Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Julie, I had an an interesting, uh experience recently.
Speaker 1: I mean it was other things too, but there were
Speaker 1: aspects of it they were interesting. Um my father died um,
Speaker 1: which of course comes with a lot of shock and
Speaker 1: a lot of emotional um turmoil. But but the technology,
Speaker 1: modern technology seems to make these things flow a little different.
Speaker 1: Like after I talked to him on the phone like
Speaker 1: earlier in the day and then I got this call
Speaker 1: that he was dead, and uh and so, I mean
Speaker 1: no knowing that I knew he was dead, but I
Speaker 1: picked up my cell phone and I, for you know,
Speaker 1: some reason, I pulled him up on that and I
Speaker 1: called him, and of course it went straight to his
Speaker 1: answer machine and I heard this electronical way message this
Speaker 1: question posed to me, you know, out of the void,
Speaker 1: and then I I left my response. You know that?
Speaker 1: And uh, you know this in the sense is you know,
Speaker 1: it's the same message I've heard when I've called him
Speaker 1: and missed him. Uh, you know, or you know, or
Speaker 1: called him when I was in the middle of something,
Speaker 1: you know, many times before. Um, but there was this
Speaker 1: strange feeling, you know, of of conversing with the technology
Speaker 1: of a person that lives on after that person is gone,
Speaker 1: like this technological remnant of your Yeah, like little like
Speaker 1: technological pieces of my father, you know, insignificant pieces, to
Speaker 1: be sure, but but pieces all the same. So, you know,
Speaker 1: since I've like I've saved the messages that he'd left me,
Speaker 1: I've and I you know, and I found myself wondering
Speaker 1: things like, oh, what have I recorded our last phone call?
Speaker 1: Because you know, I have this recording device. I could
Speaker 1: have done it. I do it all the time for interviews.
Speaker 1: If I had you know, if i'd only you know,
Speaker 1: had any inkling and uh. So it's you end up
Speaker 1: questioning what if what if I could What if I
Speaker 1: could have done this? What else would I have done?
Speaker 1: What if I could have preserved him digitally in some way?
Speaker 1: You know? And uh and then the other question is
Speaker 1: there any sense to that at all? Is that just well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, we have been documenting ourselves,
Speaker 1: you know, since since we I think became aware of ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know, how to put it best, but I mean
Speaker 1: if you think about the you know, the the Dagara type, right,
Speaker 1: you know, all of a sudden, it was photographs were
Speaker 1: widely used, and that was a different way of remembering
Speaker 1: our loved ones and going back to the memory which
Speaker 1: has been so important to us. Um. So it kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense that as we are, you know, smack
Speaker 1: dab in the digital age now that we began to
Speaker 1: layer these different pieces of our chiving together. Yeah, A
Speaker 1: couple of interesting examples come to mind. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: for starters, of course, any time someone has written something
Speaker 1: or created something, most of those creations continue to exist
Speaker 1: in some form after the the author or the artist
Speaker 1: has passed away. So you know, a book becomes a
Speaker 1: remnant of the person. Um. You know, a song they
Speaker 1: wrote becomes a remnant. Um. I cannot but think of
Speaker 1: Mark Twain's biography or the volumes in his bot biography
Speaker 1: that are coming out a hundred years after his death
Speaker 1: right that stipulation that it could not be published until
Speaker 1: one hundred years after his death right, which which on
Speaker 1: one hand, that's pretty uh, you know, pretty ballsy to
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, a hundred years from now, they're still
Speaker 1: going to be craving me. So, yeah, that's Mark Twain, right,
Speaker 1: but but but also it feels kind of eerie. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: Mark Twain has a new book out. He's been dead
Speaker 1: a century, but here's here's this new book and her
Speaker 1: words that next to no one has heard before from him, right,
Speaker 1: and and a different understanding of him because I guess
Speaker 1: he felt comfortable in and sharing that information only one
Speaker 1: hundred years after his death, which is pretty interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the example that comes to mind, and this one
Speaker 1: is also non electronic. Uh. Happened on a recent episode
Speaker 1: of This American Life, the NBR radio show Slash podcast
Speaker 1: uh and it was titled parent Trapped with the episode
Speaker 1: and there was a segment about a sixteen year old
Speaker 1: girl named Rebecca and her mom died of cancer. But
Speaker 1: before the mom died, she wrote the series of letters
Speaker 1: to be delivered each year after death, one uh, one
Speaker 1: for for each birthday that Rebecca would have in the
Speaker 1: years afterwards years thirteen years, and then one letter to
Speaker 1: be delivered to her on the day of her her wedding.
