Could we live forever in virtual worlds?

There's a thought provoking post from commentator Dusan Writer who talks about virtual worlds one day giving us a form of immortality.

The idea is that an avatar could be programmed with our behavioural traits and preferences and then carry on living a life in a virtual universe that wouldn't be subject to biological limitations.

Second Life founder and former Linden Lab boss Philip Rosedale is quoted in a recent book as saying that he could envisage a point where one day he could be uploaded into code and "live" forever."

At the moment, that's of course not possible as avatars are still the virtual personas of real world human beings - dependant on someone who sits behind a computer screen and operates the controls.

But the other month a team at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York successfully created an avatar called 'Eddie' who had the intelligence (if you want to call it that) of a four year old (or 'AI boffins create four year old loser' as the trade mag the Inquirer memorably put it), pointing to the day when the digital representations of ourselves could indeed have a kind of existence of their own.

Philip Rosedale poses the question of whether we'll then be able to then draw upon the "temporal wisdom" of our forefathers (and also whether people will start leaving money to their avatars...rather than their pets).

Just imagine it, school children will be able to go online and interact with the Nelson Mandelas and Stephen Hawkings of the future.

Or actually, judging by people who are currently having themselves cryogenically frozen, those same school kids might instead encounter the virtual successors of cranks and crashing bores.

A way for me to carry on pontificating forever? Now there's an idea!

Photo - Duncan