virtual
sandbox world, I mean you'd have to like, how do
how does that work? They would have to continue in
a way, they'd have to continue a separate timeline or something,
you know it like, they would have to It would
be hard to keep them if you kept them the same,
that would be a problem. But then also continuing to
allow them to develop into a new person in this
(17:34):
program form would would seem to be really complex. And
also what you brought up is this idea of ownership, right,
so who owns this this virtual representation of your loved one? Yeah?
And can they charge? Are they charging you for it?
Like where you are they charging you for it? What
happens twenty five years down the road if they happen
(17:54):
to sell the company or you know, and and what
what happens is we continue to lay are on all
this different data um in cyberspace about ourselves to do
you know, does this do these sort of avatars get
shuttled away somewhere. Do they exist indefinitely? Um? Is it
feasible that you could have tangent generations down from where
(18:17):
you are now being able to access all of their
their different relatives and look at the various pieces of information, right,
I mean is the Internet that deep? Yeah? And we
talk about identity theft now, but if you had this
much information online, it would it would amount to soul
theft or mind theft and h yeah, which is worse
(18:39):
than your credit card number. I was thinking about that
if you took what is available today, right, if you
just took um that like the Virtual Alternity, like the
company that's doing that. And let's say my grandmother had
participated in this and we had our Myers Briggs and
we had all of her memories and her photos. Now
let's say that you took what the National Science Foundation
is doing and doing a more deep archive having of
(19:01):
this person. And then now let's say that you marry
that with the Blue Brain technology, right, a Blue Brain
Project technology which again is mapping the human brain um
in precise cellular detail and it's simulating neural activity. Let's
say that they, you know, had built my grandmother's brain
in that sense, who's to say that someone couldn't then
(19:24):
take basically this blueprint of my grandmother and use her
in in a robot or you know, for advertising. Advertising
company buys copies of a bunch of these, like we
want to really market the grandma's, so give me, you know,
give me you know, fifty dead grandma minds and let
me throw a whole bunch of product ideas at them,
like right, And it's kind of and you can see
(19:45):
how that would be so intriguing and so seductive because
it would be a very real feeling representation of someone's life,
for their feelings or their thoughts, and used in this
marketing way which would really sort of tug at the
heart strings of people, right right, Um, but you know,
and of course I'm awfulizing there, but it's possible. Yeah,
(20:06):
I'm awfulizing. I think that's an Oprah term. Okay, Um,
but you know I'm saying, okay, what really, what is
there's no legislation around this, right, there are no rules
around it, And I think that's why we're bringing it
up and saying, okay, you can you can see right
now what's in existence, and you can see the roadmap
going forward, that there's a real possibility that these versions
of ourselves, multiple versions of ourselves could exist. Um, just
(20:30):
pretty fascinating. Yeah, like yeah, And and to go back
to the letter that the thirteen year old letter from
her mom, you know, at what point would you you know,
it seems like a good idea at first to cyber
immortalize a deceased loved one, but then you reach the
point where it's like, well, well, heck, I guess I
have to go out and kill the electronic ghost of
(20:51):
my my dead parent because they're not they're not benefiting
me anymore. And it's now it's just kind of creepy.
Or now it's just traumatic. It feels like you're haunted. Yeah.
Another aspect of this that was brought up in the
bain Bridge Futurist article is that you could use it
very practically right now as a sort of backup database
(21:12):
to your brain. Right. Um, and this type of effective
computing could help inform other devices, such as robots, to
better respond to you depending on your mental and physical states,
which is sort of interesting, right that that piece of
AI in which we could have this sort of robot
that is enhancing the way that we think and that
it's anticipating and maybe even I was thinking about about this,
(21:35):
looking at the blind spots in the way that we think.
So that's very possible that we could use this technology
to try to approach maybe problems from a different angle.
Right if you have a copy of your brain essentially
that you can access and um and and play with.
But that it seems like we would reach the point
where like already we know we no longer know how
(21:56):
to spell because of Firefox and and spell check. We
don't know how to we haven't known how to do
simple math um. You know lookspt for mathematicians out there,
but a lot of us have forgotten how to do
simple math because we always have that calculator handy, first,
the pocket calculator, now the various calculators and all of
our gadgets. Well, so I see what you're saying, Get
to think. Do you just turn to your database and
(22:17):
go think, Okay, that's the algorithm for like what do
I want to eat for lunch today? And then I'll say, hey,
you want some pizza? Great? You know, and then do
we do we reach the tipping point between the person
and this technological exo skeleton to where the technology technological
exo skeleton is more the person than the flesh and
blood person at the core of it. Well, and already.
(22:39):
The interesting thing about that is that we already know
the online representations that we put out there and edit.
Our different version of ourselves are the friendlier, nicier, whatever,
versions of ourselves most of the time, um, sometimes naked
or depending on the person. Yeah, you never know. But
you know, the question is will people really want to
(23:01):
do they really want to talk to the real you
or the avatar you. You already have that in existence
right now distinction. Yeah, can you imagine all the different
layers you know that that might be possible to put
on top of that. Uh. The other use that this
technology could be um employed is with the elderly. They
could actually use portable digital devices documenting their lives to
(23:22):
help them remember facts, so they could kind of dive
back into their memories um to to help them sort
of um say, oh, that's my daughter visiting me, or
that's my grandchildren and so on and so forth. So
they would essentially be interacting with some of this technology.