Speaker 1: So and and this is this was just a fascinating
Speaker 1: study until like into these you know, these missives sent
Speaker 1: off from you know, in a way, from beyond the grave,
Speaker 1: because like the first the first one she receives a
Speaker 1: year after um after her death, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's emotional, it's but it's comforting somehow, you know, you're
Speaker 1: hearing from this person. But as the years roll on,
Speaker 1: they become less comforting, become these grief bombs that go
Speaker 1: off each year to the point where she's kind of
Speaker 1: dreading them. Um and the and the mother that is
Speaker 1: conversing or there is still this mother of you know,
Speaker 1: five years ago, six years ago, seven years years ago,
Speaker 1: talking to a version of her that doesn't really exist
Speaker 1: anymore because we change. You know, the person I was
Speaker 1: a year ago ago isn't the person I am now.
Speaker 1: The person I'm going to be in a year isn't
Speaker 1: the person I am now. So you get this this
Speaker 1: increasingly disjointed conversation across time, uh, because it's like her
Speaker 1: mother's projections of who she wants her to be, right,
Speaker 1: and she's evolving as a person, and that's not matching
Speaker 1: up right, right, So we bring we bring these examples
Speaker 1: then into a discussion of cyber immortality or digital immortality,
Speaker 1: and the idea that the more technological, um, stuff that
Speaker 1: we pile onto our being. Uh, the more it becomes
Speaker 1: possible for that stuff to live on after we're dead,
Speaker 1: and then what does that mean? And how do we
Speaker 1: process this and when what good does it do ultimately? Well?
Speaker 1: And what's so interesting to me too, is that it
Speaker 1: does become like an afterlife for us, right, I mean
Speaker 1: we you know in the biblical sense that there's there's
Speaker 1: the heaven and afterlife right there where you continue to
Speaker 1: exist in another form. You know, essentially, if you've got
Speaker 1: cyber immortality, you're existing in another form, right, And it's
Speaker 1: interesting to break down, um. And we're gonna take this
Speaker 1: is a very scientific uh look at it and a
Speaker 1: psychological look at it. Um. So you know, we're just
Speaker 1: discounting religion for a second here, um, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about why do we have this idea of
Speaker 1: a soul and indeed, why do we have this idea
Speaker 1: of a mind? And psychologist Paul Bloom argues that humans
Speaker 1: imagine that we have souls because the human brain has
Speaker 1: no awareness of its own functioning, Right, we falsely perceive
Speaker 1: ourselves to be separate from our bodies, I mean, our
Speaker 1: brain can we've discussed in the past how our brain
Speaker 1: can wrap itself around everything except itself. So we have mind,
Speaker 1: so we have souls. I mean the bulk of our
Speaker 1: brain's processes exist outside of what we can experience and
Speaker 1: what we do experience. We experience that a slight delay.
Speaker 1: So um, so we have to compartmentalize at someone would
Speaker 1: we end up viewing ourselves as being outside of our bodies.
Speaker 1: So along with this argument, according to science author William
Speaker 1: Simms Bainbridge, religion enables us to turn the idea of
Speaker 1: the soul um turned to the idea of the soul
Speaker 1: to achieve highly desired rewards that are unattainable in the
Speaker 1: real world, like living forever or being becoming reunited with
Speaker 1: loved ones and friends that we've lost. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: very interesting that in the Bainbridge article from the futurist
Speaker 1: Um I think that was from two thousand and six. Yes,
Speaker 1: pretty prescient stuff, right, because there he's talking about how
Speaker 1: it's very possible that technology could supplant some of the
Speaker 1: ways in which religion is used. And again there's that
Speaker 1: idea of the afterlife, this idea that there's an assurance
Speaker 1: that there's meaning to our lives that there's some sort
Speaker 1: of flicker of our existence that extends beyond our mortality, right, um,
Speaker 1: and then create an archive of our memories that we
Speaker 1: could transfer to AI surrogates. He talks about this. Articles
Speaker 1: like robots, avatars and distributed intelligence would essentially do that job.
