WEBVTT - Building Eternity 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.440 From how stuff works dot com. This is the Stuff 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:10.879 of Life. I'm Julie Douglas, host of the Stuff of Life, 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.760 a podcast that teases a part the tales we tell, 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:17.520 because when we crack open a story and look inside, 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:21.639 we see the seeds of what make our world so maddening, 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:27.240 so strange, and so achingly beautiful and at times ridiculous. 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:30.800 The Stuff of Life is a podcast about how we're 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:34.640 all just getting by, learning and surviving through stories we share. 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:39.519 Today's story is about achieving immortality, the idea that in 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:43.400 stories we transcend death, whether it's an I was here, 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:48.120 graffiti scrawl, or an epic length autobiography. In this way, 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:51.479 we humans try to build out eternity. We pass on 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.160 our genes, we record our stories, and we make and 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:58.840 collect objects as evidence of our existence. For our first 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:01.480 look into building as Trinity will time travel back to 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:07.319 historian Paul Hudson to the Crypt of Civilization, the most 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:10.880 famous time capsule You've never heard of, which holds, among 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:15.920 other things, these objects, one container of beer, about one quarter, 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:22.560 one plastic bird, one plastic ash train, one beetle, plastic ornament, ample, 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:27.319 one benny makeup mirror. There's controversy about these things that 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:30.200 I've never thought about. Some people didn't want Donald Duck 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:35.080 in there because well, Donald Duck is not wearing pants. 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.600 Then we'll meet Marius Ursake, the co founder of the 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:43.520 site Eternomy, a site where you can preserve your memories, photos, 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:48.400 your social media footprint in an eternal avatar. Right now, 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:53.040 the only way to donod our memories is by actually 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:55.360 writing these if we don't have get a cable to 0:01:55.840 --> 0:02:01.400 blog into our heads and bollowed everything. And finally we'll 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:03.559 talk to our crew here at how stuff works about 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:06.760 what they want to be remembered for an instagram of 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:10.320 the pancakes they made. Probably not, I mean, we certainly 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.560 narrativise our own lives. We we organized the events in 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:16.720 our lives into a coherent story that we sort of 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:20.200 model on the arcs of characters and the stories that 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:28.000 we read and watching movies. When I think of time capsules, 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.239 I think back to grade school in Michigan one cold 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:34.760 spring morning, when our class gathered around the school flagpole 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:39.399 and ceremoniously lowered a container filled with lucky rabbits, foots, 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:43.480 school portraits, and scraps of paper documenting our hopes and dreams. 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:47.280 It seemed like a momentous occasion, like one day we 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:54.040 would be discovered. Little did my third grade self know 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:58.800 that I was participating in a ritual popularized by Thornwell Jacobs, 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:01.960 the father of the modern time capsule and the creator 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:08.000 of the Crypt of Civilization. Jacobs wasn't just forward thinking, 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:12.440 but a millenarian, someone who stared deep into the future, 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:17.240 hoping someday someone may stare back, specifically someone in the 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:23.480 year who stumbles upon the crypt of Civilization, a possibility 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:27.800 simply because Jacobs thought this that nothing is too beautiful 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:31.920 to happen in life, and um so he didn't know, 0:03:32.120 --> 0:03:35.360 but he hoped that somehow someone would open the you know, 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:40.360 the Crypto Civilization and really get a good idea of 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:44.400 just what things were like. I am Paul Stephen Hudson. 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:49.080 I am professor of history at Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta, 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:54.440 and also I'm co founder of the International Time Capsule Society. 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:57.200 For Paul, the discovery of the crypt led to a 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:00.880 lifelong passion for the things that people preserve of I 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:05.520 first encountered it around nineteen seventy. I was an undergraduate 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:10.680 at Oldthorpe University in nineteen seventy. It was kind of 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:15.120 a distressed university. The buildings were almost these beautiful shells, 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:18.279 but that particular building where the crypt was, there was 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:23.159 only one story operational in the other stories, and the 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:27.240 basement where the crypt is we're sealed off. But I 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:31.400 was exploring and really in a place I shouldn't have been. 