Getting dissed by the Onion and living forever

So I think the Onionhas it in for me today. First, on the main page, there's a picture of a chick with my exact hair above the caption, "Hair Carefully Disheveled in 20-Minute Ritual." I'll have you know I style my hair in less than 45 seconds using Lanza'a Ctrl hard_wire. Anyway, they also run an article titled, "Area Man Consults Internet Whenever Possible." What did I do?

Psychology Today: Live Forever: Uploading the Human Brain

By 2050, $1,000 worth of computing will equal the processing power of all human brains on earth. Of course, achieving the processing power of the human brain is necessary but not sufficient for creating human level intelligence in a machine. But by 2030, we'll have the means to scan the human brain and re-create its design electronically.

The really weird thing is that I just had a conversation about identity preservation the other day with respect to this sort or storage (or, for that matter, teleportation). The article neatly summarizes my fears:

Consider this: If we scan me, for example, and record the exact state, level and position of my every neurotransmitter, synapse, neural connection and other relevant details, and then reinstantiate this massive database into a neural computer, then who is the real me? If you ask the machine, it will vehemently claim to be the original Ray. Since it will have all of my memories, it will say, "I grew up in Queens, New York, went to college at MIT, stayed in the Boston area, sold a few artificial intelligence companies, walked into a scanner there and woke up in the machine here. Hey, this technology really works." But there are strong arguments that this is really a different person. For one thing, old biological Ray (that's me) still exists. I'll still be here in my carbon, cell-based brain. Alas,I (the old biological Ray) will have to sit back and watch the new Ray succeed in endeavors that I could only dream of. But New Ray will have some strong claims as well. He will say that while he is not absolutely identical to Old Ray, neither is the current version of Old Ray, since the particles making up my biological brain and body are constantly changing. It is the patterns of matter and energy that are semipermanent (that is, changing only gradually), while the actual material content changes constantly and very quickly.

For more on the nature of consciousness and its relation to technology (especially artificial intelligence), check out Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.