Speaker 1: Or like a virtual world that you might you know,
Speaker 1: jack into where it's your you know, it's your childhood
Speaker 1: living room and there's your father or your grant or
Speaker 1: your uncle or or whoever, um, that you might converse
Speaker 1: with them again Yeah, yeah, And I don't want to
Speaker 1: jump ahead too much. But of course we know too
Speaker 1: with the Blue Brain project that we are trying to
Speaker 1: map our brains. There there are scientists that are trying
Speaker 1: to do this with computer models and are doing with
Speaker 1: a wrap brain right now. So we're trying to get
Speaker 1: to that point where we understand how our brain works
Speaker 1: and actually maybe see our consciousness in action. Right And
Speaker 1: and of course we're obviously we're we're putting more and
Speaker 1: more profiles out there, like our our Facebook profiles are
Speaker 1: Twitter feeds, um, all these things, I mean, even our
Speaker 1: cell phones are are various accounts are Flicker accounts. Um.
Speaker 1: It kind of like the way I end up looking
Speaker 1: at It's kind of like this exoskeleton that we build.
Speaker 1: And uh and when the person inside that exo skeleton
Speaker 1: goes away, you still have this this at least faint
Speaker 1: form of them. It's kind of like a shade or
Speaker 1: a ghost Stephen. Uh And and because what is the
Speaker 1: Facebook profile or the blog of a of a dead
Speaker 1: person but but a but a ghost and an electronic
Speaker 1: ghost that's still out there. Uh. It may not be
Speaker 1: interacting with us anymore, but to a certain extent, we
Speaker 1: can interact with it, and we can. It's still there
Speaker 1: as if they are alive. Right, there's there. You have
Speaker 1: had some sort of trace of yourself uh on the
Speaker 1: web right in cyberspace, which is it's fascinating to think
Speaker 1: of that. And you actually sent me a really interesting
Speaker 1: article about a company called Virtual Eternity, which is offering
Speaker 1: an avatar that take the results of your Myers brig
Speaker 1: personality test. Right, So, assuming that you're doing all of
Speaker 1: this work while you're alive, right, um and then along
Speaker 1: with all your memories and photos uh and and it
Speaker 1: actually has a computing process that has an endless capacity
Speaker 1: for data acquisition of you. Um. And it can then
Speaker 1: interact with others and will share specific memories depending on
Speaker 1: the clearance level of a family member or a friend.
Speaker 1: So it's really interesting that you could set up this
Speaker 1: avatar of yourself, fill it with all of your memories,
Speaker 1: give it whether whatever information you want to give it,
Speaker 1: and then you live on for your relatives you know,
Speaker 1: who knows, I guess forever for as long as the
Speaker 1: Internet is alive, right, And and certain people have different
Speaker 1: access two different emotions or information, which is kind of
Speaker 1: creepy if you think about hackers, right, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's weird. I mean you could that's that's a
Speaker 1: huge concern um because the more and more information one
Speaker 1: puts into something like this, because because Bainbridge, he even
Speaker 1: argued that the online memorial, like a website honoring someone
Speaker 1: who's deceased, is in a sense of precursor to cyber immortality.
Speaker 1: And then this avatar that we've just discussed is even
Speaker 1: an even more robust model of it. And it's this
Speaker 1: can if this continues to evolve, you know, you'll reach
Speaker 1: the point where to create a to create a more
Speaker 1: and more accurate simulation of a person, you'd have to
Speaker 1: put more and more information to the point where you'd
Speaker 1: have a lot of sensitive information because I think of
Speaker 1: the things that make us who, that make us who
Speaker 1: we are. There's a lot of stuff in the in
Speaker 1: the architecture there that we don't want out in the public. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, we might, um, you know flippantly say oh
Speaker 1: I wish I could take that memory away or or
Speaker 1: that weird thing that I do away, But it makes
Speaker 1: us who we are, and it's all a part of
Speaker 1: the of the finished product. You know. We can't pick
Speaker 1: and choose and then keep the form. You know, we
Speaker 1: can't see the joinery in all things. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: I look at it and I think this is something
Speaker 1: that you can edit. This is a version of yourself
Speaker 1: that you can edit and put out there and people
Speaker 1: can visit, and then it's not really you. It's not
Speaker 1: really you. But also we we all know the amount
Speaker 1: of information that we're sharing online. So there's this different
Speaker 1: picture of us that could be forming depending on access levels, right. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean if you have a criminal record and uh,
Speaker 1: and if that were released, that would certainly be information
Speaker 1: that people could access. Um. So again there's this like
Speaker 1: there's this idea of who we want to be in
Speaker 1: our cyber immortality and whether or not that's attainable. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: then you get into issues because remember it's kind of
Speaker 1: like funerals, um. Uh, they're they're always This is tug
Speaker 1: and pull um of where one you know that someone
Speaker 1: might be well, so and so wouldn't have wanted this
Speaker 1: to happen. But then it ultimately comes down to what
Speaker 1: does the family want to happen? But then maybe there's
Speaker 1: the what the immediate family wanted of this, uh, the
Speaker 1: ceased individual, and what the uh the the friends wanted
Speaker 1: or what other parts of the family wanted. So would
Speaker 1: you reach a point where you had several different versions
Speaker 1: of this person that were memorialized in some sort of
Speaker 1: virtual setting, um, right, If nothing else, it just comes
Speaker 1: from the fact of like like which which version in
Speaker 1: the past? Like do you want the like? Some people
Speaker 1: work may have been closer to John Doe a year
Speaker 1: before he died versus people who knew him two decades ago,
Speaker 1: and that's a very different person uh to have a
Speaker 1: connection to yees. So I guess the question is could
Speaker 1: you really get to the point where you could establish
Speaker 1: those sort of complexities to to give a full picture
Speaker 1: of who that person was, and like he said, everybody
Speaker 1: has different relationships with people and um, and it brings
Speaker 1: out different aspects of that person. So is that fully represented?
