The Future, Now: Cloning

In this month’s issue of Interstellar Fiction, we featured a story called Download, a great tale about the implications of cloning.  While the story isn’t exactly grounded in hard science, I thought that I would take this opportunity to explore some of the real, scientific advances in this area.  So how close are we to being able to clone a human being?

Well if certain projections are to be believed, we might be seeing human cloning of one kind of another within our life time, assuming you’re younger than 50.  Sorry middle aged folks, you’re probably just going to miss it.  So what projections give us such an optimistic outlook?  Moore’s Law, for one.

Moore’s Law

For those unfamiliar with Moore’s Law, the general gist is this; computer processing power doubles every two years.  What does computer processing power have to do with cloning, you might ask.  Well, think about it.  Feel that?  You just used the most complex computer known to mankind, the human brain.  If scientists are ever going to transfer human minds into other bodies, they need to be able to record and simulate them in digital form first.  This technological event is referred to as “Singularity”, when computers can match human brains.

If Moore’s Law continues to apply to computing technology, we can expect that Singularity will occur sometime between 2045 and 2055.  Of course, we’ll need to better understand our own brains before we can do anything with them.  Conveniently, President Obama has announced a hundred million dollar effort to fully map the human brain.  So what do we do with these brains, once we can transfer them?  One Russian billionaire is working on some ideas.  The 2045 Initiative, founded by Dmitry Itskov, is focused on developing technology to help us live beyond our mortal bodies.

The future?

Like many projects funded by eccentric billionaires (Mars One comes to mind), the goals set by the 2045 Initiative seem a little too ambitious.  Just take a look at the milestone graphic on their homepage.    It seems a little absurd to think that we could have literal afterlives as digital ghosts in thirty or so years.  Or that we could be just brains walking around in robot contraptions in just twenty years.

The 2045 Initiative seems quite focused on plopping our brains into metal bodies.  But what about making another flesh sack to house your thoughts?  Don’t worry, science hasn’t forgotten.  In a recent interview with BBC’s The Life Scientific, Sir John Gurdon (who cloned a frog years before Dolly the Sheep) stated that he believes human cloning to happen within the next fifty years (note that this puts it well within the 2050 estimate for singularity).

Of course, the neither the 2045 Initiative nor cloning scientists have not given any details on whether this kind of technology will be available to the common folk.  My guess is probably not.  The other thing to wonder about is this: will a digital or cloned copy of your brain be you?  Will that spark of consciousness come with your brain in digital form?  There will be no real way of knowing.  A clone would go on living as if it was the real you, theoretically.  Will clones or avatars(as 2045 refers to their future products) have the same rights as humans?  These are all things that need to be discussed before this technology should be unleashed on the world.

Those sorts of discussions are still premature however.  For now, all we can do is wait and watch the technology grow up in front of our eyes.  And you can believe that you will see the beginnings of this technology within the next few years.