14 DAY TRIAL // Do you remember Highlander? The one with "I am immortal, I have inside me blood of kings..." soundtrack by Queen. In the movie, immortals would only die if one chopoed off their heads.
Guess what, in 50 years from now, the highlander will have to find a better way to kill them, because according to Ian Pearson, the head of the futurology unit at British Telecom, people will be able to download their brains into computers.
He says in an interview for the Observer that by that time, rich people will be given the opportunity to transfer their minds into computers. Those who aren't rich will have to wait until 2080 to have access to this service.
Pearson bases his predictions on the rapid evolution of computing technology, exemplifying with Sony's PlayStation3 specifications which are 35% more powerful than the ones of the previous model.
He says that if PlayStation3 is 1% of the capacity of a human brain, then in 50 years from now, the computing systems will be as powerful as the human brain.
According to the same visionary, the downloaded mind will have feelings just as a normal living person would.
But I think the important question is: Do we really want to be immortal and live an eternal life inside a computer?