Mindclone, Doppelgänger, Mental Twin? Immortality as Non-human Other?
American project LifeNaut promotes technologically-mediated immortality and encourages to collect digital data (mindfiles) and biological material (biofiles) to prolong the life of a person after his/her death. In this paper I wonder how the procedure of gathering information brings us closer to creating a human look-alike and exceeding the mortality limits, analyzing the prototype of this idea – a humanoid robot BINA48. I invoke the concept of the uncanny valley to consider the issues of functional and external similarity of a robot and human as well as genetic determinism (in the context of Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s work), wondering how the instructions contained in the DNA can contribute to the creation of a faithful human equivalent. The arguments presented
in this paper show that the archiving and processing of digital, as well as biological, data only leads to speculation based on a set of procedures and methods. There is no double-man, but his subjective representation. In addition, projects of technologically constructed immortality contribute to the broadening/redefinition of the concept of human, but so far, they do not guarantee life without death (immortality).