Speaker 1: Is it possible? Again? From the article that you talked
Speaker 1: about with Bainbridge, that's called Battle to Save Our Souls
Speaker 1: by William Sims Fainbridge from the Futurists UM from two
Speaker 1: thousand and six. Uh, he says, somewhat farther in the future,
Speaker 1: we can expect the development of rigorous means for recording
Speaker 1: and classifying all of the persons, perhaps fifty episodic memories,
Speaker 1: that is, memories of specific events and feelings that accompany them.
Speaker 1: A memory of the past event may exist as a
Speaker 1: network of mental associations linking images of a few of
Speaker 1: the people and things in a particular scenario. So he's
Speaker 1: he's imagining this database and lo and behold. According to
Speaker 1: The Daily Galaxy, the National Science Foundation has awarded a
Speaker 1: half million dollar grant to the Universities of Central Florida
Speaker 1: and Illinois at Chicago to explore how researchers might use
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, archiving, and computer imaging to create digital lifelike
Speaker 1: versions of real people. And they're also using video game
Speaker 1: type technology. So UM to your point, like, you know,
Speaker 1: can you can you construct this this avatar of yourself
Speaker 1: in your living room? Yeah? As possible. I mean, what
Speaker 1: they're talking about is taking UM. The folks you know
Speaker 1: at that National Science Foundation are basically talking about taking
Speaker 1: this virtual eternity offering that this company does and really
Speaker 1: sort of amping it up in terms of matrixing matrix
Speaker 1: ng your emotions UM and your personality Myers Briggs, so
Speaker 1: on and so forth, and and trying to have a
Speaker 1: fuller representation. Wow. But the more full that representation becomes.
Speaker 1: It also you see arguments about whether UM robots, computer
Speaker 1: ais will eventually reach the point to where they have
Speaker 1: rights of some kind, but where they're can considered UM
Speaker 1: at least corporations if not people, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of the rights afforded to them. So like, do you
Speaker 1: reach the point where who has the authority to say
Speaker 1: copy that program that is the simulation of you? Or
Speaker 1: if or ultimately, if you if you remove some some
Speaker 1: more of the the ideas of the soul and you
Speaker 1: get down to the idea of of who we are
Speaker 1: is information in our brain, then you're then then what's
Speaker 1: the difference between that and this version and the computer
Speaker 1: as it grows more and more perfect, Who has the
Speaker 1: right to copy it? Who has the right to delete it?
Speaker 1: Is deleting it? Murder? Um? Right, that's the right to
Speaker 1: talk mean to it? You know? Is that I mean it?
Speaker 1: Should we feel ethically, um crappy if we if we
Speaker 1: pull up a program of our uncle Carl and we
Speaker 1: just go in and tell him how elpset we are
Speaker 1: when he uh, you know, didn't eat the neat loaf
Speaker 1: we prepared, uh, you know six Christmases ago. Well, and
Speaker 1: even if you could perfect it and you had this database, um,
Speaker 1: basically of of a loved one, um, and you could
Speaker 1: you could take let's say, the response to a questionnaires,
Speaker 1: a bunch of questionnaires if that person filled out, and
Speaker 1: you could feed that into an automated decision support system
Speaker 1: so that it could interact with you, and uh in
Speaker 1: a way that felt realistic. It's still as as we
Speaker 1: talked about, um with the letters. You know, this this thing,
Speaker 1: this person that you knew, is now interacting with you
Speaker 1: at a much later date, and you're a different person.
