Avatar Actuality

Anyone who enjoyed the movie Avatar must have been intrigued by the prospect of mentally inhabiting another body or perhaps finding immortality for yourself within a robotic body. New plans by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov suggest that such an idea might become reality within a decade..

31-year-old Itskov is a Russian media entrepreneur, and his proud boast is that he has already got 100 scientists working on making this vision of human immortality come to fruition, believing that person with a perfect Avatar could continue to function in society, cheating the spectre of death.

His Avatar project resembles that run by the Pentagon, a study that envisions the surgical transplantation of human consciousness into robot bodies, though the hope of Itskov is that transference without surgery be pursued as a goal.

Itskov revealed more details of his plans to a  futurist group at a 3-day Moscow conference called Global Future 2045, having initially launched his project a year before, and now planning to get even more scientists involved, the project developing in different stages.

Phase one  will involve the creation of an artificial body suitable for the human consciousness to inhabit, something requiring a perfect brain-machine interface, in order to allow total control, as well as a life support system that will allow the brain to survive separated from the human body it had occupied.

Itskov fully anticipates that the transplanting a human mind into the robot body is completely feasible, within 30 years planning the creation of hologram-type bodies – such as those seen on Star Trek – that would be capable of hosting human consciousness, as these would enable the user to walk through walls and move at the speed of light, meaning that space-travel could be revolutionised.

He is quick to acknowledge that his project is a long way from being simple, and perhaps even ridiculously audacious, but dismisses any idea  that it might not be scientifically feasible, because new discoveries are being made all the time. This far-sighted, possibly even slightly crazy adventurer believes that putting all of ones time and energy into a project can make it a reality, eventually, and who would want to disillusion someone with ideas as grandiose and appealing as these? We all secretly want to live forever, so let us hope that he is successful in his quest.