Our Futures in Mind Uploading: Public Perceptions and Narratives

Angela Thornton; Alexandra Lang; Elvira Perez Vallejos; Dimitris Papadopoulos

doi:10.55613/jeet.v34i1.140

Authors

Dr. Angela C. Thornton University of Nottingham
Alexandra Lang University of Nottingham
Elvira Perez Vallejos University of Nottingham
Dimitris Papadopoulos UC Santa Cruz

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55613/jeet.v34i1.140

Keywords:

Mind Uploading Neurotechnology Public Research HCI Ethics Transhumanism

Abstract

Advances in neurotechnology have immense potential but also pose significant ethical challenges. While the public is a key stakeholder, this audience is understudied. My research uses mind uploading as an exemplar for hypothetical future neurotechnology and contributes new data to an under researched field. To encourage participants to connect with mind uploading, I designed a novel data collection tool and method - a website that tells the stories of two fictional mind uploaded characters. My results showed that while awareness of mind uploading has remained relatively static over the last few years, favourability towards the concept has significantly increased, reflected in an increasing number of people who would upload if their physical body was dying and search for meaning in this new afterlife. However, while the public could identify several benefits for mind uploading, primarily a continued connection to loved ones, they were clearly concerned how neurotechnology, particularly that which would augment our existing capabilities, might develop. Public concerns reflected those of policymakers and scientists and confirmed the need for regulation to ensure neurotechnology is not discriminatory and does not create an even greater divide between the privileged and disadvantaged.

Author Biographies

Dr. Angela C. Thornton, University of Nottingham

Associate at Human Factors Research Group, Faculty of Engineering
Alexandra Lang, University of Nottingham

Dr Alexandra Lang is an Assistant Professor in Human Factors (HF), specialising in the application of HF to Health and Social care. She has previously worked for Nottingham University Hospitals Trust (NUHT) as a Human Factors Specialist, integrating human factors into practice through applied projects in clinical context, research studies and training and education. Prior to her time working for the NHS Alex was a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham. Alex continues to be a Human Factors Consultant for the Centre for Healthcare Equipment & Technology Adoption (CHEATA) at NUHT.

She is a member of the Human Factors Research Group and is affiliated with the Horizon Digital Economy Research Centre and NIHR funded MindTech Mental Health MedTech Co-operative.

Alex sits on the Faculty of Engineering Ethics Committee and has held a variety of committee roles for external organisations including but not limited to - Chair of the Healthcare Special Interest Group for the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors 2016-19, Difficult Airways Society Human Factors Committee 2017-present.

PhD supervision covers a wide range of topics, not just health and social care domains. Recent multidisciplinary supervisions include work with School of English, Computer Science, Pharmacy and Medical School. Alex currently teaches on a range of modules - Advanced Methods in Human Factors, Human Factors and Usability Engineering in Medical Device Design and Regulation, Applied Human Factors in Healthcare Safety and Quality and User Centred Design and Research.
Dimitris Papadopoulos, UC Santa Cruz

I am a science and technology studies scholar working at the intersections of technoscience studies, socio-cultural theory, constructivist photography, and political ecology.

My current research looks at technoscience and social transformation. I have been awarded a Leverhulme fellowship to study the emergence of green chemical innovations and I am currently completing a monograph entitled Substance and its Milieu. Anthropochemicals, Autonomy, and Geo-Ecological Justice that investigates the lives and afterlives of diverse substances in their respective milieus. Within this context I interrogate the shifting meanings and contradictions of autonomist politics and agency in the midst of worlds marked by socio-elogical degradation. I have also co-edited a volume on Reactivating Elements: Chemistry, Ecology, Practice (Duke University Press, 2022) which explores new social and cultural research on chemical and elemental thinking.

Another strand of my current research centers on alternative modes of knowledge production outside instituted technoscience and organized social movements. I have recently published a co-edited volume on Ecological Reparation. Repair, Remediation and Resurgence in Social and Environmental Conflict (Bristol University Press, 2023) and I have co-produced the YouTube channel Ecological Reparation which discusses work engaged in remediating and repairing as well as claiming reparations for damaged more than human ecologies. My previous monograph Experimental Practice. Technoscience, Alterontologies and More-Than-Social Movements (Duke University Press, 2018) investigates the distributed invention power of community technoscience, political movements and social innovation projects.

In my research I use a variety of methods and approaches such as conceptual analysis, engaged fieldwork, visual constructivism, ethnographic interviewing, and social science fiction. I am a research photographer and I work with scientific, vernacular, documentary, fine art, and professional images. I am currently working on a photobook entitled unEcology and I recently started work on a photo-theory monograph entitled Landscape After the Event: Constructivist Photography and the Vision of Abolition.

My current research draws upon my previous work on social transformation and social justice where I have published a book on Escape Routes. Control and Subversion in the Twenty-First Century (Pluto, 2008) and numerous papers on power and control, on precarious labour and the transformation of work as well as on transnational mobility, the mobile commons and the autonomy of migration.

I have a long-standing interest in the social studies of social scientific knowledge and I have published three books on how human experience relates to socio-material processes: a monograph on Analysing Everyday Experience. Social Research and Political Change (Palgrave, 2006); a monograph on LS Vygotsky (Lehmans, 2010); and the collection Culture in Psychology (Asanger, 2002) which examine socio-cultural approaches to human development and subjectivity.

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