The 2045 Initiative – What it Means For The Future Of Humanity
The 2045 Initiative is a way to look into the future and see where human technology will be by the year 2045. If this initiative comes off, avatars may be a way of life and therein a way of traveling, living, and surviving. If you want to learn more about the 2045 Initiative and how to survive through things such as Global Warming and international warfare, keep reading.
Who Created the 2045 Initiative?
In February 2011, Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov started working with leading Russian scientists in the fields of neural interfaces, robotics, and artificial organs. Itskov was inspired by the condition in which we live: the world has problems with pollution, extreme storms, and in Russia especially, extreme weather conditions. Additionally, Itskov wanted to find a way to imbue humanity with spirituality, culture, technology, ethics, and science.
What Exactly is the 2045 Initiative?
According to 2045.com, Itskov’s initiative is to create a 2045 avatar. Into this avatar, you would invest your entire personality, changing the bits you lack, to appeal to Itskov’s five principals (spirituality, culture, technology, ethics, and science). The avatar would navigate life for you, and if the technology matches Itskov’s ideal, this avatar could even be immortal. In essence, you would live forever.
How Will the 2045 Avatars Work?
Dmitry Itskov has planned out four different kinds of avatars. Avatar A is an anthropomorphic robot controlled by a brain-computer interface. In other words, you would direct Avatar A with what to do through brainwaves. Your brain would be hooked up to a computer. Avatar B (also known as Body B) is a support system for your brain function. It’s a way of transferring your brainwaves from your body into a body that doesn’t need a computer: it senses what to do. Avatar C is referred to as Rebrain, as in this draft, the Avatar has it’s own brain that matches yours. This is probably the closest version of cloning. Avatar D is a hologram and is the most computerized version of the process. As you can see, these avatars represent a variety of steps, from something as easily achieved as a computer avatar, to something far more difficult. Cloning in this form is more difficult, blending the technological world with biology to make an avatar with its own brain still connected to your brain.
Who Would Be Involved?
Currently, Russian scientists are invested in the project, however Itskov’s dream is to get everyone involved. His goals are international and global, allowing every nation to be a part of his 2045 Congress. His current goal is to have his believers or those who read 2045.com to write to Forbes Magazine and get everyone involved. His current international goal is to create artificial limbs and mobile prosthetics for those with disabilities. If he can invent a prosthetic that responds by brainwaves and regains lost senses for the patient, he will move forward with this plan, hoping to get other countries to fund his projects and later to be a part of the 2045 Congress.
The Implications of Cloning
While Itskov prefers to use the term “avatar,” his plan describes the science of cloning. What is cloning, after all, if not the reproduction of beings that are already living that match in DNA and sometimes in personality? By bypassing the word “cloning” and by creating avatars that have an ethical focus, Itskov seems to be avoiding the topic of unethical reproduction. The most obvious unethical motivation within this plan is related to religion: if billions of people in the world belong to a religious organization that believes in divine reproduction, how will Itskov convince them to participate in avatars? Merely stating that the avatars will have a spiritual focus doesn’t mean that it is enough to convince religious believers to participate in cloning.
Additionally, in order to appeal to his five principals, he will imbue each avatar with spirituality, culture, technology, ethics, and science. How can he reproduce a human and also make sure that human has the five principals? And who has Itskov decided who gets to decide if the human reproduced has sufficient levels of these five principals? It seems that Itskov isn’t so much interested in cloning you and allowing you to live forever, but instead he wants to clone you and make you into the person he thinks you should be. Therefore when these avatars live forever, they will not be reproductions of ourselves so much as a group cultivated after their creator, a fallible human being.
Itskov ironically says that ethic are among his five principals, but he has defied ethics through his decision to ignore the firm religious beliefs of his target groups, and then to unethically decide which facets of this person’s personality they are allowed to keep. This form of cloning is mind-control at its best.
Division and Affecting Nations
Itskov plans on appealing to everyone’s desire to live forever, essentially preying on emotions to gain reputability. For those that he succeeds with, the avatars as interpretations of their original human beings may achieve immortality with the five principals –these principals geared toward an eternity of living at harmony on Earth. However, Itskov’s plan causes disharmony.
His plan isolates a few large groups of people. Already discussed includes religious groups. Additionally, the vast expense required for the 2045 initiative project will exclude areas of poverty. Not only do areas of poverty exist in what is considered wealthier nations like the United States, Japan, and Germany, but there are whole nations considered “third world countries.” These are countries that can’t even figure out daily necessities, and therefore they’re not going to spend money they don’t have on becoming an avatar when they could spend this time on money on finding water for their families.
These left-out groups would be automatically and naturally opposed to avatars, thus creating more conflict between groups of people. On 2045.com, on of Itskov’s accompanying scientists, David Dubrovsky, claims that humans insist on acting like animals. He says the world is at an “anthropological crisis” and that patterns of humanity indicate that a change needs to happen. If the 2045 Initiative opposes people against avatars, how is this changing the world?
And what is Itskov’s plan for warring countries? The incorporation of the five principals aren’t enough to keep humans from emotions such as greed, hatred, sadness, revenge, or listlessness. If an avatar lives forever and is designed to be virtually indestructible, what will humanity look like when it comes to things like wars or conflicts? In the distant future, will scientists strive to find a way to kill avatars?
Ultimately, the 2045 Initiative sounds interesting. No one has ever before attempted to take biology and technology to such an extreme level. All humans love the vanity and fascination of living forever, but at what cost are we living forever? While it would be better for humans to survive extreme situations such as weather, pollution, or travelling, surviving in a world that would be a permanent mess might not be ideal.
