Someday it will be possible to create a blank human being. By creating I mean the production of the living form through biological or other means—such as the normal reproductive process that typically takes about nine months to complete, or the yet-to-be-discovered method of fabrication in some future living-system factory. There is nothing remarkable here, except, possibly, for the adjective blank
Why want a blank one? And also, aren't all human beings born blank
Let's answer the second question first. No, every one of us was born already inheriting many physical qualities and already bearing initial mental qualities that depend on a number of environmental factors. To my ear that first cry of a newborn
always screams a protest: "Why am I here like this?" "Why am I an imbecile?" "Where is my father?" "Why am I born poor?"
You see, when your lifeline is predetermined by environmental factors, you cannot be a blank human being. Don't think for a moment that you are free to fill your existence with the experiences that you want. You are born deaf, therefore you will never hear a single note of Mozart's
. You are born poor, therefore you will never experience the feeling of comfort while growing up as a child. Some people think mental qualities are orthogonal from the physical ones—but in reality they are interdependent.
Now the first question. Let's imagine that it is possible to create a blank human being. Let's also imagine that it is possible to transcribe all the experiences
that another existing human being has into an external medium, an optical or molecular storage
of some sort. Now, this new blank human being can be made to absorb all these experiences, making him virtually a living copy of the original. Except that the second one could be much younger than the first. Get the idea? It may eventually be possible to remove the intermediate storage, and make a copy of a human mental consciousness to a blank substrate directly. This process can be initiated just a few moments before the original copy dies, resulting in the extension of the lifespan of its being
This is not human cloning, which, some people argue, is immoral and genetically dangerous. Remember that our body is only a vehicle for energy flow? Well, there is nothing wrong with providing another vehicle for that flow when the first one is exhausted. Also, think of how much more we can advance mentally over generations. It may be possible that history will never be repeated
again. It will be wonderful.
Now, here comes the difficult question. How can we create a blank human being?