Erin Rhodes | What happens to memory and experience when it becomes a commodity? Can the mind really be freed from the physicality of the brain – and of the body? Wouldn’t multiple versions or copies of ourselves, and the prospect of immortality, cheapen the uniqueness of being human? Are consciousness, emotion, and intelligence particular only to humans (and perhaps other living things), or can they be instilled into a machine? Are these even relevant questions to be asking?

Transmigration of the human mind into a machine is only one of many fantastical predictions Hans Moravec, a roboticist at Carnegie-Mellon University, makes in his book Mind Children. Moravec speculates that the end product of transmigration, where our “postbiological” evolution will ultimately lead us, is “a supercivilization, the synthesis of all solar system life, constantly improving and extending itself, spreading outward from the sun, converting nonlife into mind.”