According to this article: Will You Live Forever—or until Your Next Software Release—by Uploading Your Brain into a Computer?, someone’s stolen Milt Jackson’s idea, the one that gave him a lot of assets though all the cash went to the one they call the Opportunist, the fellow who fathered those children using Milt’s genes. I told poor Milt’s story in A Man for Every Purpose and maybe that’s where they got the idea for immortality via…
Wait. They got it wrong. They don’t understand basic biology. They want to give us immortality by uploading the epiphenomena of our brains into computers while Milt seems more tied to biological reality. His company started out with ossuaries, sealing the hard stuff of the human organisms so it could last for eons and then that corporation efficiently moved on to put their client’s genetic patterns on storage disks and also to store chemical clones of their genetic stuff in airtight containers. Of course, Milt also knows he’s making false promises of immortality. With all the centers that Brother Steven’s Vaults of Eternity built around the world, there’s a good chance most of the clients will survive, or their genes or something will survive, but only for a few billion years. Any part of the earth’s crust will eventually ride down into the molten mess inside and the day will come when the sun will go nova but maybe by then the DNA databases or chemical clones will have figured out how to get to a younger star system.
Well, these other guys might have a point. Maybe a rocket-scientist’s brain encoded in BASIC… Encoded in COBOL… Maybe FORTRAN??? How about (((common-lisp))) so that brain can continue to edit itself with ease. Or maybe {[#*&@%wperl]} will do something linguistically proper in the given context. The venerable INTERCAL might be the most appropriate choice. After all, INTERCAL’s compiler is known, to close friends — and he has no other sorts of friends, as “ick”. Ick was designed to ignore all errors including any code not properly badly formed according to the properly badly formed rules of INTERCAL. Moreover, Ick has no output capabilities other than ‘”butchered” Roman numerals’ and thus keeps his ideas mostly to himself. Thus, our encoded brains will never know about the heat death, or big crunch, of the universe because Ick will ignore it or maybe keep it a personal secret. Ick has the capability of ignoring or thoroughly obscuring anything that’s yucky in Ick’s considered opinion — and he has no other sorts of opinions. Maybe immortality is possible? Even if it isn’t, we’ll be able to go on forever without ever learning that it has all come to an end.
What’s most important is that someone is stealing Milt’s idea. It’s bad enough that Milt’s balance-sheet is the envy of Warren Buffet but all the cash-flow is going to the Opportunist, but…
I can see Milt feasting on the scum in the stagnant pond out back. If only he didn’t share DNA with all those ancient worms.
If Milt shares DNA with some ancient Great White Barristers, he might be able to take care of these intellectual property thieves.