But that reminded me so much of the vin Vendor's
film until the end of the world. And I won't
(23:44):
go into the plot, but I'll just say that in
a sort of quasi post apocalyptic world, people have access
to this type of technology and it's actually documenting their dreams.
So they're going into their past and they get completely
addicted to to these portable old devices showing them their
their previous life because of course they're you know, they're
(24:04):
living in like rotted out canyons or something. I don't
know if canyons can rot, but you get the idea. Yeah,
um and and post elliptic squalor um, And they keep
returning to this other part of their lives and they
become completely addicted. They quit eating, They just all they
want to do is review their memories from their dreams.
And so I thought, is it possible that you could
(24:25):
build something like this to the point where you do
you stop living in the present and you start mining
all the data of your own life. Yeah, Like I
could easily, Like when you're talking about the elderly, like
I would instantly imagine like two old dudes meeting each
other for the first time in retirement home, like both
of them just to sleep in their chairs while they're
um they're like forty or fifty something avatars conversed um
(24:49):
via USB, cab or something, you know, and or does
it come to the point where it's like, say, to
forty year olds meet and they're like, hey, how are
you going? And it's a two forty year olds meet
each other. They upload their uh, several different versions of
their past self so they can be too, because knowing
the current me isn't quite enough. I want the digital
copy of your thirty year old self to meet the
(25:09):
digital version of my thirty year old self, or you know,
in various you know, you could just go go crazy
with this vision of the future, and I will tell
you that that's something that to me, I would I
have to say, you know, if I'm eighty years old,
I would love to have because I would love to
be able to share with people the different things that
I did in my life, particularly if I had a
problem communicating because I had memory problems. If I could
(25:30):
just draw it up and be like, here's me, you know,
rocking out and I don't know something. Yeah, the old
you brings up with the memory problems, brings up the
young you, and then brates there for all of our
hard partying it's like, look what you did, I don't
remember anything now, so they can be our punching bags.
You know. Yeah, there's all sorts of possibilities here. But
(25:52):
back to the the the the real reality in in
our current time. Um, Facebook already has the thing where um,
when when you when you die, uh, your profile is memorialized. Uh.
And this is this is like right off and right
off the website. When a user passes away, we memorialize
their account to protect their privacy. Memorializing an account sets
(26:14):
the account privacy so that only confirmed friends can see
the profile or located in search, the wall remains so
friends and family can leave post in remembrance. Memorializing an
account also prevents anyone from logging into the account. And
to add a little extra that um, a recent estimate
put the number of US Facebook users who die annually
(26:35):
at something like um, which is you know, probably gonna
go up. Um. And then in the world of Twitter,
there's a really interesting thing like Yeah, Jonathan Strickland turned
me on to this. Who has an article by the
time is web this Uh, this episode comes out His
article on how stuff works website how digital immortality works
(26:57):
should be out so be sure to check out that
after you listen to this UM. But Jonathan told me
about this blogger by the name of Brian Brushwood who
teamed up with a web guru by the name of
Patrick Delante, and uh, they launched Afterlife. Me. That's a
f T E R L y f E dot m
e UM to pursue this idea of digital immortality. So
(27:19):
the ideas you create a dead man switch on your
online life, like every every time your birthday rolls around,
you need to go in and push her button. Otherwise
it's gonna activate the afterlife for you. In terms of
social media, which means you'll your Twitter account will start,
say throwing out random mundane um responses, or your Facebook
(27:40):
I'm just thinking of all like the smart alec things
that you could do. Yeah, like like Mark Twain with
the with the biography. Everyone's dead, so what does it matter.
But but then also your Facebook account would be programmed
to say give birthday, which is to to all your
friends and family on their on their birthdays, things of
that nature. Um And uh yeah, So the website is
(28:02):
just in its early stages right now that it's not
you can basically sign up and just get updates. On
the status of this. But it's an interesting like first
real stab at cyber immortality and uh and it and
it brings in all these questions the same you know,
to what extent is this weird and cool? With what
what extent is it comforting? Will it help with people
(28:23):
with their bereavement? And to what extent that would it
eventually become creepy? And yeah, of course, someone says, Man,
I'm gonna have to act call somebody at Twitter to
get them to turn off, you know, my best friends
Twitter account because it's no longer cute now it's just sad, right, Yeah,
I know this. And again, this is what's so fascinating
about this topic is, you know, technology again makes us
(28:45):
rethink a place in the world and and how to
manage our ideas of ourselves. They are left ones. Well, hey,
I have some missives from the void right here in
the form of uh, well first person as an email
that I'm particularly excited about. Uh. This one comes from
(29:05):
a listener by the name of Bruce, and Bruce says,
high folks, I was listening to a podcast of Yours
and a Long Drive. It was on viruses. Robert mentioned Maximilian,
the Big red robot in the Black Hole. Thanks much.
