Martine Rothblatt Looks At Digital Immortality in Virtually Human

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In her new book, Virtually Human, Martine Rothblatt explores what the not-too-distant future will look like when cyberconsciousness—simulation of the human brain via software and computer technology—becomes part of our daily lives.

Martine Rothblatt, the founder of Sirius satellite radio and pharmaceutical company United Therapeutics, was the highest paid female executive in America last year with total earnings of $38 million. She also happens to be a leading transhumanist and transgender.

She founded United Therapeutics to help find a cure for pulmonary hypertension, a disease that afflicts her daughter Jenesis. Rothblatt's futuristic ideas sometimes seem far-fetched, if not a little crazy until they actually become reality.

In 1994, Rothblatt, then a man, underwent sexual reassignment surgery and remained married to her wife, Bina Aspen, inspiration for the robot avatar BINA48.

In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via mind uploading and geoethical nanotechnology. Through a charitable foundation, leaders of this school convene publicly accessible symposia, publish explanatory analyses, conduct demonstration projects, issue grants, and encourage public awareness and adherence to Terasem values and goals. The movement maintains a "Terasem Island" on the Internet-based virtual world Second Life, which is currently composed of two sims.

"I know this sounds messianic or even childlike, but I believe it is simply practical and technologically inevitable."

Through her blog Mindfiles, Mindware and Mindclones, she writes about “the coming age of our own cyberconsciousness and techno-immortality“ and started a vlog together with Ulrike Reinhard on the same topic.

Now, Rothblatt is the author of a book about the ethics and morality of cyberconsciousness, Virtually Human: The Promise---and the Peril---of Digital Immortality.

Virtually Human, with a forward by Kurzweil and illustrations by Ralph Steadman, explores what the not-too-distant future will look like when cyberconsciousness—simulation of the human brain via software and computer technology—becomes part of our daily lives.

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"I wrote it after reading Ray Kurzweil’s book The Age of Spiritual Machines in 2002," Rothblatt told Fortune. "I felt I had a kind of revelation. I actually had never thought about the possibility of digital immortality. It had never even occurred to me. The book was written so logically, and it seemed to be based on such solid technology with all of those graphs and data-based reasoning that I found myself being intellectually intrigued by it like I hadn’t been intellectually intrigued by something since satellite communications in the ‘70s"

Bina48, arguably the world's most sentient robot, was commissioned by Rothblatt and created by Hanson Robotics. Bina48 is a nascent Mindclone of Martine’s wife that can engage in conversation, answer questions, and even have spontaneous thoughts that are derived from multimedia data in a Mindfile created by the real Bina.

If you’re active on Twitter or Facebook, share photos through Instagram, or blogging regularly, you’re already on your way to creating a Mindfile—a digital database of your thoughts, memories, feelings, and opinions that is essentially a back-up copy of your mind.

“I know this sounds messianic or even childlike,” she told New York Magazine's Lisa Miller, “But I believe it is simply practical and technologically inevitable.”

Acording to Rothblatt, soon, this Mindfile can be made conscious with special software—Mindware—that mimics the way human brains organize information, create emotions and achieve self-awareness. This may sound like science-fiction, but the nascent technology already exists. Thousands of software engineers across the globe are working to create cyberconsciousness based on human consciousness and the Obama administration recently announced plans to invest in a decade-long Brain Activity Map project.

Virtually Human examines the ethical issues relating to cyberconsciousness and Rothblatt, with a Ph.D. in medical ethics, is uniquely qualified to lead the dialogue.

By 33rd Square

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