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Date Posted: 00:14:02 06/04/06 Sun
Author: mozel
Subject: The feasibility of the so-called Rapture of the Nerds

—uploading our consciousnesses into cyberspace—was also discussed at the conference. One proponent is Martine Rothblatt, who is a genuine visionary . She has helped launch several satellite networks, including the satellite radio network Sirius, and also founded the biotech company United Therapeutics. She is also proudly a postoperative transsexual and author of The Apartheid of Sex .

Her talk entitled "Of Genes, Bemes and Conscious Things" outlined a future in which human consciousnesses are uploaded into computers. Her neologism "beme" is modeled after Richard Dawkin's meme . Memes are units of cultural transmission and Rothblatt's bemes are "fundamental, transmissible, mutable units of beingness." Heideggerian bytes if you will. Bemes consist of smiles, the taste of lasagna, the memory of a first bike ride and so forth. According to Rothblatt, just as genes spell out matter, bemes spell out mind.

Rothblatt suggested that bemes could be eventually captured and stored by more sophisticated wearable recording systems like the MyLifeBits project being developed at Microsoft by Gordon Bell. Researchers are also working on creating a bouquet of nanowires....

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