Dollhouse and The Future

Now that Dollhouse has ended, it deserves a standing ovation.  In the true spirit of Sci-Fi, it made us question what it is to be human.  It took a plausible technology, and presented a compelling vision of the future.  But what really made it a success was Joss Whedon's remarkable ability to make characters come alive.  The relationships and interactions were as complex and nuanced as the technology.  While it suffered from some slow going early on, it finished strong.  I only wish it had been given another season or two to cover the same ground.

The question of what makes us who we are will be answered in our lifetime.  As our ability to map the brain in real time becomes increasingly sophisticated, researchers are beginning to reverse-engineer how the brain works.  With sufficiently advanced sensors and processors, we will one day be able to map each neuron in real time.  Truly mapping and understanding the brain will be as monumental a task as mapping the human genome, but it will happen in our lifetime.

As increasing research into genetics has raised the moral issue of cloning, mapping the brain will force us to deal with vital issues of what it means to be human.  When we are able to model every neuron in the brain, it will be a relatively small step to keep the model running after the scanner is turned off.  Connected to virtual inputs and outputs, the modeled brain would react exactly the same as the person it was modeled after.  Would that make the computer a person?  What if the original person died in an accident, and only the model remained; would it be inhumane to stop the model from running?  What if we could keep great artists and scientists alive indefinitely?  What if it becomes cheaper to keep a loved one alive in a computer than to pay for end-of-life care?

It may never be possible to "wipe" a person or "imprint" them with a new personality, but similar issues will be raised as we explore the forefront of neuroscience.  There will be hard questions without easy answers, but we will be forced to face them as a society.  Dollhouse got one prediction very right:  we can't stop technological progress, only hope to preserve what makes us who we are.