Achieving ImmortalityAchieving Immortality
Here we are, the first species that’s ever effectively taken over its own evolution …. It’s like human evolution is now designer evolution.
—WILLIAM GIBSON
Since the dawn of human history, philosophers and theologians have speculated about immortality. Uneasy, aging kings have commanded methods for extending the life span.
A most dramatic example of this age-long impulse is ancient Egypt, which produced mummification, the pyramids, and manuals like the Book of the Dying.
The Tibetan Book of the Dying presents a masterful Buddhist model of post-mortem stages and techniques for guiding the student to a state of immortality, which is neurologically “real” and suggests scientific techniques for reversing the dying process.
The new field of molecular engineering is producing techniques within the framework of current consensus Western science to implement auto-metamorphosis. The aim of the game is to defeat death—to give the individual mastery of this, the final stupidity.
We do not endorse any particular technique of achieving immortality. Our aim is to review all options and encourage creative thinking about new possibilities.
Brain Preservation
There are three scientific methods for preserving the hardware of the brain after physical death.
1. Cloning a new brain and body from cells.
2. Cryonic suspension of the body and/or brain.
3. Biological brain banking—awaiting donor transplant to a new body.
Preserving the brain does not assure that the software directories, the memory files and the personal operating systems, will be preserved. Therefore, the owner of the brain must make arrangements to “save” and “back up” the memory software that comprises the individual’s personality and consciousness of self.
The brain is an organic computer. The human mind is a brain that recognizes its own existence.
—SIMON YOUNG
Designer Evolution
A Transhumanist Manifesto
Storing personal memories and genetic algorithms in the brain to be backed up and stored for uploading into the new or re-animated brain.
Owners who wish to preserve and re-animate their neuro-memories—souls—must diligently collect and protect material mementos that will help reconstruction the unique personality and personal environment of their lives—within reason. The tombs of pharaohs are models of personal-reality storage, but impractical for our times. Material items, mementos, souvenirs, clothes, books, and pictures are obviously vulnerable to loss. The key to software backup is digitization.