Speaker 1: So it's still not going to be the person you
Speaker 1: I thought was the person, right, because they can't recognize you,
Speaker 1: they can't recognize change. Presumably this, this type of technology
Speaker 1: isn't going to be that complex. Yeah. And if you
Speaker 1: were to take the simulation of you know, say you know,
Speaker 1: a deceased parent and put them in like a virtual
Speaker 1: sandbox world, I mean you'd have to like, how do
Speaker 1: how does that work? They would have to continue in
Speaker 1: a way, they'd have to continue a separate timeline or something,
Speaker 1: you know it like, they would have to It would
Speaker 1: be hard to keep them if you kept them the same,
Speaker 1: that would be a problem. But then also continuing to
Speaker 1: allow them to develop into a new person in this
Speaker 1: program form would would seem to be really complex. And
Speaker 1: also what you brought up is this idea of ownership, right,
Speaker 1: so who owns this this virtual representation of your loved one? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And can they charge? Are they charging you for it?
Speaker 1: Like where you are they charging you for it? What
Speaker 1: happens twenty five years down the road if they happen
Speaker 1: to sell the company or you know, and and what
Speaker 1: what happens is we continue to lay are on all
Speaker 1: this different data um in cyberspace about ourselves to do
Speaker 1: you know, does this do these sort of avatars get
Speaker 1: shuttled away somewhere. Do they exist indefinitely? Um? Is it
Speaker 1: feasible that you could have tangent generations down from where
Speaker 1: you are now being able to access all of their
Speaker 1: their different relatives and look at the various pieces of information, right,
Speaker 1: I mean is the Internet that deep? Yeah? And we
Speaker 1: talk about identity theft now, but if you had this
Speaker 1: much information online, it would it would amount to soul
Speaker 1: theft or mind theft and h yeah, which is worse
Speaker 1: than your credit card number. I was thinking about that
Speaker 1: if you took what is available today, right, if you
Speaker 1: just took um that like the Virtual Alternity, like the
Speaker 1: company that's doing that. And let's say my grandmother had
Speaker 1: participated in this and we had our Myers Briggs and
Speaker 1: we had all of her memories and her photos. Now
Speaker 1: let's say that you took what the National Science Foundation
Speaker 1: is doing and doing a more deep archive having of
Speaker 1: this person. And then now let's say that you marry
Speaker 1: that with the Blue Brain technology, right, a Blue Brain
Speaker 1: Project technology which again is mapping the human brain um
Speaker 1: in precise cellular detail and it's simulating neural activity. Let's
Speaker 1: say that they, you know, had built my grandmother's brain
Speaker 1: in that sense, who's to say that someone couldn't then
Speaker 1: take basically this blueprint of my grandmother and use her
Speaker 1: in in a robot or you know, for advertising. Advertising
Speaker 1: company buys copies of a bunch of these, like we
Speaker 1: want to really market the grandma's, so give me, you know,
Speaker 1: give me you know, fifty dead grandma minds and let
Speaker 1: me throw a whole bunch of product ideas at them,
Speaker 1: like right, And it's kind of and you can see
Speaker 1: how that would be so intriguing and so seductive because
Speaker 1: it would be a very real feeling representation of someone's life,
Speaker 1: for their feelings or their thoughts, and used in this
Speaker 1: marketing way which would really sort of tug at the
Speaker 1: heart strings of people, right right, Um, but you know,
Speaker 1: and of course I'm awfulizing there, but it's possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm awfulizing. I think that's an Oprah term. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: but you know I'm saying, okay, what really, what is
Speaker 1: there's no legislation around this, right, there are no rules
Speaker 1: around it, And I think that's why we're bringing it
Speaker 1: up and saying, okay, you can you can see right
Speaker 1: now what's in existence, and you can see the roadmap
Speaker 1: going forward, that there's a real possibility that these versions
Speaker 1: of ourselves, multiple versions of ourselves could exist. Um, just
Speaker 1: pretty fascinating. Yeah, like yeah, And and to go back
Speaker 1: to the letter that the thirteen year old letter from
Speaker 1: her mom, you know, at what point would you you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like a good idea at first to cyber
Speaker 1: immortalize a deceased loved one, but then you reach the
Speaker 1: point where it's like, well, well, heck, I guess I
Speaker 1: have to go out and kill the electronic ghost of
Speaker 1: my my dead parent because they're not they're not benefiting
Speaker 1: me anymore. And it's now it's just kind of creepy.
