Technology is Preserving Our Ghosts

Our technology is giving us progressively greater power to keep alive our ancestors' ghosts. First the invention of writing allowed us to preserve their words. Painting and photography allowed us to preserve their faces. The phonograph preserves their voices and the videotape recorder preserves their movement and gestures. But this is only the beginning. Soon we shall acquire the technology to preserve a permanent record of the sequence of bases in the DNA of their cells. This means that we shall be able, if we wish, to carry the magic a stage further, to reconstruct from the DNA sequence a genetic copy or clone of the ancestor. After that, perhaps, will come the technology to read the memory traces that record the experiences of a lifetime in the ancestor's brain. And then, perhaps, the technology to play back the ancestor's memories and feelings into the consciousness of the living. At that point the distinction between living and dead, present and past, will become blurred. It will be hard to tell who is the ancestor and who is the descendant, who is the one blowing on the embers and who is the one lying wrapped in spotted garments in the grave.

Freeman J. Dyson, Infinite in All Directions (2004-07-22)

• memory
• posterity
• preservation