The Future of Life

After reading Kurzweil's article and learning about the experiments of Warwick and others, it makes me wonder what human life will be like in the nearing distant future when man and computer interface. The examples with Demolition Man and Kurzweil's infatuation with leaving the body behind and perceiving and experiencing every aspect of life mentally and interconnected with machine, makes me wonder about the existence of human life as we know it in the future. Every generation expects to outlive the generations that precede them, and I wonder if interfacing with machine will create an extremely long living human or cyborg. Will the brain be able to survive through mechanisms after the body dies and decays? Or will cyborgs only be able to live and sustain life as long as the human component of the cyborg is alive. I would be nervous and wouldn't want to live in a world where physical activity and mental learning is no longer relevant and used. I also wonder whether humans would become healthier if every aspect of life was controlled through machine and experienced mentally. Like the Demolition Man example physical sex would become all fantasy and all done through mental stimulations, making it disease free, mess free, and making anonymity more possible. Then would all physical activity become that of brain stimulation rather than actual motion and physical movements? Like we talked about in class, one has to wonder whether the brain would rebel and turn everybody's fantasies into a series of nightmares in which they can't escape. All these questions and thoughts come to mind as technology increases and the future of cyborg reality looms in the distance. Will our generation be the first to witness cyborg advancement and possible immortality? Who knows, but everything seems to be a possibility. (Because of my increasing interest in Warwick's work I have linked a video that from One Step Beyond. There are many videos, this one shows one of his first experiments at becoming a cyborg.)