The Seattlepi reports that Microsoft is patenting solutions to store digital information indefinitely, data preserved and revealed to future generations, and maybe even to future civilizations. MS dubs it “immortal computing” (from Pasta and Vinegar).
One scenario the researchers envision: People could store messages to descendants, information about their lives or interactive holograms of themselves for access by visitors at their tombstones or urns.
And here’s where the notion of immortality really kicks in: The researchers say the artifacts could be symbolic representations of people, reflecting elements of their personalities. The systems might be set up to take action — e-mailing birthday greetings to people identified as grandchildren, for example.
How much will information last seems to be a concern. Nowadays, what happens to my information legacy if I die? if all my login/password combinations, key to my web presence (flickr, youtube, myspace, etc), are written down maybe my family will keep the memory of me by paying regular fees to these services. If in some services automatic actions are scheduled, such as birthday emails, the recipients - given their “infinite” email address at gmail for example - would keep receiving them.
Therefore, as in the the paper blogged by Marc, in which an autonomous agent survives on a server by earning money in virtual environments to sustain itself for ever, the interesting bit is the importance of actions over reflection and even, in this case, life. Even if not clever the agent is believed to be human “most of the time”; with immortal computing people will believe I am alive “most of the time” when they will get news and information, depending on the amount and the smartness of our residual activity, forgetting for a moment that no one is there anymore.
And if my residual actions represent more than just sending birthday emails, and happen to break the law, immortality may end there, with a judge’s decision to close a few accounts.
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