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.000 I'm not sure how I got there, but I got 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:36.080 to where the crypt was, and it was a sealed 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:38.479 off area. It was dark, and I had a flashlight 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:42.480 and I was just looking at things, and um, then 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:45.320 I saw this stainless steel door with this message on 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:49.760 it about I really didn't quite know what it was. 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:52.239 And there were cobwebs on the door and so forth, 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:55.720 and I thought, what is this? The crypt is located 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:58.919 on the bottom floor of a phoebe Hearst Hall, gone 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:01.680 or the cobwebs. There even a plaque with an explanation 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:04.640 that the content is placed inside in Ny will remain 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:10.200 hermetically sealed until the year. But still there's little fanfare 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:14.000 about this subterranean time capsule, and the casual visitor could 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:18.720 easily glide by jacobs heroic attempt to catalog civilization. He 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:22.839 was inspired by the Pyramids. Um, we have pictures of it. 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:25.320 That's a sealed chamber. It looks the way you would 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:28.279 imagine a pyramid chamber to look like. It's just literally 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:31.320 cluttered with artifacts. But there's a kind of order, you know, 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:35.440 in the storage of them. But Dr Jacobs and he 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:38.840 um he was a millinarian. He thought in terms of 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:43.159 thousands of years, and to him, six thousand years really 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:46.240 wasn't that long. There was six thousand years ago with 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:49.799 the Pyramids, why not six thousand years into the future. 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:54.240 Like red we are all interested in the future. All 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:56.400 that is where you and I are going to spend 0:05:56.480 --> 0:06:01.560 the rest. Imagine a room twenty feet long, ten ft 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:05.360 high and ten ft wide stuffed with artifacts. We're talking 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:09.560 about painstakingly preserved micro films of eight hundred works of literature, 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:13.000 more than six hundred and forty pages, including the Koran, 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:16.359 the Bible, and the Iliad, not to mention musical and 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:20.720 historical recordings and films. And then there are the objects themselves. 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:24.839 One set, Lionel, model train, six cars, one track, one 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.040 cigarette holder, one model air things that would represent a 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:32.279 cross section of daily life for someone living in everything 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:35.560 from dental floss and false eyelashes, two shot glasses, and 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:39.960 typewriters and toasters. But the most important object inside is 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:43.760 something called the language integrator. The idea is that six 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.080 thousand years from now, English will be obsolete, and the 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:50.839 language integrator will help decode the contents of the crypt 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:55.640 You turn a wheel and then it plays a record, 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:58.680 and the very first item you see as apple, and 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:03.120 then you hear the word apple, and it's It's based 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:06.840 on an old cryptographical language from World War One called 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:10.680 Basic English. It has about five thousand words. But what 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:13.640 Dr Jacobs and the organizers hoped is that would be 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:17.480 the key to the English language. And like the Rosetta Stone, 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:21.880 you know, that's what helped archaeologists really understand what the 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:28.680 pyramids were all about. The problem is, you know, whoever 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:33.040 opens this time capsule or finds it, they probably won't 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:35.640 know what it's all about. Because we're also complex, and 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:39.040 it's really kind of scatter shot. You might ask yourself, 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:42.040 if you were doing a time capsule, what what would 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:43.840 you put in it? Or you might give one answer 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:46.280 today in a different answer tomorrow. You're just sort of 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:50.640 defining yourself and and where you are, unless, of course, 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:54.960 the item is so recognizable, so valuable, that it transcends 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:59.760 the ages with that good taste or a good time 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:04.240 go ahead. The one thing that he was pretty sure 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:07.280 of though, and this was during the time of the 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:11.200 Egyptians as well, is that people would be drinking beer. 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:14.680 You know, the Egyptians were great beer drinkers. And everything 0:08:14.720 --> 0:08:18.720 in the crypt was donated, and it was the Anheuser 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:25.920 Busch company that donated an ampule. If it is open 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:31.360 by an archaeologist or historian or someone else, um that 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:36.160 bud would be for them. The fascinating thing about time 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:39.240 capsules is that in an attempt to document our interest, 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:45.280 they also unwittingly document our anxieties. Among recordings about engineering 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:49.280 feats like the Panama Canal, there's a preoccupation with Adolf 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:56.160 Hitler in the rise of fascism, and while the Crypt 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:58.600 has frozen in time, many of the Harme works of 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:03.120 this particular era, it's hardly a true reflection of that society. 