I watched Transcendence the movie last night and it got me thinking. The stories that became myths that became religions that became the foundation to societies offered transcendence. It is the bribery the divinities or their representatives offer in exchange for following their rules. Heaven is the best known in my corner of the world but there are many others. Technology is now in the running though, a man made transcendence.

They are already making headway in a digital afterlife where you can live on digitally in social media after you die by means of AI software scanning your behaviour and replicating after your demise so you keep commenting and sharing the same sort of things.

I do not believe anyone is promising that this is any kind of continuance of consciousness though so no kind of evolution from bio to digital intelligence. That issue is explored very well in Johnny Depp’s Transcendence the movie.

Spoiler Alert

In the film Jonny Depp is a scientist working to develop artificial intelligence and meets with an accident that leads to his slow death. The solution is to transfer his consciousness into a very powerful computer. When they realise his successful transference his team have achieved everything they have been working for but instantly one of them is suspicious that this is not him which remains the complicated issue of the film from that point on.

This highlights the point that I am interested in. My novel, The Hereafter, is about the same technological breakthrough but instead of remaining in this world it is about creating a new world for those who have transcended into digital form at the moment of their death – an artificial afterlife where they can reside happily forever after their body is dead.

In the novel there is no question. In the novel I claim that technology offers a guaranteed afterlife which people can somehow trust better than taking their chances with oblivion – the great unknown beyond a natural death. In reality I have to ask though – what guarantee is there that this technology is a continuation of your consciousness and not just a replica?

To take that question deeper into philosophy – our brains store our memories and our memories make us who we are. Every time we go to sleep the stream of our consciousness is broken. So when we wake up how do we know we are the same consciousness that went to sleep and not just a copy with all the same memories and no reason to suspect otherwise?

The Hereafter

This is an issue that I touch on closer in I Am You than The Hereafter. In I Am You when the main characters hijack someone else’s body they take over their brain as well – they know everything that person knew and can do everything that that person has learned to do but they hold on to their own consciousness in doing so. If the issues raised in Transcendence the movie interest you feel free to take a closer look at my books, The Hereafter in particular.