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awareness of mortality was not far behind. Sure, the debate rages back and forth about whether animals are aware of death and its, shall we say, lengthy consequences — more and more evidence points to yes — but among our own species there is no discussion. We come with a use-by date and a built-in awareness of this date.
    This terrible knowledge of our eventual end is the so-called human condition. And it is quite a condition. In 1974, psychologist Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for his book
The Denial of Death
, wherein he argues that everything we think of as society — from the cities we construct to the religions we believe in — is nothing more than an elaborate psychological defense mechanism against this knowledge. And a great many researchers agree. Today, our fear of death, what is technically called “death anxiety,” is considered the most fundamental of human motivators, the very drive that drives us most.
    So what happens when we remove that drive?
    Consider how many of our wisdom traditions use the threat of the hereafter to shape behavior in the here and now. Judgment day and all that. But what happens when judgment is suspended indefinitely? What happens to our morality when we achieve immortality?
    Perhaps nothing. After all, for those who toe the Judeo-Christian line, believing that there is a kernel of immortality inside our mortality — that is, a soul — this problem is already solved. It is also solved for those who take the Eastern view — that we are already immortal and must merely remember this fact. Yet, foreveryone beyond the truest of true believers, the promise of immortality needs to rest on something stronger than faith. Something tangible and tactile and testable. Something like silicon.
    And silicon is coming.
    So, again, what happens then? We don’t really know. But we do know that with biotechnology accelerating exponentially, sooner or later, we are going to find out.
    4.
    Immortality is one thing — playback is another. See, Cochrane’s idea is not simply to capture a life. He also wants to make that life available to others. Education is the real point of the Soul Catcher. And it will be an education unlike any other.
    Take the late, great physicist Richard Feynman, considered one of the most brilliant minds in recent history. According to biographers, Feynman’s genius was not linear and orderly but rather radical and intuitive. In his mind, A + B did not equal C. It equaled Z. How Feynman’s brain produced such leaps is unknown. But if the physicist had been hooked up to the Soul Catcher — which would record his life — and the Soul Catcher was further connected to some sort of total experience playback device, this might make his A + B = Z intuition not just knowable, but experienceable — meaning teachable.
    Of course, it would have to be a really powerful playback device like, say, the virtual reality systems that are now hitting the market. Cochrane envisions a Tomorrowland version of the Oculus Rift, meaning not the VR system that Facebook just bought for a billion dollars, but the one that’s going to emerge after they spend another billion developing the technology. But the larger point is that the playback device completes the picture. With a robust brain-computer interface, a chip capable of capturing experience, and a damn powerful playback device, the system is inplace. Pretty soon, and for the first time in history, a living being will be able to experience the life of a dead one.
    Not surprisingly, Cochrane takes a humanitarian view of all this work. He thinks in terms of preserving the wisdom of the ages, of the chance to interact with the future Einsteins, Sapphos, and Beethovens after their deaths. But he also acknowledges the risks. “I’m sure there will be problems,” he says. “I may turn out to be a little like the guy who invented television. When they asked him what he thought television would be used for, the only thing he could