Speaker 1: Or now it's just traumatic. It feels like you're haunted. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another aspect of this that was brought up in the
Speaker 1: bain Bridge Futurist article is that you could use it
Speaker 1: very practically right now as a sort of backup database
Speaker 1: to your brain. Right. Um, and this type of effective
Speaker 1: computing could help inform other devices, such as robots, to
Speaker 1: better respond to you depending on your mental and physical states,
Speaker 1: which is sort of interesting, right that that piece of
Speaker 1: AI in which we could have this sort of robot
Speaker 1: that is enhancing the way that we think and that
Speaker 1: it's anticipating and maybe even I was thinking about about this,
Speaker 1: looking at the blind spots in the way that we think.
Speaker 1: So that's very possible that we could use this technology
Speaker 1: to try to approach maybe problems from a different angle.
Speaker 1: Right if you have a copy of your brain essentially
Speaker 1: that you can access and um and and play with.
Speaker 1: But that it seems like we would reach the point
Speaker 1: where like already we know we no longer know how
Speaker 1: to spell because of Firefox and and spell check. We
Speaker 1: don't know how to we haven't known how to do
Speaker 1: simple math um. You know lookspt for mathematicians out there,
Speaker 1: but a lot of us have forgotten how to do
Speaker 1: simple math because we always have that calculator handy, first,
Speaker 1: the pocket calculator, now the various calculators and all of
Speaker 1: our gadgets. Well, so I see what you're saying, Get
Speaker 1: to think. Do you just turn to your database and
Speaker 1: go think, Okay, that's the algorithm for like what do
Speaker 1: I want to eat for lunch today? And then I'll say, hey,
Speaker 1: you want some pizza? Great? You know, and then do
Speaker 1: we do we reach the tipping point between the person
Speaker 1: and this technological exo skeleton to where the technology technological
Speaker 1: exo skeleton is more the person than the flesh and
Speaker 1: blood person at the core of it. Well, and already.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about that is that we already know
Speaker 1: the online representations that we put out there and edit.
Speaker 1: Our different version of ourselves are the friendlier, nicier, whatever,
Speaker 1: versions of ourselves most of the time, um, sometimes naked
Speaker 1: or depending on the person. Yeah, you never know. But
Speaker 1: you know, the question is will people really want to
Speaker 1: do they really want to talk to the real you
Speaker 1: or the avatar you. You already have that in existence
Speaker 1: right now distinction. Yeah, can you imagine all the different
Speaker 1: layers you know that that might be possible to put
Speaker 1: on top of that. Uh. The other use that this
Speaker 1: technology could be um employed is with the elderly. They
Speaker 1: could actually use portable digital devices documenting their lives to
Speaker 1: help them remember facts, so they could kind of dive
Speaker 1: back into their memories um to to help them sort
Speaker 1: of um say, oh, that's my daughter visiting me, or
Speaker 1: that's my grandchildren and so on and so forth. So
Speaker 1: they would essentially be interacting with some of this technology.
Speaker 1: But that reminded me so much of the vin Vendor's
Speaker 1: film until the end of the world. And I won't
Speaker 1: go into the plot, but I'll just say that in
Speaker 1: a sort of quasi post apocalyptic world, people have access
Speaker 1: to this type of technology and it's actually documenting their dreams.
Speaker 1: So they're going into their past and they get completely
Speaker 1: addicted to to these portable old devices showing them their
Speaker 1: their previous life because of course they're you know, they're
Speaker 1: living in like rotted out canyons or something. I don't
Speaker 1: know if canyons can rot, but you get the idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um and and post elliptic squalor um, And they keep
Speaker 1: returning to this other part of their lives and they
Speaker 1: become completely addicted. They quit eating, They just all they
Speaker 1: want to do is review their memories from their dreams.