I built that robot many years ago working effects at Disney.
That little blast in the past perked me right up.
I spent two years of my life working on that flip.
Thanks again for the indirect shout out regards Bruce. So
(29:31):
that was awesome, Yeah, because that that is a that
is a movie that I just grew up with. And
uh and and and I don't I don't know what
you call the affection that a like three year old
or five year old boy um has for a evil
red robot, but I definitely, yeah, I definitely had a
bot crush on Maximilian Um and uh and so that's
(29:52):
awesome too to hear that. Yeah, they The only thing
even close to that was when I was working for
a newspaper and tell Homes in a Sea. I've interviewed
a guy who ran a lokal antique store who helped
build the set the giant bed that they created for
the film Stephen King's Cat's Eye, because they have a
little troll who's like, you know, it's like yeah, big,
(30:13):
very little, little tiny guy and he's running around on
on this bed and jumping around. So they had to
create this enormous version of a for the scale of
the troll. Yeah, and create an enormous children's room with this,
like you know, like a bed two stories tall. And
he showed me all these pictures on it, so did
the No. No, he was enormous. But apparently the guy
telling me when I was talking to him that there
(30:34):
was an ongoing bet to see, um who could well
well to to see who could looks at what they
keep it tamped to? You could sleep in that bed first? Yeah,
but but anyway, that but that was cool, but Maximilian
is even cooler. So thanks, Bruce, really appreciate that. And um,
(30:55):
one little note, Um, so I threw out a question
on our Facebook pro wile which is blow the mind.
Uh you can look that is blow the mind on Facebook,
and we'll also blow the mind on Twitter. But I
put out the question what will five hundred years of
life due to the human mind, which is similar to
what we're talking about here. Uh. And I put this
on the New House Stuff Works forums, So everybody out there,
you can log into the forum, create an account, log in,
(31:18):
and you you know, you can converse on the Facebook.
You can also confers on the forum and respond to
various articles, et cetera. Um But a listener by the
name of Richard responded, and he says, quote, it is
difficult to separate the biological from the mental and the brain.
They're connected, and so characteristics of the body follow into
the brain and thus the mind. I believe that the system, limitations,
(31:40):
and specs of the brain correspond to the body. It
seems that without the assistance of technology, our bodies are
meant to survive in the natural world. Between forty and
sixty years since the brain mind coevolved with the body,
it is reasonable to surmise that the specs are similar
for the brain mind. With that said, I think that
we have a certain capacity for experience in memory. When
we exceed this capacity, I believe that we begin to
(32:03):
feel certain fatigue set in that leads to depression and
thus um a, and thus we feel the need to
move on. So I thought that was some interesting commentary
there from Richard, and uh and uh some other people
have already responded with some cool stuff. You know. Yeah,
it's very thought provoking. Yeah, So you know, come onto
the Facebook or the Twitter or the forums and interact
with us. We'd love to hear your thoughts on all
(32:24):
these mind blowing questions. That's right, and you can always
drop us a line as well at blow the Mind
at house to works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
icon in the upper right corner of our home page.
(32:45):
The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download
it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And uh,
you know, Julie, I had an an interesting, uh experience recently.
I mean it was other things too, but there were
(00:24):
aspects of it they were interesting. Um my father died um,
which of course comes with a lot of shock and
a lot of emotional um turmoil. But but the technology,
modern technology seems to make these things flow a little different.
Like after I talked to him on the phone like
(00:44):
earlier in the day and then I got this call
that he was dead, and uh and so, I mean
no knowing that I knew he was dead, but I
picked up my cell phone and I, for you know,
some reason, I pulled him up on that and I
called him, and of course it went straight to his
answer machine and I heard this electronical way message this
question posed to me, you know, out of the void,
(01:07):
and then I I left my response. You know that?
And uh, you know this in the sense is you know,
it's the same message I've heard when I've called him
and missed him. Uh, you know, or you know, or
called him when I was in the middle of something,
you know, many times before. Um, but there was this
strange feeling, you know, of of conversing with the technology
of a person that lives on after that person is gone,
(01:28):
like this technological remnant of your Yeah, like little like
technological pieces of my father, you know, insignificant pieces, to
be sure, but but pieces all the same. So, you know,
since I've like I've saved the messages that he'd left me,
I've and I you know, and I found myself wondering
things like, oh, what have I recorded our last phone call?
Because you know, I have this recording device. I could
(01:50):
have done it. I do it all the time for interviews.
If I had you know, if i'd only you know,
had any inkling and uh. So it's you end up
questioning what if what if I could What if I
could have done this? What else would I have done?
What if I could have preserved him digitally in some way?
You know? And uh and then the other question is
(02:11):
there any sense to that at all? Is that just well,
I don't know. I mean, we have been documenting ourselves,
you know, since since we I think became aware of ourselves.
