"I think she shares my view of death as a tragedy," said Kurzweil, an author and entrepreneur who received the National Medal of Technology from Bill Clinton in 1999 for "pioneering and innovative achievements in computer science," according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
"One of the things that's lost, aside from the relationships, is all of this knowledge and wisdom and skill and learning, and that's really what the Terasem foundation is seeking to preserve," he said.
There are actually two Terasem foundations, the Terasem Movement Foundation Inc. in Vermont, and the Terasem Movement Inc. in Satellite Beach, Fla. Each maintains a Web site devoted to creating digital versions of the human race. Why two? To hedge her bet, said Nick Mayer, cyberbiological systems at the Terasem Movement Foundation.
"In sort of the same way that salmon lay millions of eggs [to ensure at least] a few survive, we have different perspectives on the same problems, there's kind of this competitive edge," Mayer said.
On the Vermont side is Lifenaut.com, an older social-networking site that even sells its own logo-laden gear, including T-shirts designed for dogs. It claims about 7,500 members. On the Florida front is the newer CyBeRev.org which Rothblatt, in her video, said stands for "cybernetic beingness revival."
Through the Web sites, people can post pictures, video, blogs, memories, psychological test results - basically anything you can put on MySpace and Facebook. Then, after you die, researchers hope to be able to use that information to create a digital "mindfile" of you, which would be broadcast into space to live eternally, but also turned into software that could be put into a robotic, holographic or even cellular body.
High on creativity meter
In her Lifenaut profile posted online, based on results from a personality test, Rothblatt scored high in imagination, happiness, creativity and stability. Rationality, sympathy and understanding were on the lower ends.
In November, she posted an audio file of someone named Temple singing while Rothblatt plays piano in Silver Spring; in April, she posted a video of herself walking on a frozen lake with a dog. There's a video of her doing tai chi in Florida and one of her daughter dancing the rhumba. She's included pictures of swimming with the dolphins in Bermuda and a first-birthday haircut given by Grandpa Sam.
