Dmitry Itskov, the founder Russian news service New Media Stars, has got a plan to make everyone immortal and he is hoping to achieve it some time in the next 30 years. His proposed project shares a name with the US Military’s recently announced Avatar program except the 31-year-old Russian is far more ambitious. His Avatar project is hoping to, within the next ten years, transplant a human mind into a robotic body.

He revealed details of his plans at the recent Global Future 2045 conference and claims that the self-funded project has 30 Russian researchers working on achieving his goals. He is now looking for global collaboration on his version of Avatar.

There are several milestones that Itskov is planning on passing on his road to an improbable, if not impossible, destination. The first is the creation of robots that can be controlled with the human mind. The technology for these exists at present but his next step is something else entirely. Via a surgical procedure Itskov wants to transplant a human mind into a robotic shell and, later, devise a method for simply uploading consciousness into a mechanical host. The final step is to build hologram bodies that are capable of hosting a human mind.

Right now executing his concept seems to be entirely unlikely but Itskov isn’t daunted.

“Years ago, people didn’t believe the internet could work. I think of Avatar in the same light. Right now, the idea is new and radical. It won’t always be that way.”

Source: Wired