You know, how to put it best, but I mean
if you think about the you know, the the Dagara type, right,
you know, all of a sudden, it was photographs were
widely used, and that was a different way of remembering
(02:35):
our loved ones and going back to the memory which
has been so important to us. Um. So it kind
of makes sense that as we are, you know, smack
dab in the digital age now that we began to
layer these different pieces of our chiving together. Yeah, A
couple of interesting examples come to mind. Um. I mean,
(02:58):
for starters, of course, any time someone has written something
or created something, most of those creations continue to exist
in some form after the the author or the artist
has passed away. So you know, a book becomes a
remnant of the person. Um. You know, a song they
wrote becomes a remnant. Um. I cannot but think of
Mark Twain's biography or the volumes in his bot biography
(03:19):
that are coming out a hundred years after his death
right that stipulation that it could not be published until
one hundred years after his death right, which which on
one hand, that's pretty uh, you know, pretty ballsy to
be like, yeah, a hundred years from now, they're still
going to be craving me. So, yeah, that's Mark Twain, right,
but but but also it feels kind of eerie. It's like, hey,
Mark Twain has a new book out. He's been dead
(03:41):
a century, but here's here's this new book and her
words that next to no one has heard before from him, right,
and and a different understanding of him because I guess
he felt comfortable in and sharing that information only one
hundred years after his death, which is pretty interesting. Yeah.
And the example that comes to mind, and this one
is also non electronic. Uh. Happened on a recent episode
(04:06):
of This American Life, the NBR radio show Slash podcast
uh and it was titled parent Trapped with the episode
and there was a segment about a sixteen year old
girl named Rebecca and her mom died of cancer. But
before the mom died, she wrote the series of letters
to be delivered each year after death, one uh, one
(04:26):
for for each birthday that Rebecca would have in the
years afterwards years thirteen years, and then one letter to
be delivered to her on the day of her her wedding.
So and and this is this was just a fascinating
study until like into these you know, these missives sent
off from you know, in a way, from beyond the grave,
(04:46):
because like the first the first one she receives a
year after um after her death, and it's you know,
it's emotional, it's but it's comforting somehow, you know, you're
hearing from this person. But as the years roll on,
they become less comforting, become these grief bombs that go
off each year to the point where she's kind of
dreading them. Um and the and the mother that is
conversing or there is still this mother of you know,
(05:08):
five years ago, six years ago, seven years years ago,
talking to a version of her that doesn't really exist
anymore because we change. You know, the person I was
a year ago ago isn't the person I am now.
The person I'm going to be in a year isn't
the person I am now. So you get this this
increasingly disjointed conversation across time, uh, because it's like her
mother's projections of who she wants her to be, right,
(05:30):
and she's evolving as a person, and that's not matching
up right, right, So we bring we bring these examples
then into a discussion of cyber immortality or digital immortality,
and the idea that the more technological, um, stuff that
we pile onto our being. Uh, the more it becomes
possible for that stuff to live on after we're dead,
(05:54):
and then what does that mean? And how do we
process this and when what good does it do ultimately? Well?
And what's so interesting to me too, is that it
does become like an afterlife for us, right, I mean
we you know in the biblical sense that there's there's
the heaven and afterlife right there where you continue to
exist in another form. You know, essentially, if you've got
(06:16):
cyber immortality, you're existing in another form, right, And it's
interesting to break down, um. And we're gonna take this
is a very scientific uh look at it and a
psychological look at it. Um. So you know, we're just
discounting religion for a second here, um, and we're going
to talk about why do we have this idea of
a soul and indeed, why do we have this idea
(06:39):
of a mind? And psychologist Paul Bloom argues that humans
imagine that we have souls because the human brain has
no awareness of its own functioning, Right, we falsely perceive
ourselves to be separate from our bodies, I mean, our
brain can we've discussed in the past how our brain
can wrap itself around everything except itself. So we have mind,
(07:00):
so we have souls. I mean the bulk of our
brain's processes exist outside of what we can experience and
what we do experience. We experience that a slight delay.
So um, so we have to compartmentalize at someone would
we end up viewing ourselves as being outside of our bodies.
So along with this argument, according to science author William
Simms Bainbridge, religion enables us to turn the idea of
(07:23):
the soul um turned to the idea of the soul
to achieve highly desired rewards that are unattainable in the
real world, like living forever or being becoming reunited with
loved ones and friends that we've lost. Yeah, and it's
very interesting that in the Bainbridge article from the futurist
Um I think that was from two thousand and six. Yes,
pretty prescient stuff, right, because there he's talking about how
(07:47):
it's very possible that technology could supplant some of the
ways in which religion is used. And again there's that
idea of the afterlife, this idea that there's an assurance
that there's meaning to our lives that there's some sort
of flicker of our existence that extends beyond our mortality, right, um,
and then create an archive of our memories that we
(08:10):
could transfer to AI surrogates. He talks about this. Articles
like robots, avatars and distributed intelligence would essentially do that job.
Or like a virtual world that you might you know,
jack into where it's your you know, it's your childhood
living room and there's your father or your grant or
your uncle or or whoever, um, that you might converse
(08:32):
with them again Yeah, yeah, And I don't want to
jump ahead too much. But of course we know too
with the Blue Brain project that we are trying to
map our brains. There there are scientists that are trying
to do this with computer models and are doing with
a wrap brain right now. So we're trying to get
to that point where we understand how our brain works
(08:53):
and actually maybe see our consciousness in action. Right And
and of course we're obviously we're we're putting more and
more profiles out there, like our our Facebook profiles are
Twitter feeds, um, all these things, I mean, even our
cell phones are are various accounts are Flicker accounts. Um.
