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Living the age-old dream: Last night's TV reviews
While scientists benefit from the funding from rulers and manufacturers, rulers and manufacturers benefit from the discoveries of said scientists.
So in a way, the story behind Horizon: The Immortalist (BBC2) was a very old one.
Internet billionaire Dmitry Itskov doesn’t need any more money.
Instead he’s funnelling his capital into a very particular boyhood dream, eternal life, and top-notch scientists across the world are working on the challenge.
Itskov’s motives aren’t money any more but his dream seemed to be a very capitalist one.
When a man has bought everything possible what can he spend his money on except the impossible?
Behind his hopes of ‘uploading’ the personality into an endless series of bodies there was the dubious promise that makes every visit to a supermarket so confusing.
For Itskov, choice seemed to be the end-goal, a purchasable means of doing everything and doing it forever.
Either that or multiple lives were just the neatest solution for someone with more money than they could spend in one lifetime.
But the research was having far more noble and useful applications.
Through the painstaking mapping of every tiny process in the brain, scientists have been able to develop artificial limbs that move in response to thoughts.
It may be that Itskov’s money helps no one live forever but it does help people live a better life Mrs Brown’s Boys star and creator Brendan O’Carroll certainly enjoys the limelight.
His episode of Who Do You Think You Are? contained many scenes of him being greeted and saluted by adoring passers-by in the street.
Brendan O’Carroll: My Family At War (BBC2) had a fair bit of that and when people weren’t looking enough he shouted extra-loud until they did.
You can’t blame a showman for showing off but his second clamber up the family tree demonstrated a thoughtful side.
Three of his uncles had taken part in the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 and last night’s film saw Brendan finding out why.
You couldn’t help but join him in the living history of it all, standing outside the Dublin shop from which his young uncles had marched to an uncertain fate.
Unlike many in the rebellion, they escaped death in combat and in front of a firing squad but the tragedy of it all came over loud and strong.
The rebels were desperately outnumbered and scuppered by internal disagreements and poor communications.
Raw recruits from Britain, some believing they’d landed in France, were sent to quell the uprising and slaughtered in great quantity.
As for Dubliners, they dragged the injured Brits into their homes out of sympathy with what they saw as an act of treason during a world war.
O’Carroll’s account was about as fair as any has given. He clearly felt pride in his uncles’ stand but he was also disarmingly straight about the things the Rising had and hadn’t achieved.
It was an eight-day gesture that resulted in brutal crackdowns and deportations but because of the ferocious response it won hearts and minds over time.
Over an even longer time, it resulted in a republic of which Brendan, a century’s worth of Irish people, and even, perhaps, Ma Brown herself are proud.
Source: http://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/653154/Horizon-The-Immortalist-BBC2-Brendan-OCarroll-My-Family-At-War-BBC-review-stream
/ About us
Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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