Transferring the human consciousness to some kind of digital media has been looked at a lot. The idea of having a human live on past death or ailment in some virtual reality seems like something that is only feasible in movies or tv shows. This actually does happen to appear in the movie The Matrix and in the television show Futurama. In The Matrix, machines have taken over and are “growing” humans to harvest energy from the human bodies but humanity if blind to this because they are all connected to the Matrix which is a virtual reality that was made to simulate daily life for everyone and no one really knows this is happening, unless you take the red pill. In Futurama, there is an episode where the main character Fry goes to visit some of his elderly relatives who are living in a virtual retirement home. Fry’s relatives are plugged into this virtual reality where they have a nice apartment and a nice retired life, but in reality they are packed closely together in a giant building.
I do not believe that transferring a human from physical to digital is possible with the technology we have today. There are some machines and robots that are being worked on in an attempt to emulate a human with very advanced artificial intelligence. They can make complex decisions and even beat the worlds best boardgame players. In my eyes however, that is all they can do. Sure AlphaGo can play GO and beat the world champion Lee Sedol, but again that is all it can do. It doesn’t have to eat, exercise, worry about hygiene, worry about social interactions, or really do any of the day to day monotonous acts that people do and its how people chose to do things in the world that makes them human. At the root of all this, the reason people make the decisions they do is because of their thoughts and feelings. These are parts of consciousness. Computers today do not really have the power to emulate all the processes in a human brain. To add to that challenge, trying to produce a human consciousness is almost impossible in my eyes. Also, notice that in both The Matrix and Futurama examples, the subject is still alive and once dead, are of no use. Even in a movie about the future where machines take over and a tv show that is 1000 years in the future and space ships are the vehicle of choice for delivery companies, They still need the human body to have them in the systems.
Jacob Villa 