It kind of like the way I end up looking
(09:14):
at It's kind of like this exoskeleton that we build.
And uh and when the person inside that exo skeleton
goes away, you still have this this at least faint
form of them. It's kind of like a shade or
a ghost Stephen. Uh And and because what is the
Facebook profile or the blog of a of a dead
person but but a but a ghost and an electronic
(09:35):
ghost that's still out there. Uh. It may not be
interacting with us anymore, but to a certain extent, we
can interact with it, and we can. It's still there
as if they are alive. Right, there's there. You have
had some sort of trace of yourself uh on the
web right in cyberspace, which is it's fascinating to think
of that. And you actually sent me a really interesting
article about a company called Virtual Eternity, which is offering
(09:58):
an avatar that take the results of your Myers brig
personality test. Right, So, assuming that you're doing all of
this work while you're alive, right, um and then along
with all your memories and photos uh and and it
actually has a computing process that has an endless capacity
for data acquisition of you. Um. And it can then
(10:20):
interact with others and will share specific memories depending on
the clearance level of a family member or a friend.
So it's really interesting that you could set up this
avatar of yourself, fill it with all of your memories,
give it whether whatever information you want to give it,
and then you live on for your relatives you know,
(10:41):
who knows, I guess forever for as long as the
Internet is alive, right, And and certain people have different
access two different emotions or information, which is kind of
creepy if you think about hackers, right, yeah, I mean
it's it's weird. I mean you could that's that's a
huge concern um because the more and more information one
(11:03):
puts into something like this, because because Bainbridge, he even
argued that the online memorial, like a website honoring someone
who's deceased, is in a sense of precursor to cyber immortality.
And then this avatar that we've just discussed is even
an even more robust model of it. And it's this
can if this continues to evolve, you know, you'll reach
(11:23):
the point where to create a to create a more
and more accurate simulation of a person, you'd have to
put more and more information to the point where you'd
have a lot of sensitive information because I think of
the things that make us who, that make us who
we are. There's a lot of stuff in the in
the architecture there that we don't want out in the public. Uh.
You know, we might, um, you know flippantly say oh
(11:45):
I wish I could take that memory away or or
that weird thing that I do away, But it makes
us who we are, and it's all a part of
the of the finished product. You know. We can't pick
and choose and then keep the form. You know, we
can't see the joinery in all things. Well, I mean
I look at it and I think this is something
that you can edit. This is a version of yourself
that you can edit and put out there and people
(12:06):
can visit, and then it's not really you. It's not
really you. But also we we all know the amount
of information that we're sharing online. So there's this different
picture of us that could be forming depending on access levels, right. Um.
I mean if you have a criminal record and uh,
and if that were released, that would certainly be information
(12:28):
that people could access. Um. So again there's this like
there's this idea of who we want to be in
our cyber immortality and whether or not that's attainable. Right, Well,
then you get into issues because remember it's kind of
like funerals, um. Uh, they're they're always This is tug
and pull um of where one you know that someone
(12:49):
might be well, so and so wouldn't have wanted this
to happen. But then it ultimately comes down to what
does the family want to happen? But then maybe there's
the what the immediate family wanted of this, uh, the
ceased individual, and what the uh the the friends wanted
or what other parts of the family wanted. So would
you reach a point where you had several different versions
of this person that were memorialized in some sort of
(13:10):
virtual setting, um, right, If nothing else, it just comes
from the fact of like like which which version in
the past? Like do you want the like? Some people
work may have been closer to John Doe a year
before he died versus people who knew him two decades ago,
and that's a very different person uh to have a
connection to yees. So I guess the question is could
you really get to the point where you could establish
(13:31):
those sort of complexities to to give a full picture
of who that person was, and like he said, everybody
has different relationships with people and um, and it brings
out different aspects of that person. So is that fully represented?
Is it possible? Again? From the article that you talked
about with Bainbridge, that's called Battle to Save Our Souls
by William Sims Fainbridge from the Futurists UM from two
(13:54):
thousand and six. Uh, he says, somewhat farther in the future,
we can expect the development of rigorous means for recording
and classifying all of the persons, perhaps fifty episodic memories,
that is, memories of specific events and feelings that accompany them.
A memory of the past event may exist as a
network of mental associations linking images of a few of
(14:15):
the people and things in a particular scenario. So he's
he's imagining this database and lo and behold. According to
The Daily Galaxy, the National Science Foundation has awarded a
half million dollar grant to the Universities of Central Florida
and Illinois at Chicago to explore how researchers might use
artificial intelligence, archiving, and computer imaging to create digital lifelike
(14:40):
versions of real people. And they're also using video game
type technology. So UM to your point, like, you know,
can you can you construct this this avatar of yourself
in your living room? Yeah? As possible. I mean, what
they're talking about is taking UM. The folks you know
at that National Science Foundation are basically talking about taking
this virtual eternity offering that this company does and really
(15:04):
sort of amping it up in terms of matrixing matrix
ng your emotions UM and your personality Myers Briggs, so
on and so forth, and and trying to have a
fuller representation. Wow. But the more full that representation becomes.
