Page - 165 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

Cyberneuroethics • 165 every bias in opinion and effectively catalogue every mood. This could sub- sequently be transferred onto some yet-to-be-developed supercomputer in which the person could continue to exist.283 This change from biological humans to super-intelligent machines, capa- ble of making decisions, will progress slowly. To begin with, it is suggested that humans will upload the most important parts of their minds and per- sonalities into supercomputers, which will look after the physical needs of humanity. Eventually the machines, in the words of Geraci, ‘will tire of caring for humanity and will decide to spread throughout the universe in the interest of discovering all the secrets of the cosmos’.284 Similarly, Moravec postulates that machines will convert the entire uni- verse into an extended thinking entity.285 Eventually, when the ‘Age of Mind’ replaces the ‘Age of Robots’, machines will create an environment for a ‘subtler world’286 in which only calculations continue to exist. The Virtual Kingdom will eventually make earthly life futile and will ultimately be engulfed by cyberspace.287 This is the ultimate goal of the metamorphosis of the human to the posthuman. Technology will enable humans to successfully bring about what established religions have sought for thousands of years: immortality.288 According to Kurzweil, ‘[o]ur mortality will be in our own hands. We will be able to live as long as we want’, which, interestingly, is not quite the same as immortality.289 Cyber-immortality is especially supported by the American sociologist William Bainbridge, who presents posthumanism as a kind of religion for the ‘galactic civilisation’.290 He also asks humanity to be creative so that the current virtual world ‘could evolve into extrasolar homes for posthuman beings’.291 In this context, he defends the notion of technologically based immortality, predicting that it ‘will put religions largely out of business, and [therefore] religious fundamentalists would condemn activities in these directions’.292 Of course, the dream of cyber-immortality is currently more science fic- tion than fact. But it does emphasise the desire in the technological sector to consider computers as a way to break free from the constraints of bodily existence.293 Because of this, Bainbridge considers that if the contents of any personality archives were to be ‘erased’, this could be a form of murder, an ‘infocide’, because it would kill people in their pure form.294 Hayles also examines how poshumanists have asserted the importance of freeing themselves from the limitations of nature to build a more favourable posthuman future with a new social and political order.295 The vision is of a perfect world, free of suffering, where freedom is the dominant value and where persons would have unlimited opportunities for individual and com- munity development.296 On this account, virtual reality is often seen as the future for a posthuman world  – not as a means of escape from the real world, but rather as a means to change what is real for the better.297 This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.