Edge,
Yes, I would pretty much agree with that, though not necessarily by requirement as much as because of the advantages it would give. At least that is what I believe.
It would require a combination of engineering masteries, such as genetic engineering, molecular engineering, viral engineering and well, all those disciplines related to how our living body works, including how the brain works. I believe it is predictable we will master this knowledge.
In the end, we won’t be physically human anymore, but we would not necessarily be like the Borg either, unless it was a desired look of choice.
To achieve what I am talking about would require the technology to engineer a living body, on the fly, down to the molecular level according to desired specifications. This would involve mastering the design of what we might call nano-machines, but more than that, it would mean being able to incorporate such technology in ourselves.
Once this technology is fully achieved, physical form would greatly depend upon personal choice, with some limitations of course.
This would have all kinds of implications, every one of which might drastically change our society. Because of this, I can predict what the technology will be like, but the society could take all kinds of turns, so I can not predict what the society would be like.
Still, one can make some logical guesses.
Well we would have a chance at immortality if we kept just the brain alive, set in a machine that has all the attributes of a human.
It would be easier to keep one organ going verses more.
The brain is the only one needed but would we be human.
But then I would become bored too.
And imagine paying taxes for eternity.
I would surly miss real boobies and such, (limitations).
The movie A.I. has some interesting concepts in it about a robot that finally has a dream and feels love. After being programmed to show unconditional love.
At the same time being rejected for that unconditional love and sent away.
He started searching endlessly, to receive unconditional love to get that in return.
He makes it beyond the extinction of man.
Bicentennial Man is another good one where a robot becomes self-aware and decides to rebuild him self and do the opposite of what we are talking about to experience what humans do.
Then in the end decides to die, to experience that with his human wife, even brings on the aging process by reversing the scientific process that was going to make him immortal.
There comes a point I believe that you would have to make such a decision, just to see what’s out there.
Is that out there, after death, unconditional love?
Unconditional love, that’s where everything comes from, Faith is Gods way of getting it back, no matter what happens here, I.M.H.O..
How can we be in a universe that’s based on motion and not continue on? What’s the purpose to gaining knowledge and then losing it to nothingness?
We are all on our way to somewhere.
Energy is never lost only transferred.