Avatar of a Taobabe

Lately, it seems as if everywhere I look, nothing much ever changes.  The sun still shines, the rain still falls.  People still do what they do.  Admittedly, nowadays, with all the new gadgets at our finger tips, we can do a multitude of things that would not have been possible in the past.  Even sitting around waiting for the bus is a good chance for us to catch up on our friendly correspondences and to collect the latest rounds of coins on our various internet games.  It’s become such a mundane activity that we forget this was not how life was, only twenty years ago.  And yet, it’s part of our ordinary lives today.

But be forewarned.  The world is changing so fast now that if we don’t adapt to what’s coming ’round the bend, we will not only get left behind, we will be completely swallowed by the dust and buried underneath seven layers of dirt.

Literally.

I mean, like—dead.

Being dead isn’t very glamorous, or so I’ve been told.  Since being fashion-conscious relies on a body having to be at the very least, ‘conscious‘, I have therefore decided to choose my very own avatar so that in the far future, should I need to, I might have that rare and crazy interesting opportunity to transfer my consciousness into it once my body is either too old and worn to be able to house my consciousness or has suffered some catastrophic accident upon which it can no longer maintain my consciousness.

So with that in mind, I went online and downloaded some random blonde computer-generated avatar.

Yes, I know.  This avatar isn’t the best looking one out there.  In fact, the hair looks rather funky, and the lips need a bit more 3D molding work, but it’s just a place holder, and as place holders go, it’ll do.  In fact, for the real deal, I would probably prefer a custom-created avatar that looks more like myself (albeit, a prettier version of myself) and not so much this caricatur-ish image.  And before you even ask—yes, I did say ‘the real deal’.  There are companies out there already starting the clock on the countdown towards the eventuality of this becoming a reality.  In fact, this is what Project Avatar 2045 is working on.  From their website, simply named 2045.com, this is their mission statement:

The “2045″ team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality. ~ 2045 [1]

Before we go into all the knee-jerk reactions to this idea, I would like to pitch in with something that I think is critical.  It may very well be that the Universe is littered by the billions with extinct and vanished one-world-wonders—those great and amazing civilizations that decided not to explore space.  For whatever reason they deemed important, they figured it was best to remain on their planet and never roam out of their atmosphere.  So of course, when some random catastrophe hit their planet, they all died out, being unable to leave their home world.  If they had just had the foresight to send out a ship—it wouldn’t matter if it was a generational ship or one that had frozen bodies in it—they would have at least been able to preserve a cross-selection of their own race.

Now, knowing how hard space is on the physical human body, I can safely say that living in anti-gravity (or even mock gravity) will cause our human bones to become so frail that we will eventually be unable to return to our home world, and that’s no fun.  Space radiation is also an issue, it doesn’t matter how much gold we place in between space and ourselves.  It will eventually cause us to become sterile (most likely the reason why all the science-fiction stories talk about female humans and how they have been so coveted for their eggs).

Since physically traveling the stars is a bit of a bum deal, the best way to travel through space would have to be via computer interface.  We would have to change ourselves, either in part or completely, into machines in order to travel through space and not get so dang bored with the same old food that’s served every damn day of the space week, not to mention the same old black space scenery every time we look outside the window.  Add to that the fact that space is so large that, even going full-speed ahead, we would die of old age before we ever got anywhere interesting, that the idea of doing it the silicon way seems to be much more advantageous.

Still…can you just imagine all the types of people who would be picked to go on one of these journeys?  They would all be scientists of one sort or another (no run-of-the-mill folks would even qualify).  It would certainly be somewhat lacking in that ‘cross-section’ of humanity I spoke about, in which case, Taobabe-types like me would be rather important, if only for genetic diversity and entertainment value.

…

1.  http://2045.com/