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:06.360 In fact, the Portrait of America in nine contains a 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:10.880 very large gap in knowledge. There are very few contributions 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:14.720 from African Americans, and one lone black doll becomes a 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:18.959 stand in for the rich multicultural heritage of the United States. 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.000 But all of this may be a moot point. After all, 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:27.400 how likely is it that when arrives the crypt will 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:31.760 actually be opened? He said he could no more imagine 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:36.400 that than chro magnant Man could comprehend the skyline in 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:41.480 New York, so he really didn't didn't know. Um Now, 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:44.280 I do think the artifacts will be preserved. I mean, 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:46.880 I'm just sort of guessing here. For one thing, I 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:49.000 doubt if there will. I hate to say it that 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:51.560 there will be in Atlanta or United States. I mean 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:55.520 it will be. It's an archaeological site, you know, projected, 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:59.480 you know, six thousand years into the future. So I 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:02.200 think the big question is not so much if the 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:05.800 artifacts will be preserved, but the big question is who 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:09.400 will know to open it, Which makes you wonder why 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:12.520 we extend ourselves into the future in the first place. 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:17.840 There's a kind of a naive optimism that someone who 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:21.480 does a time capsule has. I think no noble effort 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:25.160 is in vain. That was one of Dr Jacob's favorite 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:29.240 things here. You know, whether it's opened or not, it 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:32.120 does show that you really care about your fellow men 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:35.280 and woman. And and somehow you want to reach out 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:48.760 to them. Paul has been all over the world and 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.600 he's seen a lot of time capsules, but his idea 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:54.360 of a time capsule isn't just a container stored away, 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:57.800 but other ways that we reach into the future. A 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:01.959 grandparents letter, the voyage are golden records hurling out to 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:05.320 space containing the sounds and images of life on Earth. 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:09.520 A pregnant woman carrying a genetic code, one that can 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:14.280 move backward and forward in time. And it's this idea, 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:17.960 the ability to move forward and backward in time, that's 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:21.079 at the heart of what some e death companies are 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:26.439 trying to do. As artists in Hamilton's says, technology amplifies 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:30.880 human presence at a distance, and the company Attornemy aims 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:35.360 to amplify your data, your memories, thoughts, and emotions across time, 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:40.120 creating an immortal avatar of yourself, a digital simulacrum that 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:43.200 can exist in the past, present, in future. My name 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:47.280 is Mariossake, and I'm the CEO and founder of Attornemy, 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:51.520 and what we're trying to build at Atternomy is a 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:56.240 network of artificial intelligent avatars that would preserve people's thoughts, 0:11:56.280 --> 0:12:01.920 stories and memories ideally forever. Mary has co founded the 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.839 site euternomy for a very personal reason, one we can 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:10.480 all relate to. My grandmother died after farting Alzheimer's for 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:14.800 three years, and her memories started fading the way during 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:18.160 those three years. But after she passed away, and after 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:21.320 we so I went to the whole reading process, I 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:24.280 realized that the only things I had left from her 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:29.360 were like plenty pictures more or less, ninety years of joy, 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.240 of sorrows, and experiences of various things that happened in 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:35.880 person's life are reduced to just a couple of photos 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:39.640 and memories that are eventually lost. Marius drew a major 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:42.360 influences from his life, from his love of sci fi 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:46.280 to whose experiments and technology to ask the question, what 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:51.480 if you could preserve someone's memories using artificial intelligence, allowing 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:55.240 people to access those memories, but also do it in 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:59.480 a meaningful way because differences like the ability to first 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:03.160 of all like