Man has always experimented to fulfill the desire of living beyond the bounds of a physical body. We are bound by the physical laws of nature but our consciousness has always been an unintelligible experience and though it is bound by our physical brain but seems to exist in a different plain. For the first time in human history man is trying to go beyond the physical body and dreaming of ways to upload the mind in a digital form. Mind uploading and digital immortality will ultimately be a dream of many rich and famous. So will it be possible to upload the mind in a computer? Cryonic preservation of the body is already a reality.
Mind though a short 4 letter word is hard to define. It is the collective ability of the brain to think, intelligence and consciousness. The possibility of uploading a mind is based on a few assumptions:-
The mind is inside the structure we call brain and its connected bio chemistry.
One day we will have the technology to understand of how the brain functions and also will be able to simulate it.
Computer software will be able to host the mind, which means the mind must be computable through computer codes.
These things are of debate by the philosophers and scientists and there are too many unanswered question to come to a logical conclusion. Any discussion of mind starts with the brain, the most complex part of the body. Let’s try to understand how complex it is. Approximately 100 billion neurons are communicating with each other via 100 million billion connectors. Each one is sending up to 1000 signals each second that is a whopping 1 quadrillion signals each second and this is happening each second of your waking life. Apart from neurons there are a billion other supporting and immune cells performing various kinds of jobs each second. Within the brain where exactly is ‘you’ is not known or various parts of the brain working together may constitute ‘you’. Hormones also play a big role in the functioning of the brain.
To understand all these complexities we would need a scan machine which could decipher all that is happening. But presently we do not have such technology. Another method would be cutting the brain into small pieces and making an accurate map using a high resolution electron microscope. In 2019 scientists did this on a 1 cubic millimeter of mouse brain. It took 3 months to complete a 3D model when 5 electron microscopes worked continuously. The data takes 2 million gigabytes storage. The human brain is far more complex and will require further small pieces and may require more than the data storage available on earth.
Even if we are able to create a 3D model of a human brain, we would have to fully understand how to make this static model to a working model. We will have to bring it to life. Even if we get the model we just don’t know whether we will be able to create a thinking brain. We may come to know all the ingredients but making the final product may still be impossible. A somewhat easier objective would be to create a probabilistic model of the functioning.
A functional mind uploading will lead to the holy grail of digital immortality. But if it somehow gets corrupted as computer files do these days then we might get stuck in an eternity of pain or sorrow or any other form of outcome. If we are able to create a digital mind then the technology will make it possible for the digital and biological version of you to co-exist. Your biological mind goes through phases of pain, hunger, sleep, love etc but your digital mind can be programmed to go through selected emotions of your choice. Your digital mind will open up new possibilities which are now unimaginable like you could speed up time from past to present or you could revisit your past in the touch of a button. You could be able to change aspects of your personality which you don’t like. The adventurous could embark on a journey to explore the universe by pausing time in the digital mind.
It can be used by criminals to live eternally in the digital form; governments can use it to control the people. At present it is hard to judge what the consequences of a digital mind are and whether it will be for the benefit of mankind or not. It may create a digital utopia or a digital horror. There can be hundreds and thousands of possibilities opening up which we cannot even comprehend now.