Speaker 1: And so I thought, is it possible that you could
Speaker 1: build something like this to the point where you do
Speaker 1: you stop living in the present and you start mining
Speaker 1: all the data of your own life. Yeah, Like I
Speaker 1: could easily, Like when you're talking about the elderly, like
Speaker 1: I would instantly imagine like two old dudes meeting each
Speaker 1: other for the first time in retirement home, like both
Speaker 1: of them just to sleep in their chairs while they're
Speaker 1: um they're like forty or fifty something avatars conversed um
Speaker 1: via USB, cab or something, you know, and or does
Speaker 1: it come to the point where it's like, say, to
Speaker 1: forty year olds meet and they're like, hey, how are
Speaker 1: you going? And it's a two forty year olds meet
Speaker 1: each other. They upload their uh, several different versions of
Speaker 1: their past self so they can be too, because knowing
Speaker 1: the current me isn't quite enough. I want the digital
Speaker 1: copy of your thirty year old self to meet the
Speaker 1: digital version of my thirty year old self, or you know,
Speaker 1: in various you know, you could just go go crazy
Speaker 1: with this vision of the future, and I will tell
Speaker 1: you that that's something that to me, I would I
Speaker 1: have to say, you know, if I'm eighty years old,
Speaker 1: I would love to have because I would love to
Speaker 1: be able to share with people the different things that
Speaker 1: I did in my life, particularly if I had a
Speaker 1: problem communicating because I had memory problems. If I could
Speaker 1: just draw it up and be like, here's me, you know,
Speaker 1: rocking out and I don't know something. Yeah, the old
Speaker 1: you brings up with the memory problems, brings up the
Speaker 1: young you, and then brates there for all of our
Speaker 1: hard partying it's like, look what you did, I don't
Speaker 1: remember anything now, so they can be our punching bags.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, there's all sorts of possibilities here. But
Speaker 1: back to the the the the real reality in in
Speaker 1: our current time. Um, Facebook already has the thing where um,
Speaker 1: when when you when you die, uh, your profile is memorialized. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is this is like right off and right
Speaker 1: off the website. When a user passes away, we memorialize
Speaker 1: their account to protect their privacy. Memorializing an account sets
Speaker 1: the account privacy so that only confirmed friends can see
Speaker 1: the profile or located in search, the wall remains so
Speaker 1: friends and family can leave post in remembrance. Memorializing an
Speaker 1: account also prevents anyone from logging into the account. And
Speaker 1: to add a little extra that um, a recent estimate
Speaker 1: put the number of US Facebook users who die annually
Speaker 1: at something like um, which is you know, probably gonna
Speaker 1: go up. Um. And then in the world of Twitter,
Speaker 1: there's a really interesting thing like Yeah, Jonathan Strickland turned
Speaker 1: me on to this. Who has an article by the
Speaker 1: time is web this Uh, this episode comes out His
Speaker 1: article on how stuff works website how digital immortality works
Speaker 1: should be out so be sure to check out that
Speaker 1: after you listen to this UM. But Jonathan told me
Speaker 1: about this blogger by the name of Brian Brushwood who
Speaker 1: teamed up with a web guru by the name of
Speaker 1: Patrick Delante, and uh, they launched Afterlife. Me. That's a
Speaker 1: f T E R L y f E dot m
Speaker 1: e UM to pursue this idea of digital immortality. So
Speaker 1: the ideas you create a dead man switch on your
Speaker 1: online life, like every every time your birthday rolls around,
Speaker 1: you need to go in and push her button. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it's gonna activate the afterlife for you. In terms of
Speaker 1: social media, which means you'll your Twitter account will start,
Speaker 1: say throwing out random mundane um responses, or your Facebook
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking of all like the smart alec things
Speaker 1: that you could do. Yeah, like like Mark Twain with
Speaker 1: the with the biography. Everyone's dead, so what does it matter.
Speaker 1: But but then also your Facebook account would be programmed
Speaker 1: to say give birthday, which is to to all your
Speaker 1: friends and family on their on their birthdays, things of
Speaker 1: that nature. Um And uh yeah, So the website is
Speaker 1: just in its early stages right now that it's not
Speaker 1: you can basically sign up and just get updates. On
Speaker 1: the status of this. But it's an interesting like first
Speaker 1: real stab at cyber immortality and uh and it and
Speaker 1: it brings in all these questions the same you know,
Speaker 1: to what extent is this weird and cool? With what
Speaker 1: what extent is it comforting? Will it help with people
Speaker 1: with their bereavement? And to what extent that would it
Speaker 1: eventually become creepy? And yeah, of course, someone says, Man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to act call somebody at Twitter to
Speaker 1: get them to turn off, you know, my best friends
Speaker 1: Twitter account because it's no longer cute now it's just sad, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know this. And again, this is what's so fascinating
Speaker 1: about this topic is, you know, technology again makes us
Speaker 1: rethink a place in the world and and how to
Speaker 1: manage our ideas of ourselves. They are left ones. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: I have some missives from the void right here in
Speaker 1: the form of uh, well first person as an email
Speaker 1: that I'm particularly excited about. Uh. This one comes from
Speaker 1: a listener by the name of Bruce, and Bruce says,
Speaker 1: high folks, I was listening to a podcast of Yours
Speaker 1: and a Long Drive. It was on viruses. Robert mentioned Maximilian,
Speaker 1: the Big red robot in the Black Hole. Thanks much.
