Elon Musk

In response to a Twitter user’s idea that Elon Musk utilises the site to construct a digital replica of our personality in a “digital afterlife,” the social network’s new owner answered cryptically, “maybe we’re already in it.”

Several experts have commented on how tech billionaires appear to be obsessed with immortality, whether through biohacking or uploading their consciousness into a “Matrix”-style metaverse.

PayPal founder Peter Thiel has stated that immortality is not an impossibility, saying in 2012, “Death is a problem that can be solved.”

Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering, predicted a future in which technology such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink allows us to upload ourselves into machines: “We’re going to become increasingly non-biological to the point where the non-biological part dominates, and the biological part is not important any more.”

“In fact,” Kurzweil continues, “the non-biological part – the machine part – will be so powerful it can completely model and understand the biological part.”

However, Rami Kaminski of The Institute of Integrative Psychiatry believes the billionaires’ desire for endless life is “juvenile.”

“You may go to Mars,” he says, “but you cannot go out into the solar system.”He claims that the internet billionaires have a “limited” perspective on life, “What they’re trying to do is get away from the mortal coil. Every day when you look in the mirror you are reminded you are made of carbon. It is degrading and has to be recycled.”

In a lengthy Twitter thread last month, American data scientist Emily Gorcenski prophesied a future in which the human species will be separated into “digital” personalities living on computer servers and a labour class maintaining the computer infrastructure in a wrecked physical world.

“To comprehend the Metaverse means you have to realise that affluent techno nerds actually believe they will be able to upload their consciousness before they die,” she says of Jeff Bezos’ Metaverse.

“The Metaverse isn’t being built to revolutionise remote working. It’s being built because they need to believe they can build heaven.”

But, as she argues, that’s a difficult concept to sell, thus the predominant conversation in the Metaverse revolves around business and remote working. Nobody, she said, requested virtual reality business meetings.

Emily adds that even if the digital afterlife is effectively developed, we won’t be able to take benefit of it completely.

“The servers that run the metaverse…have be physical. They require power as well as spare parts. They are brittle. As a result, people—mortals—need to keep them alive.”

“In the Metaversal future, there will be a class of mortals tasked with the upkeep of the gods’ heaven.”

“There are a *lot* of people who would be deeply offended by the idea of a synthetic heaven. A lot of people who would be violent to stop it.,” she continues. There are many people who would resort to violence to halt it.

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