Gwyneth Llewelyn, Beta’s business manager.
Gwyneth has worked for twelve years as an IT consultant, specializing in creating a commercial identity and presence for customers on the internet. She brings to the company a solid understanding of man…

And what amazes me is the way we reveal ourselves to the others. Like there were no barriers and feeling we’ve met those people hundreds of years ago.

This doesn’t mean that “zeros and ones” are “more real” to the reality created by your brain based on the perception of what your senses tell them. In fact, I would argue that the current technology is not yet enough advanced to give your brain the same level of perception. But it’s almost there. Computer screens are able to come close to 2000×1500 pixels of resolution nowadays; our eye can only perceive roughly 10.000×10.000 pixels, but obviously that depends on the viewing distance; once you increase the resolution level to the amount your eye is able to see, your brain will not be able to tell the difference between a computer-generated image and a “natural” image. In effect, the difference will only exist philosophically; both stimuli that reach your eye are just photons, either reflected by several surfaces or emitted by a computer screen. Your brain will process the same information in the same way.

But this is into the real of philosophy; you’re welcome to discuss what is real and what isn’t. As you probably know, all Oriental philosophies have long ago (millenia ago, in fact) simply declared that the universe is a mere illusion of our senses, and that the only constant in the universe is change. Surprisingly, since the advent of quantum theory in the early 1900s, scientists cannot explain the universe in any other way. The question of what is “real” is still an open one; you can either “believe” in Oriental philosophy, or choose to accept what contemporary science tells you — or you can refuse both, philosophically, and provide your own answer.

What happens to my avatar when my physical body dies is about the same: both will disappear from the face of the Earth, but my self will remain alive as long as people remember me. Immortality on Earth is simply memory — you endure as long on Earth as the memory lasts. Your soul, however, may (or may not) continue beyond our current Universe, and that is open to speculation in metaphysics. I’ll not pretend to have an answer to that; or even if I do have one, I have no reason to believe I could explain it to you, since the answer is pretty personal.

I can give you an analogy, though. When you turn your computer off, your avatar disappears from the face of the virtual world. Is it “dead”? No, since everybody knows that when you turn it on again, you’re able to interact with people (through their avatars) again. “Death” in the virtual world is “temporary” in that sense — and this is clearly explained because the avatar, by itself, is not a person: it becomes one as long as there is a human being (a soul, if you wish) behind it, animating it, connecting and communicating with oher human beings. However, your soul — the essence of what makes you human — certainly goes on with your disconnected computer: you simply go on and live on a “higher” plane (what we call the “physical world”). In my mind, physical death in the physical world is nothing more than that: you cease to communicate with your fellow human beings, but the essence of what makes you a human being (the ability to communicate, for instance, or to interpret the signals from your senses and process them) might still go on on an even higher plane. But this is naturally pure metaphysics and definitely very, very arguably, and I’m pretty sure I’m unable to explain it any better than countless hordes of philosophers and theologists have done in the past six millenia of recorded history.

Have you given any thought to what will happen to your avatar when your physical body dies? You have a soul but your avatar does not.