It also you see arguments about whether UM robots, computer
ais will eventually reach the point to where they have
(15:27):
rights of some kind, but where they're can considered UM
at least corporations if not people, you know, in terms
of the rights afforded to them. So like, do you
reach the point where who has the authority to say
copy that program that is the simulation of you? Or
if or ultimately, if you if you remove some some
(15:47):
more of the the ideas of the soul and you
get down to the idea of of who we are
is information in our brain, then you're then then what's
the difference between that and this version and the computer
as it grows more and more perfect, Who has the
right to copy it? Who has the right to delete it?
Is deleting it? Murder? Um? Right, that's the right to
talk mean to it? You know? Is that I mean it?
(16:08):
Should we feel ethically, um crappy if we if we
pull up a program of our uncle Carl and we
just go in and tell him how elpset we are
when he uh, you know, didn't eat the neat loaf
we prepared, uh, you know six Christmases ago. Well, and
even if you could perfect it and you had this database, um,
basically of of a loved one, um, and you could
(16:32):
you could take let's say, the response to a questionnaires,
a bunch of questionnaires if that person filled out, and
you could feed that into an automated decision support system
so that it could interact with you, and uh in
a way that felt realistic. It's still as as we
talked about, um with the letters. You know, this this thing,
(16:52):
this person that you knew, is now interacting with you
at a much later date, and you're a different person.
So it's still not going to be the person you
I thought was the person, right, because they can't recognize you,
they can't recognize change. Presumably this, this type of technology
isn't going to be that complex. Yeah. And if you
were to take the simulation of you know, say you know,
(17:14):
a deceased parent and put them in like a virtual
sandbox world, I mean you'd have to like, how do
how does that work? They would have to continue in
a way, they'd have to continue a separate timeline or something,
you know it like, they would have to It would
be hard to keep them if you kept them the same,
that would be a problem. But then also continuing to
allow them to develop into a new person in this
(17:34):
program form would would seem to be really complex. And
also what you brought up is this idea of ownership, right,
so who owns this this virtual representation of your loved one? Yeah?
And can they charge? Are they charging you for it?
Like where you are they charging you for it? What
happens twenty five years down the road if they happen
(17:54):
to sell the company or you know, and and what
what happens is we continue to lay are on all
this different data um in cyberspace about ourselves to do
you know, does this do these sort of avatars get
shuttled away somewhere. Do they exist indefinitely? Um? Is it
feasible that you could have tangent generations down from where
(18:17):
you are now being able to access all of their
their different relatives and look at the various pieces of information, right,
I mean is the Internet that deep? Yeah? And we
talk about identity theft now, but if you had this
much information online, it would it would amount to soul
theft or mind theft and h yeah, which is worse
(18:39):
than your credit card number. I was thinking about that
if you took what is available today, right, if you
just took um that like the Virtual Alternity, like the
company that's doing that. And let's say my grandmother had
participated in this and we had our Myers Briggs and
we had all of her memories and her photos. Now
let's say that you took what the National Science Foundation
is doing and doing a more deep archive having of
(19:01):
this person. And then now let's say that you marry
that with the Blue Brain technology, right, a Blue Brain
Project technology which again is mapping the human brain um
in precise cellular detail and it's simulating neural activity. Let's
say that they, you know, had built my grandmother's brain
in that sense, who's to say that someone couldn't then
(19:24):
take basically this blueprint of my grandmother and use her
in in a robot or you know, for advertising. Advertising
company buys copies of a bunch of these, like we
want to really market the grandma's, so give me, you know,
give me you know, fifty dead grandma minds and let
me throw a whole bunch of product ideas at them,
like right, And it's kind of and you can see
(19:45):
how that would be so intriguing and so seductive because
it would be a very real feeling representation of someone's life,
for their feelings or their thoughts, and used in this
marketing way which would really sort of tug at the
heart strings of people, right right, Um, but you know,
and of course I'm awfulizing there, but it's possible. Yeah,
(20:06):
I'm awfulizing. I think that's an Oprah term. Okay, Um,
but you know I'm saying, okay, what really, what is
there's no legislation around this, right, there are no rules
around it, And I think that's why we're bringing it
up and saying, okay, you can you can see right
now what's in existence, and you can see the roadmap
going forward, that there's a real possibility that these versions
of ourselves, multiple versions of ourselves could exist. Um, just
(20:30):
pretty fascinating. Yeah, like yeah, And and to go back
to the letter that the thirteen year old letter from
her mom, you know, at what point would you you know,
it seems like a good idea at first to cyber
immortalize a deceased loved one, but then you reach the
point where it's like, well, well, heck, I guess I
have to go out and kill the electronic ghost of
(20:51):
my my dead parent because they're not they're not benefiting
me anymore. And it's now it's just kind of creepy.
