英语流利说懂你英语 Level6 Unit2 Part4 Rea
If you could live forever, would you want to?
The challenge of keeping your body alive seems impossible, but some scientists are working on an alternative.
They want to create a digital copy of your "self" and keep that copy "alive" long after your physical body has stopped functioning.
In effect, their plan is to clone a person electronically.
Unlike ordinary physical clones - which have identical features as their parents, but which are independent organisms, each with a different conscious self, your electronic clone would believe itself to be you.
How might this be possible?
One plan relies on the development of nanotechnology.
Ray Kurzweil, a leading futurist, predicts that within 2 or 3 decades we will have tiny transmitters that can be injected into the brain.
Once there they would line up alongside neurons and monitor the details of the brain's activity.
They would then be able to transmit that information to receivers inside a special helmet, allowing us to map the brain.
As a further step, Kurzweil foresees using these tiny transmitters to connect you to a world of virtual reality.
With the transmitters in place, you could think your way onto the internet.
Instead of seeing pictures on a screen, you would see them in your mind.
Rather than send emails to your friends, you could meet them on some virtual tropical beach, and exchange messages in "virtual person".
For a futurist like Ray, this would be heaven, a virtual heaven.
Once you upload the brain onto the internet, and log on to that virtual world, your body can be left to decomposed while your virtual self can play games for as long as you wish.
However, there is still a problem.
To exist on the net, your virtual self will have to reside on the computer of a web-hosting company.
These companies want to be paid real money, or they will delete your "self" and sell the space to someone else.
With your body long gone how will you pay?
(According to the author, digital tecnologies are?)
(Creating new possibilities for extending life.)为延长生命创造新的可能性
(Enriching our lives by giving us more leisure time.)给我们更多的闲暇时间来丰富我们的生活
(Eventually going to replace physical human beings.)最终将取代人类
(Nanotechnology deals with...)
(...working with matter at a molecular scale.)在分子尺度上研究物质
(... cloning various organisms.)
(...removing contaminants from substances.)清除物质中的污染物
(When someone goes to heaven, they are going to...)
(...the place of God and eternal happiness.)上帝的地方和永恒的幸福
(...the deepest part of their imagination.)他们想象力的最深处
(...somewhere high above the atmosphere.)在大气层上方的某个地方
