WILLIAM SHATNER: Boston, Massachusetts, March 2018.

Nectome, a biotechnology startup company,

announces an audacious and controversial plan.

Their vision-- a groundbreaking technique that

can take the data stored inside a human brain

and transfer it into a computer.

There are companies like Nectome

that are attempting to preserve the brain and the mind.

Our methods of analyzing the connections

between neurons in the brain are getting really good.

And so eventually, we'll be able to model the connections

between all the neurons.

And at that point, we'll have a better idea

as to whether or not it's possible to upload

a brain into the Cloud.

But we'll have to wait and see what happens.

SUSAN SCHNEIDER: Uploading is the process

of basically copying and encoding someone's

mental life onto a computer.

Advocates of uploading believe that that

would really be a way for you to survive

the death of your brain.

MICHIO KAKU: And now people say, well, if I'm immortal

and I'm living my life inside a computer,

isn't that rather boring?

No, because this mainframe computer

will connect to a mechanical avatar that

is superhuman in every way.

And you will see through his eyes.

You'll feel through his sense organs.

So in other words, we will have a form of digital immortality.

WILLIAM SHATNER: Digital immortality--

the incredible notion that we might someday

be able to live forever.

But if the information inside our brains

can be copied and transferred like information

onto a computer hard drive, does that

mean it can keep and store everything,

like our personalities perhaps?

Or would something be lost in translation?

There are two issues to consider here.

First of all, why believe that a digital copy of you

is capable of being conscious?

The second issue is that it doesn't at all follow

that that being would really be you, that you are the survivor,

rather than a digital copy.

Consciousness is one of the most hard to define

phenomena about the human brain.

And it's also what separates us from all other species.

It's this idea that we have internal reflection.

Can we actually live on forever in a computer

and still be able to preserve all our memories,

all our friendships, all the different things that we love?

And I think that that's a very romantic notion for a lot

of people, that they want to feel like there's

a way to go on forever.

But you can't separate the brain from the rest of your body.

There are those who believe the human brain has more

potential than even the brain itself can imagine

and that its true capabilities might be limitless.

In some ways, we know more about the far reaches of the galaxy

than we do about the human mind.

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