Or now it's just traumatic. It feels like you're haunted. Yeah.
Another aspect of this that was brought up in the
bain Bridge Futurist article is that you could use it
very practically right now as a sort of backup database
(21:12):
to your brain. Right. Um, and this type of effective
computing could help inform other devices, such as robots, to
better respond to you depending on your mental and physical states,
which is sort of interesting, right that that piece of
AI in which we could have this sort of robot
that is enhancing the way that we think and that
it's anticipating and maybe even I was thinking about about this,
(21:35):
looking at the blind spots in the way that we think.
So that's very possible that we could use this technology
to try to approach maybe problems from a different angle.
Right if you have a copy of your brain essentially
that you can access and um and and play with.
But that it seems like we would reach the point
where like already we know we no longer know how
(21:56):
to spell because of Firefox and and spell check. We
don't know how to we haven't known how to do
simple math um. You know lookspt for mathematicians out there,
but a lot of us have forgotten how to do
simple math because we always have that calculator handy, first,
the pocket calculator, now the various calculators and all of
our gadgets. Well, so I see what you're saying, Get
to think. Do you just turn to your database and
(22:17):
go think, Okay, that's the algorithm for like what do
I want to eat for lunch today? And then I'll say, hey,
you want some pizza? Great? You know, and then do
we do we reach the tipping point between the person
and this technological exo skeleton to where the technology technological
exo skeleton is more the person than the flesh and
blood person at the core of it. Well, and already.
(22:39):
The interesting thing about that is that we already know
the online representations that we put out there and edit.
Our different version of ourselves are the friendlier, nicier, whatever,
versions of ourselves most of the time, um, sometimes naked
or depending on the person. Yeah, you never know. But
you know, the question is will people really want to
(23:01):
do they really want to talk to the real you
or the avatar you. You already have that in existence
right now distinction. Yeah, can you imagine all the different
layers you know that that might be possible to put
on top of that. Uh. The other use that this
technology could be um employed is with the elderly. They
could actually use portable digital devices documenting their lives to
(23:22):
help them remember facts, so they could kind of dive
back into their memories um to to help them sort
of um say, oh, that's my daughter visiting me, or
that's my grandchildren and so on and so forth. So
they would essentially be interacting with some of this technology.
But that reminded me so much of the vin Vendor's
film until the end of the world. And I won't
(23:44):
go into the plot, but I'll just say that in
a sort of quasi post apocalyptic world, people have access
to this type of technology and it's actually documenting their dreams.
So they're going into their past and they get completely
addicted to to these portable old devices showing them their
their previous life because of course they're you know, they're
(24:04):
living in like rotted out canyons or something. I don't
know if canyons can rot, but you get the idea. Yeah,
um and and post elliptic squalor um, And they keep
returning to this other part of their lives and they
become completely addicted. They quit eating, They just all they
want to do is review their memories from their dreams.
And so I thought, is it possible that you could
(24:25):
build something like this to the point where you do
you stop living in the present and you start mining
all the data of your own life. Yeah, Like I
could easily, Like when you're talking about the elderly, like
I would instantly imagine like two old dudes meeting each
other for the first time in retirement home, like both
of them just to sleep in their chairs while they're
um they're like forty or fifty something avatars conversed um
(24:49):
via USB, cab or something, you know, and or does
it come to the point where it's like, say, to
forty year olds meet and they're like, hey, how are
you going? And it's a two forty year olds meet
each other. They upload their uh, several different versions of
their past self so they can be too, because knowing
the current me isn't quite enough. I want the digital
copy of your thirty year old self to meet the
(25:09):
digital version of my thirty year old self, or you know,
in various you know, you could just go go crazy
with this vision of the future, and I will tell
you that that's something that to me, I would I
have to say, you know, if I'm eighty years old,
I would love to have because I would love to
be able to share with people the different things that
I did in my life, particularly if I had a
problem communicating because I had memory problems. If I could
(25:30):
just draw it up and be like, here's me, you know,
rocking out and I don't know something. Yeah, the old
you brings up with the memory problems, brings up the
young you, and then brates there for all of our
hard partying it's like, look what you did, I don't
remember anything now, so they can be our punching bags.
You know. Yeah, there's all sorts of possibilities here. But
(25:52):
back to the the the the real reality in in
our current time. Um, Facebook already has the thing where um,
when when you when you die, uh, your profile is memorialized. Uh.
