The startup Nectome, which said it wanted to \u201carchive the human mind,\u201d proposed a method for chemically preserving the brain<\/strong> so that its structure could one day be recreated in a computer. The procedure was described as \u201c100 percent fatal.\u201d Even so, Sam Altman paid 10 thousand dollars for a place on the waiting list, assuming that minds would soon be \u201cdigitized.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elon Musk, in turn, sketches a vision in which a brain-computer interface creates an \u201capproximate snapshot of the human mind,\u201d which could then be uploaded into the humanoid robot Optimus. Yet he himself stresses that \u201cyou will no longer be exactly the same person.\u201d The record would only be an approximation, and life in a metallic body would change the way that consciousness exists. Here, digital immortality<\/strong> appears as the promise of a person\u2019s \u201cbackup copy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Supporters of mind uploading assume that if we manage to reproduce all neural connections and brain states, then a program running on a sufficiently powerful computer will behave as we do. <\/strong>It will remember our life, react in similar ways, and speak as we speak. But this raises a question: is the essence of a person an informational structure that can be copied, or rather the continuity of experiencing the world from a first-person perspective?<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the perspective of lived experience, it matters whether our consciousness continues to \u201cflow\u201d without interruption, or whether death cuts it off and a highly convincing replica<\/strong> starts running somewhere else. Copying a file does not transfer the \u201cidentity<\/a>\u201d of the original item. It creates a new object with the same data. In the same way, digital immortality may preserve a pattern of behaviour without necessarily preserving the same subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In most philosophical traditions, the human being is not a pure cloud of information, but an embodied creature. We always think and feel \u201cfrom within\u201d a particular body<\/strong>. Pain, fatigue, ageing, physical limits: all of these help shape our biography and our choices, and therefore also the identity that technology is trying to \u201csave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the digital \u201cself\u201d were detached from the body and placed in an environment where experiences could be reset, copied, and modified at will, it would be difficult to speak of the same person. The person who learned the world through fragility and vulnerability would be gone. Embodiment is not merely a carrier. It is a co-author of our story.<\/strong> Remove it, and the protagonist changes, even if the name and memories remain the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Technological projects of immortality treat death primarily as a problem to be solved. A system failure that can be prevented with the right backup copy of the data. Yet many philosophers, from the classics to existential thinkers, have argued that the experience of finitude is not merely a curse. Above all, it is a source of intensity and meaning in our choices.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Death is not only an enemy. It gives life weight and urgency<\/strong>. Martin Heidegger spoke of \u201cbeing-toward-death\u201d (Sein-zum-Tode<\/em>) as a fundamental structure of human existence. The awareness of finitude is precisely what gives choices meaning, relationships depth, and moments intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA copy, or continuity of existence?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The body that thinks for us<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Mortality: a system error, or a condition of meaning?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Heidegger: being-toward-death<\/h3>\n\n\n\n