Speaker 1: I built that robot many years ago working effects at Disney.
Speaker 1: That little blast in the past perked me right up.
Speaker 1: I spent two years of my life working on that flip.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for the indirect shout out regards Bruce. So
Speaker 1: that was awesome, Yeah, because that that is a that
Speaker 1: is a movie that I just grew up with. And
Speaker 1: uh and and and I don't I don't know what
Speaker 1: you call the affection that a like three year old
Speaker 1: or five year old boy um has for a evil
Speaker 1: red robot, but I definitely, yeah, I definitely had a
Speaker 1: bot crush on Maximilian Um and uh and so that's
Speaker 1: awesome too to hear that. Yeah, they The only thing
Speaker 1: even close to that was when I was working for
Speaker 1: a newspaper and tell Homes in a Sea. I've interviewed
Speaker 1: a guy who ran a lokal antique store who helped
Speaker 1: build the set the giant bed that they created for
Speaker 1: the film Stephen King's Cat's Eye, because they have a
Speaker 1: little troll who's like, you know, it's like yeah, big,
Speaker 1: very little, little tiny guy and he's running around on
Speaker 1: on this bed and jumping around. So they had to
Speaker 1: create this enormous version of a for the scale of
Speaker 1: the troll. Yeah, and create an enormous children's room with this,
Speaker 1: like you know, like a bed two stories tall. And
Speaker 1: he showed me all these pictures on it, so did
Speaker 1: the No. No, he was enormous. But apparently the guy
Speaker 1: telling me when I was talking to him that there
Speaker 1: was an ongoing bet to see, um who could well
Speaker 1: well to to see who could looks at what they
Speaker 1: keep it tamped to? You could sleep in that bed first? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but anyway, that but that was cool, but Maximilian
Speaker 1: is even cooler. So thanks, Bruce, really appreciate that. And um,
Speaker 1: one little note, Um, so I threw out a question
Speaker 1: on our Facebook pro wile which is blow the mind.
Speaker 1: Uh you can look that is blow the mind on Facebook,
Speaker 1: and we'll also blow the mind on Twitter. But I
Speaker 1: put out the question what will five hundred years of
Speaker 1: life due to the human mind, which is similar to
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. Uh. And I put this
Speaker 1: on the New House Stuff Works forums, So everybody out there,
Speaker 1: you can log into the forum, create an account, log in,
Speaker 1: and you you know, you can converse on the Facebook.
Speaker 1: You can also confers on the forum and respond to
Speaker 1: various articles, et cetera. Um But a listener by the
Speaker 1: name of Richard responded, and he says, quote, it is
Speaker 1: difficult to separate the biological from the mental and the brain.
Speaker 1: They're connected, and so characteristics of the body follow into
Speaker 1: the brain and thus the mind. I believe that the system, limitations,
Speaker 1: and specs of the brain correspond to the body. It
Speaker 1: seems that without the assistance of technology, our bodies are
Speaker 1: meant to survive in the natural world. Between forty and
Speaker 1: sixty years since the brain mind coevolved with the body,
Speaker 1: it is reasonable to surmise that the specs are similar
Speaker 1: for the brain mind. With that said, I think that
Speaker 1: we have a certain capacity for experience in memory. When
Speaker 1: we exceed this capacity, I believe that we begin to
Speaker 1: feel certain fatigue set in that leads to depression and
Speaker 1: thus um a, and thus we feel the need to
Speaker 1: move on. So I thought that was some interesting commentary
Speaker 1: there from Richard, and uh and uh some other people
Speaker 1: have already responded with some cool stuff. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very thought provoking. Yeah, So you know, come onto
Speaker 1: the Facebook or the Twitter or the forums and interact
Speaker 1: with us. We'd love to hear your thoughts on all
Speaker 1: these mind blowing questions. That's right, and you can always
Speaker 1: drop us a line as well at blow the Mind
Speaker 1: at house to works dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
Speaker 1: icon in the upper right corner of our home page.
Speaker 1: The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download
Speaker 1: it today on iTunes.