# Brain Copies May Arrive Before We Understand the Brain by David M. Eagleman > "While medicine will advance in the next half century, we are not on a crash-course for achieving immortality by curing all disease. Bodies simply wear down with use. We are on a crash-course, however, with technologies that let us store unthinkable amounts of data and run gargantuan simulations. Therefore, well before we understand how brains work, we will find ourselves able to digitally copy the brain's structure and able to download the conscious mind into a computer." > **— David M. Eagleman**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* ## Sources and Context - **Direct Edge response and surrounding essay:** [SILICON IMMORTALITY : DOWNLOADING CONSCIOUSNESS INTO COMPUTERS](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11682) — Edge published this passage in its 2009 Annual Question collection, *What Will Change Everything?*. The full response preserves the qualifications and argument surrounding this exact extract. - **Complete local collection index:** [[research/Edge 2009 Full Quotation Curation|Edge 2009 Full Quotation Curation]] — retained source-first archive record for the complete yearly response cohort. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] - **Article:** [[articles/Escape Hatch in the Skull|Escape Hatch in the Skull]] - **Article:** [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Host Infrastructure Overview]] - **Article:** [[articles/Science of Digital Consciousness|Science of Digital Consciousness]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Consciousness Mapping and Transfer|Consciousness Mapping and Transfer]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Whole Brain Emulation|Whole Brain Emulation]] - [[wiki/Mind Uploading|Mind Uploading]] - [[wiki/Receiving Substrate|Receiving Substrate]] - [[wiki/Consciousness Continuity Infrastructure|Consciousness Continuity Infrastructure]] ## Share on Social Media ``` "While medicine will advance in the next half century, we are not on a crash-course for achieving immortality by curing all disease. Bodies simply wear down with use. We are on a crash-course, however, with technologies that let us store unthinkable amounts of data and run gargantuan simulations. Therefore, well before we understand how brains work, we will find ourselves able to digitally copy the brain's structure and able to download the conscious mind into a computer." — David M. Eagleman, 2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?” https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-david-eagleman-brain-copies-before-understanding ```