The Future of Self

Imagine this: there’s a machine that can download your brain onto a computer and save it as a file. All of your hopes, dreams, aspirations, memories, dirty secrets, and kinky fantasies are right there in that file and can be loaded up into a program that would turn the computer into a perfect, if temporary, synthetic replication of “you.”

The computer could then do basic tasks that you find boring with the exact same tastes and preferences as yourself. It could find and order a new rug for th...