A new report from the U.S. Department of Commerce predicts that with the proper investments in technology, futuristic scenarios such as mind uploading, or humans living past 100 years, or people linking their brains together to form a global collective intelligence could come to pass in this century.
As the Internet continues to proliferate, it has become natural to think of it biologically as a flourishing ecosystem of computers or a sprawling brain of Pentium-powered neurons. However you mix and match metaphors, it is hard to escape the eerie feeling that an alien presence has fallen to earth, confronting scientists with something new to prod and understand.