Virtually Human

The Promise - and the Peril - of Digital Immortality

De: Martine Rothblatt Ph.D., Ray Kurzweil - foreword

Narrado por: Jeff Cummings, Laural Merlington

Virtually Human explores what the not-too-distant future will look like when cyberconsciousness - simulation of the human brain via software and computer technology - becomes part of our daily lives. Meet Bina48, the world's most sentient robot, commissioned by Martine Rothblatt and created by Hanson Robotics. Bina48 is a nascent Mindclone of Martine’s wife that can engage in conversation, answer questions, and even have spontaneous thoughts that are derived from multimedia data in a Mindfile created by the real Bina. If you’re active on Twitter or Facebook, share photos through Instagram, or blogging regularly, you’re already on your way to creating a Mindfile - a digital database of your thoughts, memories, feelings, and opinions that is essentially a back-up copy of your mind. Soon, this Mindfile can be made conscious with special software - Mindware - that mimics the way human brains organize information, create emotions and achieve self-awareness. This may sound like science-fiction, but the nascent technology already exists. Thousands of software engineers across the globe are working to create cyberconsciousness based on human consciousness and the Obama administration recently announced plans to invest in a decade-long Brain Activity Map project. Virtually Human is the only audiobook to examine the ethical issues relating to cyberconsciousness and Rothblatt, with a Ph.D. in medical ethics, is uniquely qualified to lead the dialogue.

©2014 Martine Rothblatt. Foreword © 2014 by Ray Kurzweil (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Published by arrangement with St. Martin’s Press, LLC

A must read.

She covered the material. Now its up to readers to have discussions. Especially none believers .

Narrator Is Annoyingly Hard To Understand

What did you like about this audiobook?

The topic is something I'm very interested in.

How has the book increased your interest in the subject matter?

It would've if not for the narrator that sounded like a robot.

Does the author present information in a way that is interesting and insightful, and if so, how does he achieve this?

I guess; it's hard to tell because the narrator sounded like a robot.

What did you find wrong about the narrator's performance?

The narrator sounded like a robot! I don't know if that's her fault or the production, but either way, her robotic voice and inflection made it impossible to concentrate on the book!