Article January 8, 2001 Issue

Virtual spirituality?

By David Cramer

Suspend Your Disbelief for a moment. Imagine a time far in the future when home computers—or their equivalents—have the processing capacity of a thousand human brains. And imagine that these computers can learn as well as, or even better than, their human creators.

They'll have read all the literature ever written. They'll discourse freely and naturally with humans and with each other, compose original music and poetry, and consider deep philosophical and religious questions.

Continue this reverie and imagine that at this future time humans will be able to transfer their thinking processes and memories into computers, so that their conscious minds could transcend their bodies, shedding disease, and achieving a kind of immortality by existing wholly in virtual reality.

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