{"id":1029,"date":"2017-03-21T04:34:47","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T04:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=1029"},"modified":"2017-03-21T04:34:47","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T04:34:47","slug":"head-in-the-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/03\/21\/head-in-the-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Head in the Cloud?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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i.bnet.com\/blogs\/brain-machine-circuit-graphic-blk-500px.jpg<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A couple weeks ago, while flipping through the featured stories on Snapchat, I stumbled upon a VICE article on hacking death through technology. Some Silicon Valley scientists are working on ways to convert human brains to code which can be converted to run on machines. Essentially, people can upload their brain\u2019s memory to the cloud after they die and leave their bodies. Much of the conversation around this topic is hypothetical though, and is very different from the idea of literal immortality, because it is not attempting to defeat biological death. Instead, it is more of a merging of human memory and artificial intelligence. Mark O\u2019Connell, author of the book, To Be a Machine<\/em>, discusses this phenomenon of immortality through technology in an interview with VICE magazine:\u00a0tonic.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/imagine-how-creepy-itll-be-when-everyone-refuses-to-age<\/a><\/p>\n

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images.penguinrandomhouse.com\/cover\/9780385540414<\/a>\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I found the ideas Mark O\u2019Connell expresses to be especially interesting in light of Alex Senemar\u2019s article, \u201cWhat Happens to Your Data When You Die?\u201d Senemar introduces the idea of how in the future, \u201csoftware-based humans\u201d will eventually rule the world and \u201cmortality will be conquered by human machines.\u201d He writes, \u201cAs the world grows increasingly dependent on internet technology, many human beings have already begun living like \u2018cyborgs.\u2019 Your electronics are collecting detailed information about you every second, not to mention the enormous amount of data you share about yourself<\/em> while navigating the internet \u2013 meanwhile, internet corporations have harvested that data to assemble detailed profiles of your habits and behaviors, in hopes of more effectively predicting and analyzing human activity.\u201d Although he writes that this data accumulated through the internet does not belong to the person, it nevertheless represents them. Its content can say a lot about a person. It also continues to exist after a person dies, which ties back to the idea of memories stored on a cloud transcending mortality. \u00a0This made me wonder: is it reductionist to say that a human can transcend death if their memories live on, if a person is a sum of their experiences? And to what extent does the human brain resemble data?<\/p>\n

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Work Cited<\/p>\n

Senemar, Alex. \u201cWhat Happens to Your Data When You Die?\u201d Medium<\/em>. Medium, 27 July 2015. Web. 21 March 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple weeks ago, while flipping through the featured stories on Snapchat, I stumbled upon a VICE article on hacking death through technology. Some Silicon Valley scientists are working on ways to convert human brains to code which can be converted to run on machines. Essentially, people can upload their brain\u2019s memory to the cloud … <\/p>\n

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