Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

So what if you reached the Age of Reason, only to find there was no reprieve? I wonder if other people walk around with a soundtrack as well as a subtext going through their mind most of the time. I know music works like a key in the lock of my carefully crafted wall of distance that allows me to get through the day without breaking down into little pieces, so there are certain bits of music we don't play; certain movies we avoid; certain books or poems we'd prefer to forget.

Hello darkness my old friend; I've come to talk with you again. I begin to see that within my lifetime that science and technology may progress to the point of non-living (wait, what's living anyway) --let's say non-biological entities that will store more information, think faster, and (as we find out more about how the brain works) completely and undetectably duplicate the human brain and personality. The AI movement, combined with massive increases in memory, processing power, parallel processing techniques -- the goal is not exactly close, but not unrealistic. Combine this with advancement on the biological front of analyzing and understanding the brain, internal thought processes, the nature of memory, etc. and eventually being able to treat human memory as we do silicon memory, i.e. read/write/erase. The logical outcome of the two paths is that we will posess the ability to download the contents of the brain into a non-living device that will posess at least as much storage and processing capability as the original (if not far more), is expandable/upgradable, and has a near-infinite lifespan. Nevermind how humanity will cope with the moral issues; the question that troubles me most is this: If I make an exact copy of my brain (i.e. my personality) and install it in a nth generation hardware device that has similar or greater processing/storage power than my original brain, comparable speaking and communicative abilities -- WHO exactly will be the REAL ME? Will the download/transfer process copy or move the (for lack of a better word) ID, seat of consciousness, soul, or what have you? If the hardware device is housed a good-enough similacurum (sp?) to my body, who is ME anymore? If said android (cause I guess that's what it is) kills the biologic version, is he killing ME, or just eliminating my unnecessary biologic housing? Not unlike the transporter problem -- what if the people don't disappear at the near point, after they (or copies of themselves) have materialized at the far point? I don't know what the value of "life" is anymore, if it will become possible to digitize (more or less) it, store it, download it, etc. I really feel as if it would be nice to just download whatever I have in here and be done with it. Let some future entity decide what makes the best use of the strange and useless blend of knowledge and abilities that I am, because I've certainly done a crappy job of accomplishing that myself.

The title, btw, is from AC Clarke's story The Nine Billion Names of God, in which it is postulated that the single purpose of the entire Universe is to discover the true name of God, handily accomplished in 3 months instead of 15 centuries by use of a computer. Whereupon...The End (of everything) ensues. Maybe I'd feel better if when I left I knew everything else was going as well?