X-Message-Number: 20256
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: "The future of death"
Date: Sun, 06 Oct 2002 13:47:40 -0700

[This article doesn't mention cryonics, and its assertion about the relative 
proportions of the living to the dead doesn't sound right to me. -- MP]

http://www.btexact.com/ideas/futurology?doc=21053

The future of death

Death used to be one of the great certainties of life, along with taxes. 
Taxes haven't always existed though, and in some utopian economy of the 
future, they might again not be needed. Death is an interesting source of 
amusing statistics. Six billion people are alive, but fewer than 6 billion 
people have died. If less than half the people ever born have died, why do 
people say it is certain. When my daughter was born 5 years ago, her life 
expectancy was given as about 85. More recently, some doctors suggest that 
she can now expect to live to 120. I have seen other estimates even higher 
than this. In the last five years, her life expectancy has increased by 35 
years or more. I would suggest that this is quite sufficient for us to make 
a realistic stab at immortality. Unless she is unfortunate enough to die 
early from accident or disease, my daughter has a good chance of not dying 
at all. Let me explain why.

In the first half of the next century, we will develop much more advanced 
capability in genetics and other biotechnology, materials technology and 
nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is hailed as a potential life saver in 
itself, able in principle to undo the damage caused by disease and age, 
keeping us eternally young. It remains to be seen how far we get with that 
vision in the next century, but we can certainly expect some progress in 
that area.

With this combination of technologies locked together in a positive feedback 
loop, we will eventually develop the technology to enable a direct link 
between the human brain and the machine, i.e. the descendants of today's 
computers. On the computer side, neural networks are already the routine 
approach to many problems and are based on many of the same principles that 
neurons in the brain use. As this field develops, we will be able eventually 
to make a good emulation of biological neurons. As it develops further, it 
ought to be possible on a sufficiently sophisticated computer to make a full 
emulation of a whole brain. Meanwhile, on the human side, nanotechnology and 
biotechnology will also converge so that we will have the capability to link 
synthetic technology directly to individual neurons in the brain. We don't 
know for certain that this is possible, but it may be possible to measure 
the behaviour of each individual neuron using this technology and to signal 
this behaviour to the brain emulation running in the computer, which could 
then emulate it. Other sensors could similarly measure and allow emulation 
of the many chemical signalling mechanisms that are used in the brain. The 
computer could thus produce an almost perfect electronic equivalent of the 
brain inside the human, neuron by neuron. This gives us two things.

Firstly, by doing this, we would have a 'backup' copy of the person's brain, 
so that in principle, they can carry on thinking, and effectively living, 
long after their biological body and brain has died. At this point we could 
claim effective immortality. Secondly, we have a two way link between the 
brain and the computer which allows thought to be executed on either 
platform and to be signalled between them. But there is one important 
difference between the brain and computer already that we may be able to 
capitalise on. In the brain's neurons, signals travel at hundreds of metres 
per second. In a free space optical connection, they travel at hundreds of 
millions of metres per second, millions of times faster. Switching speeds 
are similarly faster in electronics. In the brain, cells are also very large 
compared to the electronic components of the future, so we may be able to 
reduce the distances over which the signals have to travel by another factor 
of 100 or more. But this assumes we take an almost exact representation of 
brain layout. We might be able to do much better than this. In the brain, we 
don't appear to use all the neurons, (many are either redundant or have an 
unknown purpose) and those that we do use in a particular process are often 
in groups that are far apart. Reconfigurable hardware will be the norm in 
the 21st century and we may be able to optimise the structure for each type 
of though process. Rearranging the useful neurons into more optimal 
structures should give another huge gain.

This means that our electronic emulation of the brain should behave in a 
similar way but much faster - maybe billions of times faster! It may be able 
to process an entire lifetime's thoughts in a second or two. But even there 
are several opportunities for vast improvement. The brain is limited in size 
by a variety of biological constraints. Even if there were more space 
available, it could not be made much more efficient by making it larger, 
because of the need for cooling, energy and oxygen supply taking up every 
more space and making distances between processors larger. In the computer, 
these constraints are much more easily addressable, so we could add large 
numbers of additional neurons to give more intelligence. In the brain, many 
learning processes stop soon after birth or in childhood. There need be no 
such constraints in a computer emulation, so we could learn new skills as 
easily as in our infancy. And best of all, the computer is not limited by 
the memory of a single brain - it has access to all the world's information 
and knowledge, and huge amounts of processing outside the brain emulation. 
Our electronic brain could be literally the size of the planet - the whole 
internet and all the processing and storage connected to it.

With all these advances, the computer emulation of the brain would be many 
orders of magnitude superior to its organic equivalent. And yet it might be 
connected in real time to the original. We would have an effective brain 
extension in cyberspace, one that gives us immeasurably improved performance 
and intelligence. Most of our thoughts might happen in the machine world, 
and because of the direct link, we might experience them as if they had 
occurred inside our head.

But there is one other fundamental difference that would result. Our brains 
are the equivalent of computers before the age of the internet. They are 
certainly useful, but communication between them is slow and inefficient. 
When brains are directly connected to machines, and those machines are 
networked then everyone else's brains are also part of that network, so we 
have a global network of people's brains, all connected together, with all 
the computers too.

So the future of death is bleak. By the time today's children are due to 
die, they will have been using brain extensions for many years, and backups 
will be taken for granted. Death need not be traumatic for our relatives. 
They will soon get used to us walking around in an android body. Funerals 
will be much more fun as the key participant makes a speech about what they 
are expecting from their new life. Biological death might still be 
unpleasant, but it need no longer be a career barrier.





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