The idea of transferring human consciousness into a computer, a long — time dream of many people. I wrote about this a fiction. About dreams futurist ray Kurzweil. However, a new startup, with the support of the business incubator Y Combinator (a venture capital Fund, investing in the development of new technologies) have expressed a desire to make the dream a reality. However, there is one small to do. The person who decides to become a client of the company and believe in the “magic” will have to die first. In addition, there is no guarantee that in the framework of the migration process will not be lost part of the consciousness of the individual.
The company Nectome promotes the idea of preserving the human brain and the subsequent transference of consciousness into the machine. The MIT Review calls this technology “high-tech embalming process”. It is based on “vitrification”, also known as the process of aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation. In simple words, the company offers to freeze your brain with the ability to recreate a digital copy of it in the future.
Two years earlier, a team of scientists behind this project and working under the leadership of founders Michael Mackenny and Robert MacIntyre, was awarded the Brain Preservation Prize for the development and successful application of the method of cryopreservation. Then the scientists thawed the brain of a rabbit and a pig, while retaining all neural connections. In February of this year, researchers reported the successful work of their method on a larger brain, which was extracted from a dead elderly woman. This was the first time the demonstration of vitrification of the human brain.
In General, pre-orders for new service are already open. You can pay Nectome to the company after your death gently pulled out of your head brain and left him for safekeeping. Right now the service is valued at $ 10,000, however there is the option of a full refund if the customer changes his mind to use it.
It is also noted that the company does not guarantee anything that has to do with the so-called immortality. On the website Nectome stated that a key objective of the project is to train the brain to transplant into digital form, although it is not clear whether this procedure is carried out with the most Nectome, or else this task will be assigned to a third party.
“Our job is to preserve your brain in a fairly stable condition, retaining all accumulated in it the memories: a particularly memorable Chapter of your favorite book, feeling the cool winter air, your first freshly baked Apple pie, dinner in a circle of close friends and family. We believe that during this century appears a technology that allows to digitize all of this information and use it to recreate your consciousness”, — reports the website of the company.
To date, Nectome were able to obtain financing in the amount of $ 1 million, including $ 120,000 from the venture Fund Y Combinator, and an additional 960 000 dollars in the form of a grant from the National Institute of mental health (USA). Whether this will be enough considering the cost of services for the realization of dreams?
The company offers to freeze your brain for digitization in the future
Nikolai Khizhnyak