informational person about the person during their lifetime, 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:07.040 So acting like a biographer. Because right now the problem 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:11.040 with other websites websites have collect your memories is that 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:12.920 you have to do a lot of like manual work, 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:19.280 uploading photos and do everything by yourself, or writing your biography, 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:24.160 which usually it's a pretty big task that people always 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:30.120 live for tomorrow. And in this way, a constellation of 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:33.960 data points begin to coalesce and tell a recognizable version 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:38.880 of you emerges all through your digital footprint and conversations 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:42.720 with your avatar. Think of the ability to timeline your life, 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:47.240 to have your avatar recalls specific memories for you. Marius 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:51.400 likens this avatar relationship to Tomagotchi, the handheld digital pet 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.320 that you interact with every day. The idea is the same. 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:57.280 The more you interact with your avatar, the more you 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:01.000 nurture it, and the more it begins to truly reflect 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:05.320 you and your thoughts in ten years and twenty years, 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:07.800 or you know, for the younger generation forty fifty years, 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:10.360 the amount of information that's going to be gathered on 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:13.640 top on everything that you already post on Facebook or 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:16.480 an email is going to be huge, and it's going 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:20.359 to be very useful in uh preserving as much of 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:31.480 that person's UH consciousness of personality or thoughts as possible. Also, 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:34.680 because I know some of you are wondering eternomy does 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:37.280 not want to build a robot out of your memories 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:40.040 and let it loose. We're not trying to create like 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:43.600 a clone, like a very lifelike clone. We're trying to 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:47.320 create something that offers a very easy interface to access 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:50.600 those memories. But it's going to be very clear that 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:55.240 that's not a copy of the person. It termly launched 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:58.240 its beta site in two thousand and fourteen and more 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:01.560 than thirty thousand people signed up. So who are they? 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.840 More than half of them are millennials and English speaking. 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:07.440 I think that first of all, these people have a 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:10.840 much richer digital footprints than all those generations because of 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:14.640 using so many online tools, and this percentage is only 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:18.000 going to be increasing in the future at global level. 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:22.480 Of millennials already used Facebook. To give you an example, 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.760 you see the picture emerging here. Attornemy appeals to people 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:31.160 who are already creating a digital bread trail of information, 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:34.240 and the website gives them a chance to make sense 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:37.640 of it, contextualize it in the form of a decades 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:42.360 long relationship with their biographer, this version of themselves. Think 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:44.680 of what this might do for the way that we 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:50.600 recall our memories. We actually forget more than of things 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:54.400 that happened plus every day, and the lot will also 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:57.800 help collect those kinds of information and stories and later 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:01.040 make it accessible if he wants to we call it. 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:06.400 Of course, all of this is predicated on one thing 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:10.480 that we truly interact with our avatars, something Autnomy is 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:14.160 still trying to finesse with psychologists. At this stage. What 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:18.600 we've been most interested in is how to ask questions 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.080 and what kind of questions we would have to ask 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:26.120 people to engage them and make them like really interested 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:31.760 in collecting their memories. Marius gives these questions as an 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:35.040 example of the nuance needed when you begin your relationship 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:38.440 with your avatar. The question why did you decide to 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:41.720 become a doctor is intrusive compared to what were the 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:44.400 things that will lead you to choosing to become a doctor. 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:47.800 Some harder questions would be what are the things that 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.080 you want to be remembered for? And then there are 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:53.440 the intimate questions did you ever cheat on your partner? 