Ed. Note: The following article is the final addition of the A Transhumanist's Journey series, which also include Pt. 1: Becoming Gods and Pt. 2: Becoming Angels. If you've yet to read them, be sure to do so before proceeding with Pt. 3.

Becoming Ghosts

Which brings me to the last “Do ___ exist?” – ghosts! When we become more efficient at leaving behind our biological imprints via technology, i.e. online digital lives, to which then creates a digitized immortal presence of ourselves if we die, per se, are we then not essentially taking the throne of ghosts?

In other words, when we’ve long since passed away – if such an outcome were to occur for whatever unfortunate reason – but our digital re-creations live on, is this not similar to the basic concept of ghosts? A ghost is, after all, as according to paranormal mythology, remnants of a long-since-deceased person who has other things to do that weren’t finished before dying, or is trapped for some reason between the boundaries of life and death.

Our designing online avatars in popular digital worlds like Sims and/or Second Life is done so to achieve, as I would argue, an “immortal” presence that can’t be destroyed by the basic biological clock dictated by the Grim Reaper itself. Author Juan Enríquez would call these actions as getting “digital tattoos,” just as we’d be leaving behind a forever lasting imprint of ourselves online using social networks like Facebook and Google+.

A great example, though, which currently best resembles becoming “ghost-like,” would be the 2012 Coachella hip-hop concert. During this performance, something amazing happened which stunned not just the people there, but the entire world – Tupac Shakur showed up on stage and performed!

To achieve this, seeing as how Tupac has been dead for nearly 22 years now, a computer-generated “hologram” was projected onto the stage – Star Wars style! – using both specially positioned lights and mirrors. The detail of the hologram Tupac was so exquisite that many fans after the concert were left unsure if what they saw was real or not. It was as if the ghost of Tupac had arisen to perform again, better than ever.

That is what we can achieve today, but what in the next decade or two, or three? Could these digital replicas – “ghosts” – of ourselves one day attain consciousness and self-awareness? And if so, what better means of defining ghost than by our digitized, immortal, sentient replicas?

As a huge Star Trek fan, there’s one episode which best performed this very question without really giving a direct answer. It was episode 3 of season 2, “Elementary, Dear Data:”