Forever And A Flicker In Time

Memories do not last long. Our histories have nothing to report about the lives of ordinary people, even those that made possible the monuments that immortalize the powerful. I leave behind no descendants. I have no children who may one day tell tales of a life lived. Memories of me shall likely fade fast. My books will likely gather dust. My wisdom will likely slip into the same void from which it arose. I  do no flinch at this fact. What I bring to the world has greater good than my acts or accomplishments can claim.

Now, with everything we do flowing down data streams, saved in ones and zeros, banked in the clouds, future historians may actually peer more deeply into our lives than we do. They may follow the tracks we leave behind to find obvious patterns to which we are oblivious living out our time from one day to the next. Perhaps we will soon digitize our selves, load our essence onto a matrix, our spirits expressed through bio-robotics that lack our mortal limits giving us a real shot at electrified immortality, our consciousness finally freed from flesh and still able to interact with the world. 

What gets placed in a box or packed in an urn at the end of our days is merely a remnant, a tell-tale trace of something that could only be confined to the world for a flicker in time. Science may not allow the soul in its equations, but the soul makes science possible. And we are on the brink of a breakthrough: cresting a new wave of awareness, giving life to machines that will easily outperform us while also mechanizing our minds by merging with the virtual universe. What new "natural" laws shall emerge from the quantum landscape?

This piece is an excerpt from my "letter to future self" written on December 26, 2015 to be read on May 31, 2016. For more posts in this series, click the tag below.

What new possibilities shall we see when we alter our senses for the world and knowingly occupy an alien body?