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Scientists have been grappling with the question of life after death for centuries. Although most of the world’s religions describe the afterlife in one form or another, the world of science has not reached a consensus on the issue. However, outside of the metaphysical realm of belief, scientists are exploring the possibility of extending life beyond death through technological means.
Michio Kaku, best-selling author and professor at The City College of New York, believes life after death can be achieved through digital means.
This does not mean science will one day allow us to stand before the Pearly Gates but, rather, technology will be able to immortalise our memories, personalities and quirks in a way that will be accessible for future generations.
Doing so could, Dr Kaku believes, recreate genius minds like Albert Einstein based on his life’s writings, speeches and mannerisms.
Dr Kaku discussed the topic of life after death in a Big Think video alongside former pastor and author Rob Bell, science writer Michael Shermer and science communicator Bill Nye.
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The physicist said: “Digital and genetic immortality are within reach.
“Already in Silicon Valley, there are companies, which for a price, will digitize everything known about you: your credit card transactions, your emails, Instagrams, everything known about you can be digitized.
“And we have something called the Connectome Project which will map the pathways of the entire human brain, all your memories, all your quirks, personalities, everything digitized, and we’ll put it on a disc and for the most part, we’ll put it in a library.”
Today you can enter a library and read to your heart’s content all the books about iconic figures like Winston Churchill.
In the future, however, Dr Kaku claims it will be possible to meet Churchill, or rather a digital recreation of the man.
The physicist added: “I would love to talk to Einstein.
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“I would love to talk to him, even if it’s a computer program that has digitized everything known about him: his work, his writings, his speeches, everything, and a holographic image so that I can talk to him.
“And one day we might be digitized as well. We’ll be able to talk to our great, great, great, great, great-grandkids.
“And they’ll be able to talk to their great, great, great, great-ancestors as well because we become immortal.”
In 2018, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) already claimed to have digitised an animal’s neural maps.
The neural maps, also known as connectomes, play a vital role in the way the brain stores memories.
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Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, has also claimed technology will allow humans to connect their brain to the internet by the 2030s.
He said: “In the 2030s we are going to send nano-robots into the brain that will provide full-immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system and will connect our neocortex to the cloud.”
Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov has made similar claims, stating humans will have the power to back-up their brains onto the cloud by 2045.
Companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink are already working on developing a computer-brain interface that will in theory blur the border between human and machine.
Last year the SpaceX boss said the company is maybe five to 10 years away from giving humans the ability to communicate non-verbally.
However, some scientists have suggested the complexities of the human brain might bee too great to overcome.
Kenneth D Miller, a professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University, said in 2015: “We all find our own solutions to the problem death poses.
“For the foreseeable future, bringing your mind back to life will not be one of them.”
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