And this is this is like right off and right
off the website. When a user passes away, we memorialize
their account to protect their privacy. Memorializing an account sets
(26:14):
the account privacy so that only confirmed friends can see
the profile or located in search, the wall remains so
friends and family can leave post in remembrance. Memorializing an
account also prevents anyone from logging into the account. And
to add a little extra that um, a recent estimate
put the number of US Facebook users who die annually
(26:35):
at something like um, which is you know, probably gonna
go up. Um. And then in the world of Twitter,
there's a really interesting thing like Yeah, Jonathan Strickland turned
me on to this. Who has an article by the
time is web this Uh, this episode comes out His
article on how stuff works website how digital immortality works
(26:57):
should be out so be sure to check out that
after you listen to this UM. But Jonathan told me
about this blogger by the name of Brian Brushwood who
teamed up with a web guru by the name of
Patrick Delante, and uh, they launched Afterlife. Me. That's a
f T E R L y f E dot m
e UM to pursue this idea of digital immortality. So
(27:19):
the ideas you create a dead man switch on your
online life, like every every time your birthday rolls around,
you need to go in and push her button. Otherwise
it's gonna activate the afterlife for you. In terms of
social media, which means you'll your Twitter account will start,
say throwing out random mundane um responses, or your Facebook
(27:40):
I'm just thinking of all like the smart alec things
that you could do. Yeah, like like Mark Twain with
the with the biography. Everyone's dead, so what does it matter.
But but then also your Facebook account would be programmed
to say give birthday, which is to to all your
friends and family on their on their birthdays, things of
that nature. Um And uh yeah, So the website is
(28:02):
just in its early stages right now that it's not
you can basically sign up and just get updates. On
the status of this. But it's an interesting like first
real stab at cyber immortality and uh and it and
it brings in all these questions the same you know,
to what extent is this weird and cool? With what
what extent is it comforting? Will it help with people
(28:23):
with their bereavement? And to what extent that would it
eventually become creepy? And yeah, of course, someone says, Man,
I'm gonna have to act call somebody at Twitter to
get them to turn off, you know, my best friends
Twitter account because it's no longer cute now it's just sad, right, Yeah,
I know this. And again, this is what's so fascinating
about this topic is, you know, technology again makes us
(28:45):
rethink a place in the world and and how to
manage our ideas of ourselves. They are left ones. Well, hey,
I have some missives from the void right here in
the form of uh, well first person as an email
that I'm particularly excited about. Uh. This one comes from
(29:05):
a listener by the name of Bruce, and Bruce says,
high folks, I was listening to a podcast of Yours
and a Long Drive. It was on viruses. Robert mentioned Maximilian,
the Big red robot in the Black Hole. Thanks much.
I built that robot many years ago working effects at Disney.
That little blast in the past perked me right up.
I spent two years of my life working on that flip.
Thanks again for the indirect shout out regards Bruce. So
(29:31):
that was awesome, Yeah, because that that is a that
is a movie that I just grew up with. And
uh and and and I don't I don't know what
you call the affection that a like three year old
or five year old boy um has for a evil
red robot, but I definitely, yeah, I definitely had a
bot crush on Maximilian Um and uh and so that's
(29:52):
awesome too to hear that. Yeah, they The only thing
even close to that was when I was working for
a newspaper and tell Homes in a Sea. I've interviewed
a guy who ran a lokal antique store who helped
build the set the giant bed that they created for
the film Stephen King's Cat's Eye, because they have a
little troll who's like, you know, it's like yeah, big,
(30:13):
very little, little tiny guy and he's running around on
on this bed and jumping around. So they had to
create this enormous version of a for the scale of
the troll. Yeah, and create an enormous children's room with this,
like you know, like a bed two stories tall. And
he showed me all these pictures on it, so did
the No. No, he was enormous. But apparently the guy
telling me when I was talking to him that there
(30:34):
was an ongoing bet to see, um who could well
well to to see who could looks at what they
keep it tamped to? You could sleep in that bed first? Yeah,
but but anyway, that but that was cool, but Maximilian
is even cooler. So thanks, Bruce, really appreciate that. And um,
(30:55):
one little note, Um, so I threw out a question
on our Facebook pro wile which is blow the mind.
Uh you can look that is blow the mind on Facebook,
and we'll also blow the mind on Twitter. But I
put out the question what will five hundred years of
life due to the human mind, which is similar to
what we're talking about here. Uh. And I put this
on the New House Stuff Works forums, So everybody out there,
you can log into the forum, create an account, log in,
(31:18):
and you you know, you can converse on the Facebook.
You can also confers on the forum and respond to
various articles, et cetera. Um But a listener by the
name of Richard responded, and he says, quote, it is
difficult to separate the biological from the mental and the brain.
They're connected, and so characteristics of the body follow into
the brain and thus the mind. I believe that the system, limitations,
(31:40):
and specs of the brain correspond to the body. It
seems that without the assistance of technology, our bodies are
meant to survive in the natural world. Between forty and
sixty years since the brain mind coevolved with the body,
it is reasonable to surmise that the specs are similar
for the brain mind. With that said, I think that
we have a certain capacity for experience in memory. When
we exceed this capacity, I believe that we begin to
(32:03):
feel certain fatigue set in that leads to depression and
thus um a, and thus we feel the need to
move on. So I thought that was some interesting commentary
there from Richard, and uh and uh some other people
have already responded with some cool stuff. You know. Yeah,
it's very thought provoking. Yeah, So you know, come onto
the Facebook or the Twitter or the forums and interact
with us. We'd love to hear your thoughts on all
(32:24):
these mind blowing questions. That's right, and you can always
drop us a line as well at blow the Mind
at house to works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
icon in the upper right corner of our home page.
(32:45):
The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download
it today on iTunes.
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