Infomorph

An infomorph is a virtual body of information that may possess emergent features such as personality. The term was coined in Charles Platt's 1991 novel The Silicon Man, where it refers to a single biological consciousness transferred into a computer through a process of mind transfer. In the book, a character refers to an infomorph as "intelligence held in a computer memory", and an "information entity".[1]

Whether the vision shared in Platt’s novel will ever be more than a theory is uncertain, but computing power is still increasing exponentially (see Moore's law for more details), and the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University have considered the philosophical and technical feasibility of this theory at some point in the future.[2]

The Institute considers it theoretically possible to understand the absolute workings of every aspect of the mind, and the ability to measure this in a specific individual, although Heisenberg's uncertainty principle may apply if it is discovered that the brain's workings on a quantum scale are relevant to the workings of the mind. However, the rate of appreciation of knowledge in neuroscience and psychology is far slower than the rate of increase in computing power. There are also philosophical questions to be answered, the most important being the nature of consciousness and whether it is possible to transfer a consciousness or if this transfer would effectively be a copy.

Amber Case, a pioneer of cyborg anthropology, considers users of social networks to be "partial infomorphs", along with people whose writing is left behind after their death. She talks of an "informorphic footprint", corresponding to the size of information created and distributed during a person's lifetime.[3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Platt, Charles (1997). The Silicon Man. ISBN 1-888869-14-3.
  2. ↑ Anders, Sandberg; Nick, Boström (2008). Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap (PDF). Technical Report #2008‐3. Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University. Retrieved 5 April 2009. The basic idea is to take a particular brain, scan its structure in detail, and construct a software model of it that is so faithful to the original that, when run on appropriate hardware, it will behave in essentially the same way as the original brain.
  3. ↑ Case, Amber. A Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology. Retrieved 12 December 2011.
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