There seem to be a wide range of different ways to scan and copy an individual’s brain activity as well as many methods which could be used to replace one’s own brain with a digital one made from a computer. The entire field of mind transfer and Whole Brain Emulation has been discussed and speculated for decades, and many scientists within the field give a very positive response regarding the development of digital immortality. Famous and iconic people within the field such as Ray Kurzweil, Dimitri Itskov and Roger Penrose are all very positive towards the development toward reaching this possibility of digital immortality. According to them, the possibility to copy your mind will be a reality within 50 years give or take. This is partly why for example Google’s Ray Kurzweil is actively taking medicines and has adopted a lifestyle which may extend his life to some degree, just so that he can live long enough to be able to transfer his mind and thereby achieve a digital immortality.

Despite the positive attitude which these famous scientists have, critics say that their opinions are rather optimistic. There are more parameters involved in the process of developing mind transfer and whole brain emulation which may likely delay the possibility of achieving digital immortality. Many of the issues are philosophical, but I’ll leave them be for now and focus on the real objective ones instead. One major factor in this case is the computation power which has been exponentially increasing over almost a century. It is estimated that a human brain can perform about one quadrillion calculations per second! That’s a one followed by fifteen zeros! However, even the world’s fastest computer which was ever built together, the Blue Gene/Q could only simulate about three neurons in real time when it came to calculating the behaviour of each neuron’s many molecules. Although, simplifications have been developed in order to predict and calculate molecular behaviour. However, using one of the most powerful brain simulation algorithms through a software called NEURON, the Blue Gene/Q was only able to simulate a bit over 23 000 neurons in real time, which is far from the 100 billion neurons a human has.

Even though the actual computation power is far from being able to simulate a human brain, even when using simplified algorithms, the fact remains that we won’t know how much the introduction of quantum mechanics may bring to this field of science. Computation power might therefore run into a huge development leap rather soon, but the problems won’t stop there. The second material issue which brain stimulation must solve is rather crucial for any kind of brain simulation and transfer to run correctly. We do know a lot about brains and their molecules and function, but according to the makers of the NEURON software and many other scientists in the cognitive science field, there are over hundreds of hormones which still haven’t been found and mapped. This lack of data means that all articles regarding brain stimulation which you might find on news sites about how fast certain computers can simulate a human brain, are lacking a lot of parameters which might play a significant role in the resultant speed and precision of the simulation. It’s even highly possible that some of these scientists which test simulations remove many of these molecules just to make it to the headlines in some article. The fact therefore remains that the world as it is today, is too young to predict and claim that some of our fictional ideas will become a reality, especially in regards of how soon many of the predictions say that digital immortality will be possible. Ray Kurzweil stands loyal to his word that 2045 will be a year when he can escape death, and perhaps that will be the case, but there is just no way to prove that all issues will be solved by then.