Download your consciousness, live forever?

Every so often I write about the future here. Trying to predict what it’ll be like, not just for me, but at large.

CryoMind is a custodian for brain scans, which you can do at home now, so eventually your consciousness can be booted via computer later if/when technology allows.

I happened across them back when my take on life was more cynical. Thinking — perhaps like you do now? — that you die then everything’s blank and worms eat you. Scary.

During that time it was like, “hell yeah, upload me into the [technological] cloud so I might ‘live forever’ that way.”

However, in 2020 my really views changed and this no longer interests me.

Not getting preachy.

Anyway. Let’s talk about you, this technology, and the future.

TL;DR right now it will cost you ~$350 U.S. Dollars fiat for minimal brain scanning hardware and CryoMind. There are Black Friday sales going on.

Going a little deeper, you have choices on the hardware. CryoMind is the only software as far as I know.

If this were me, brain-scanning hardware doesn’t seem like something to cheap out on. You want a quality scan to base your digital consciousness on, right?

Let us consider the supported scanners from least sophisticated on up.

• Emotiv Insight
  • 5 sensors + 2 references
  • $299 regular price
• Emotiv Epoc X
  • 14 sensors + 2 references
  • $849 regular price
• Emotiv Epoc Flex
  • 32 sensors + 2 references
  • $1,699 to $2,099 regular price
    • Option dependent

Then CryoMind is normally $350 — or $150 right now with promo code CRYOMINDBETA (-20%) on top of their Black Friday sale.

So now we’re in the price range of $449 to $2,149 and ready to scan our brains. I can’t say this part is that clear to me but the company has put out this video below.

An important callout is that this wouldn’t seem to allow you to live forever. The you reading this right now. Black Mirror viewers may recognize that.

You would probably end up with a “fork” of your own consciousness, to use a software version control term. There’s no process by which the fleshy you goes into the computer. The computer gets a copy.

I’ve spent some money on weird things. Things others might deem silly. And will wrap by saying “to each their own.” ✌🧠