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:56.640 How did it feel? The thing is that even though 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:00.960 at tournomy is meant to grant cyber immortality and reserve memories, 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.760 this day to day journaling of person's life is very 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:09.080 much rooted in the present. For us, it's more a 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:12.359 toll for the living person to be able to collect 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.000 the memories. So we're more focused on writing the story 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:18.520 of your life for and curating it from all sources, 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:29.199 and less about interfering with the grieving process. I think 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:33.080 it's important to understand that this is not just an 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:35.960 app This is something that in order to be able 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:41.480 to work as most people want, will take years, probably 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:45.000 even decades, because there's a lot of technology that's still 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:49.119 not yelped out there. But instead of like waiting for 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.680 that perfect moment where artificient just could be at that level, 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:54.840 which could be in five years, could be in ten years, 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:58.480 or could be in twenty years when that similarity moment 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:02.080 will be reached, we prefer to start working right now 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.680 because unfortunately a lot of the memories are dual appearing. 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:08.200 A lot of these things have happened to us. Every 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:10.879 day we forget. A lot of people pass away and 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:14.679 they take, uh, you know, away, all the memories and 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:19.280 everything about them. So we decided to start earlier to 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:30.600 focus on this, but we still have a long, long journey. 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.080 So this topic is pretty much mental catnip at how 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:37.760 stock works the place where I work, and in the 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:41.600 grand tradition of water cooler conversations, I put the idea 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:45.080 of cyber immortality to some of my coworkers, and here's 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:47.760 what they had to say about it. There's a beautiful 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:52.040 sort of historical database angle to it, right, Like there 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:54.439 will be history books written, for example, about things that 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:57.720 are happening in today's society. But when someone five years 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:00.520 from now, presuming we have maintained enough techno eology in 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.200 an ongoing way that we can keep these records updated, 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:07.680 is like what were like the hot topic issues of 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:12.200 the century, Like what really was the gun control debate about? 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:14.159 Like they could if you have a database where that 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:18.240 searchable and you could get five hundred strangers and read 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:20.960 things that they had all written about that, you're going 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:23.680 to get a really interesting and probably much more complete 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:26.200 picture than if someone just writes about it later based 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.359 on their own research. That's Holly Fry, a co host 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:32.640 of stuff you missed in history class. My first thing 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:34.600 that popped in my head when you had related to 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:37.720 us that he likened it to a tamagochi is can 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:40.840 you game the system to create a much better version 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:44.040 of yourself than you actually are like, could I only 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.360 upload photoshop files where I look really great? And could 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:50.560 I only include like the best of me in it? 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:53.160 As you know, if I'm the custodian of this record, 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:57.000 can I manipulate it in such a way that future 0:19:57.040 --> 0:19:59.880 generations would be like, Man, that Holly Fry was amazing. 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.399 It's the grand tradition of how we celebrate death, right. 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:05.280 I mean, when you get up and give a eulogy 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.360 for somebody, you don't make notes of all the horrible 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:11.480 things they did and the reasons that lots of people 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:14.320 didn't like them. You remember the highlights of their life. 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:17.240 Here's Joe McCormick, a co host of stuff to blow 0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:20.840 your mind. So yeah, I guess in death we try 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:23.320 to we try to emphasize the positive in the same 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:26.040 way that we do on our our social media profiles. 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:30.840 I think that this whole idea feels funny to me 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:36.120 personally on multiple levels. That Senior editor Alison Laddermilk, For one, 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:39.239 I mean, why am I compiling all my memories and 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:41.880 spending my time on that when I could be out 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:45.920 making new ones. So that's my first issue with this. 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.160 But I mean, as you can guess from that statement. 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:50.119 I'm not big on social media, like I just I 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:52.959 really don't tend to use it all that much. So 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:55.800 and this seems like a bit of a progression of that. 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:58.840 So so that I think that makes sense for me. 