For millennia, the world's richest individuals have been searching for the secrets to eternal youth, but according to one billionaire, the best way to achieve immortality is to simply escape into cyberspace.
As was first reported by The Daily Star, Moscow-based Dmitry Itskov argues that the human body in its current form is just a shell, and that artificial bodies - which will allow people to live as long as 150 years - could become a reality over the next 25 years.
The founder of 'New Media Stars', a company he sold for a reported Ā£1 billion, is a major player in the '2045 initiative', which is aiming to 'eliminate aging and even death' with the help of the internet.
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In theory, artificial bodies would allow people to move out of their old bodies and into a new model, thanks to a concept called mind-uploading.
Fans of animated TV show Futurama will be familiar with the concept, as it would allow humans to make digital copies of their minds which would exist freely in cyberspace - or maybe even the Metaverse.
First conceived of by Facebook's parent company Meta, the Metaverse aims to be the first true Virtual Reality world, one in which people would exist in all of the time. A 3D world, centred around social connection, it could well be the next natural step after social media.
However, where the Metaverse aims to weave together elements of the real world with the virtual, Itskov's mind-uploading concept requires complete immersion.
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The idea doesn't seem quite so far-fatched when you consider what Elon Musk's Neuralink company is aiming to achieve over the coming years. The world's richest man is hoping to create a brain-computer interface that would interact seamlessly, enabling the brain to do things that were previously unimaginable.
Technology like this may form the basis for eventual whole-brain uploading - although it should be stated that development is still very much in the embryonic stage right now.
Futurist and tech expert Tom Cheesewright recently explained to the Daily Star just how far away the concept of mind-uploading still is.
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"Ultimately I think it is possible," Cheesewright says.
"You'd have to download the software of your whole body and recreate that in a way the brain feels is plausible. Replicating that inside a machine is an enormously complex proposition that we're a very long way from achieving."
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Topics:Ā Elon Musk, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg
Tom Fenton