Augmented eternity: scientists aim to let us speak from beyond the grave

Would you like a version of yourself to live on after death? A radical new concept called "augmented eternity" could make that fantasy a reality, creating a posthumous impression of our knowledge, opinions and even parts of our personality in digital form. Researchers at the MIT Media Lab and Ryerson University in Toronto believe that by applying artificial intelligence to all the data we produce each day, we may be able to transfer our thoughts to a virtual entity that not only survives our physical demise but continues to learn as new information is plugged into it. Dr Hossein Rahnama, a visiting scholar at the Media Lab and research and innovation director of Ryerson's Digital Media Zone, is planning to publish a paper on augmented eternity later this year. "My ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between life and death by eternalizing our digital identity," says Rahnama, who is also founder of Flybits, a cloud-based service that modifies the behavior of mobile apps based on where and how the customer is using it.