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:01.040 And then the other thing, guess that. I mean, yeah, 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:04.439 it's carefully curated like Facebook is. I mean, we present 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:06.520 our happy side. We feel they need to make a 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:10.840 fake Instagram account because we can't share, you know, like 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:13.680 the photo of us looking like a train wreck. It's 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:17.600 just we can't. Well, I mean, some people don't feel 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:19.760 like they're at liberty to do so, so they hide 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:21.720 it and they only invite their close friends for their 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:24.639 Instagram account. It just feels ridiculous to me. And I 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:27.119 mean that's just I think that a lot of people 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:32.600 would perpetuate that account of themselves just as very glossy 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:35.040 and it's bogus. It annoys me, it makes me mad. 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:43.280 The conversation, as you might expect, begins to veer towards 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:46.040 the what ifs. I'm thinking about the movie Strange Days. 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:49.280 Do you remember that film where you check the digital 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:52.199 I love that movie. I have no regrets admitting how 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:54.040 much I love that movie. For a variety of reasons, 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:56.920 but you could replay memories, like there was an apparatus 0:21:56.960 --> 0:22:00.280 that let you relive memories that you would recorded. Angela said, 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.880 has this beautiful moment where she says, memories are supposed 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:07.439 to fade. Their designed that way for a reason. So 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:09.640 then I wonder if you have something like this that 0:22:09.680 --> 0:22:12.640 you are working on, and you can, you know, then 0:22:12.920 --> 0:22:15.480 several decades down the road look back and see exactly 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:17.760 the person you were in your twenties or your thirties, 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:20.399 will it then affect the way you progress in a 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:23.560 way that is unnatural versus how you would have just 0:22:24.400 --> 0:22:27.400 progressed had you only had your human memories to work with. 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:31.400 I mean, we certainly narrativise our own lives. We we 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:35.200 organize the events in our lives into a coherent story 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:38.560 that we sort of model on the arcs of characters 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:41.200 and the stories that we read and watching movies and stuff. 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:45.240 And if we were to include all events in this narrative, 0:22:45.240 --> 0:22:47.560 it wouldn't be a narrative, wouldn't be interesting. I mean, 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:51.639 it's only by selective memory that we construct a meaningful 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:54.080 arc for ourselves. So you know, while I did this 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:56.040 and this and this and that's how I got to 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:58.320 where I am today. But you're leaving out all kinds 0:22:58.359 --> 0:23:02.320 of extraneous information nation. I mean, are are you more 0:23:02.359 --> 0:23:08.040 concerned about telling the literal, correct cause and effect story 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:11.600 of your life or in telling a story the way 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:15.600 like a fiction writer would tell a story. I see 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:18.719 this creating weird factions of people in the future, Like 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:21.760 the next wave of division will be about how you 0:23:21.840 --> 0:23:25.200 maintained your avatar online and what your parameters and your 0:23:25.240 --> 0:23:29.600 ethos was around it. Wow. Yeah, I think you're right. 0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:32.679 I think there will be an aesthetic that develops around it. 0:23:32.720 --> 0:23:36.080 For sure. It'll be like the truth tellers and and 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:39.080 the gloss people, and it's sort of a science as 0:23:39.240 --> 0:23:45.760 humanity split. Right, This gets us into the nitty gritty 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:48.240 of how you even begin to interact with your avatar. 0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:50.680 You know, you want to start with your avatar sort 0:23:50.680 --> 0:23:53.679 of like you would at a cocktail party. What do 0:23:53.720 --> 0:23:55.760 you do? How's it going? You don't want to go 0:23:55.840 --> 0:23:58.280 straight to have you ever killed anyone? It's doing? It's 0:23:58.320 --> 0:24:01.919 doing the yawn stretch? What is that? Oh? In the 0:24:02.000 --> 0:24:04.080 all of the movies from the fifties that you go 0:24:04.160 --> 0:24:06.720 to the drive in and the guy yawns and stretches 0:24:06.760 --> 0:24:10.840 and puts his arm around the girl. Yes, do you 0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:14.040 know what I'm talking? Yes, it's just it's just I 0:24:14.080 --> 0:24:15.800 think none of us had framed it in a dating 0:24:15.840 --> 0:24:17.919 sort of way prior to that, so there was a 0:24:17.920 --> 0:24:20.320 little bit of a I don't want to date myself. 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:23.000 Maybe some people do. I'm not judging, but you know, 0:24:23.080 --> 0:24:26.760 it's but yeah, it's a kind of trust issue like that. 0:24:27.720 --> 0:24:30.720 So maybe if it bakes me some cookies, I will 0:24:30.800 --> 0:24:34.120 tell it more information. I just talked to it. Who's 0:24:34.160 --> 0:24:36.040 the time I goche At that point, I would bore 0:24:36.040 --> 0:24:40.359 it to death. It was be like this story again, 0:24:41.520 --> 0:24:47.199 please rejected by my avatar. Yeah, so some of the 0:24:47.280 --> 0:24:50.560 data trails you create could be mundane, but some of 0:24:50.600 --> 0:24:54.480 it could be well troubling. Will you also get into 0:24:54.520 --> 0:24:56.679 the realm of like legal issues like could they be 0:24:56.760 --> 0:25:00.160 petitioned by a court or another legal entity to look 0:25:00.200 --> 0:25:03.960 at somebody's stuff. There's which I'm sure they've thought about. 0:25:04.119 --> 0:25:05.879 I mean, if they're putting together a company around it, 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:07.879