Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov plans to make humans immortal by the year 2045 via holographic avatars. Scientists have already developed video game controllers that give players the ability to control on-screen movement with their brain waves, paralyzed patients can control a robot’s movements with just their thoughts via brain implants, and in Israel, a test subject was recently able to effectively direct the movements of a robot located nearly 1800 miles away.

But unlike Avatar, we won’t just ‘become’ our avatar form, our avatar form will in essence become us, running from a download of our disembodied consciousness.

Here’s Itskov’s timeline, through which Itskov proposes the idea that humans can achieve immortality by 2045 through a series of advancing technological innovations.

Year 2020: Humans will be able to remotely control robotic avatars through brain-computer interaction.

Year 2025: Humans will be able to continue living after their physical bodies have given out by transplanting their brains into robotic avatars; this ‘autonomous life-support system’ will enable humans to continue to have an active life.

Year 2035: The human brain and consciousness will be recreated via computer model and transferred to an avatar to enable humans to keep living after ‘death.’

Year 2045: Immortality arrives in the form of a holographic avatar; the human brain and consciousnesses has been fully transferred to the artificial form.

“We believe that before 2045 an artificial body will be created that will not only surpass the existing body in terms of functionality, but will achieve perfection of form and be no less attractive than the human body. People will make independent decisions about the extension of their lives and the possibilities for personal development in a new body after the resources of the biological body have been exhausted. The new human being will receive a huge range of abilities and will be capable of withstanding extreme external conditions easily: high temperatures, pressure, radiation, lack of oxygen, etc. Using a neural-interface humans will be able to operate several bodies of various forms and sizes remotely,” says Itskov. [PSFK]

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