Thanks, But No Thanks

This morning Cole brought in a few recent issues of Rolling Stone. I grabbed the one with Sean Penn on the cover, eager to read anything having to do with his performance in "Milk." After finishing that article, I happened to keep reading the very next one, about Ray Kurzweil (the link is a pdf of the article).

That article freaked the shit out of me, in a way that I can't describe to you other than to say that if you read the article, you will know what I mean. I felt sick after reading it. It sets up that Kurzweil is a little batty, but also that he has accurately predicted many technological advances. Then it outlines his newest prediction, The Singularity, which is just about the most disturbing thing I've ever read. Basically, he predicts that in 2045, robots are going to live inside of us, backing up our brains like computers--well, among other things. (The other things are too numerous and strange to go into here--like I said, read it and weep.)

At this point I looked up and said to Cole, "I really don't think it's possible to back up your brain like you back up a hard drive." Cole said that it's quite possible that I am wrong, and he's right-- but I personally don't like to think that the brain is something that we can fully understand. I like that human thoughts and how they work are a sort of unknowable mystery, overall. At least to me. Cole says that anything could be broken down by science, but I honestly think that the idea of taking someone's thought and then being able to accurately reconstruct it sounds more like science fiction.

I think as a person who likes to write and tell stories, the idea that the contents of a brain can just be uploaded and printed out kind of spells the end of storytelling and writing as we know it. I mean, by the time that happens the world will be a very different place anyway. Maybe I should worry about this when it gets closer to being real.

The thing is-- I think every person who wants to write wishes that s/he could articulate his/her ideas in a deeper and more expressive way, but I have a feeling that just being able to read a brain's thoughts in analog or whatever wouldn't necessarily enhance the beauty of a thought as expressed with the perfectly chosen words. I don't know, I feel very inarticulate right now. I don't have any robots helping me.

One particularly disturbing moment: "By scanning the contents of your brain, nanobots will be able to transfer everything you know, everything you have experienced, into a robot or a virtual-reality program. If something happens to your physical body, no problem. Your mind will live on-- forever."

I honestly think that sounds like the freakiest thing possible. A disemodied mind, living in a computer? Kill me now, right? Kurzweil also says that eventually robots will keep us from aging, and he takes 150 pills a day to keep himself young enough to live until that day. Oookay.

The thing is, as much as nobody wants to really think about his/her mortality, I don't think that any of us would want to choose to NEVER die, or to live as a sort of hazy half-person. We aren't prepared to die, but I think we're even less prepared to live forever.

Anyway, although the article builds up the possibility of Kurzweil's future being possible, the author eventually reveals the opinions of a few other top scientist types, who pretty much say that Kurzweil is crazy.

But the most reassuring (in terms of, oh wait, this is guy is probably totally deluded)/freakiest part of the article is the very end, where Kurzweil admits that he's creating these nanobots as a means to reanimate his father, who died in the 1960s. He wants to bring his father back as some sort of robot that has all of his father's memories, thanks to nanobots rooting the memories out of his (Ray's) brain. He says that the first thing he'd tell his father is that he really did get to create music from computers, just as his father hoped he would. That's the part where the story starts to sound like a disturbing movie cliche of a boy who just wants to make his father proud, with a very Frankenstein-y twist. As long as Ray lives he's going to be pushing to develop the technology to make the future he wants possible, and that's just-- disturbing. Scary. On a lighter note-- in the process he has invented a whole bunch of useful devices for the blind, etc.

The thing is-- I wonder what Ray's father would think. I think that an aversion to death and the deaths of others has to do with fear of death-- but once it happens, it happens. I have a feeling that this dead father is okay with being dead by now. Ray wants to create a world where nothing is unknown, where life is the only possibility. But there have to be unknowns in life, I think. There has to be death. I don't want to live in a hyper-technological world. Reading this article almost made me want to go off the grid, or at least go cavort with Mother Nature more often. Seriously.

Well, I'm hoping that the people who said that this isn't really as possible as Ray thinks are right. Maybe in four hundred years from my robot body I'll be posting some sort of retraction to this entry, using videos of my memories as illustrations. Hopefully not, though.

Or maybe I'll come around to it. If nanobots are running around (and Ray Kurzweil is still alive), I might not have a choice.