From “The Rapture of the Nerds” (Time):
Terasem’s followers are dedicated to studying and raising awareness about what they call “personal cyberconciousness”—the creation of mindfiles. They believe that by ritualistically recording your thoughts and feelings with great detail, you can ultimately assemble a digital copy of yourself, available for future use.
To start, you write down or record a video of you talking about a thought, memory or feeling, and upload it to a website. You can also choose to have each mindfile beamed out into the universe—hence the satellites. So far more than 32,000 people have created free mindfile accounts.
The mindfiles are stored on servers located in both Vermont and Florida, and by using Terasem’s services you accept their promise that they will protect those files for the long-term future, making it possible for some not-yet-invented software to organize those files into an approximation of your consciousness so they can be uploaded into an artificial body 50, 100, 500 years from now.
“A lot of people have problems digesting” the idea, Gabriel says. “Instead of saying ‘mindfiling,’ I say ‘digital scrapbooking.”
Remember this when people tell you that traditional faiths feature unreasonable beliefs.
See also: Silicon Valley immortality: The resurrection of the head
Prototype in action:
Antidote: Rod Dreher discovers Dante
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as to:
And from whence, as C.S. Lewis would ask, comes this desire for immortality?
Moreover, contrary to what these people believe, we already are immortal beings!
As well, contrary to what these people believe, there is already a extensive ‘mindfile’ being created for each of us that has every detail of our lives recorded in it, no matter how minute the detail of our lives. How do I know this? Well, one line of evidence is that in a Near Death Experiences every minute detail of a person’s life is gone over in the ‘life review’ portion of the experience:
At the 17:45 minute mark of the following Near Death Experience documentary, the Life Review portion of the Near Death Experience is highlighted, with several testimonies relating how every word, deed, and action, of a person’s life (all the ‘information’ of a person’s life) is gone over in the presence of God:
Another line of evidence is ‘clarity of memories’ in Near Death Experiences:
Another line of evidence is that memories have never been located ‘in’ the brain:
Another line of evidence is, via the law of identity, that the mind is NOT the same thing as the brain:
As to ‘achieving immortality’, I think these people should take a serious look at the only person who has ever defeated death and achieved immortality in this world and see what he said in regards to us ‘achieving immortality’:
Supplemental notes:
Verse and Music:
Are we sure this isn’t viral marketing for the Johnny Depp film Transcendence?
I don’t want eternal life, I just don’t want to die a nerd’s death!