[spaetzleesser]

I personally believe that at some point civilizations will stop using their bodies and live in something like computers or whatever it will be by then. So we may already be living in a highly networked universe without noticing it.

With all the technological progress I can’t imagine why someone would want to deal with our very flawed bodies in the long run. We are already getting more and more of our experiences though means like TV and the Internet and I don’t see that trend stopping.

[bserge]

Our bodies are extremely powerful and versatile. If we actually understood how they work and how to build/modify them, we'd get way more mileage out of them than an electromechanical alternative.

Imagine a body with perfect physique, maximum strength, a bigger/denser brain, programmable immune system, etc. It could even be adapted for deep sea or outer space life.

We haven't even begun to understand biotech at this level, because of moral/ethical concerns and a general aversion to anything organic (understandable, experimentation with sentient life is seen as bad, and our primitive side rejects most foreign biomatter altogether).

[yetihehe]

> and our primitive side rejects most foreign biomatter altogether

Our immune systems do that too and for a reason.

[mongol]

I don't understand how that could happen. It is something descibed in fiction from time to time. But I don't see how you can move your consciousness from your body somewhere else. Copy perhaps. But the consciousness that remain in the body will want to live on, I am sure. So that is why I cannot see us "stop" using our bodies. Certainly, we can become extinct, but that is something else.

[goatlover]

We also don't know that a digital copy will be conscious. That's an assumption based on thinking functionalism is correct. But we simply don't know what the correct theory of consciousness is and what sort of limits that places on reproducing it artificially.

[blocko]

Odd to think about future "civilizations" of uploaded consciousness(es?) surviving the extinction of the organic species that produced it