Do we need to become biologically immortal? Or could we one day upload our minds to the cloud and live forever in a virtual world (AKA digital cryonics)?

Whole brain emulation

What would be required to reproduce a human brain in silicon? We would need technologies powerful enough to support the three key steps in its development:

• Scanning
• Translation
• Simulation

Scanning would need to be done to a fine enough resolution to capture the intricacies of the brain, probably needing an automatic handling system, and a way to fix the brain for the duration so that it is scanned as an instant in time. This 3D scan would then need to be translated into a digital model incorporating all of the neurocomputational components, such as cells and synapses, and their current state. The final step, the simulation, is then mainly down to brute force computing – processor speed and quantity, memory and lightning fast communication between them all.