You Must Remember This

I couldn't let this news story pass without comment. There is a startup business claiming that it will be able to store the entire memories within a human brain with a view to making them available after the death of the owner. This is the stuff of cutting edge science fiction. For example, Iain M Banks' Culture series envisages super-smart Artificial Intelligences of the future scanning the brains not only of humans but any other intelligent species to be found in the Galaxy and able to copy the data into new bodies, effectively producing eternal life. To have a company claiming to be on the verge of doing this today is thrilling.

Oh, hold on. There are a couple of catches. The first is that this is no more than an conjectural technique at the moment. They haven't actually recorded any memories at all. All they appear to be doing is making a map of the structure of the brain. But a scan using today's technology, such as MRI scans, is useless for recording memory - they would need the state of every molecule and the exact state of all the electrons moving between those molecules, something probably ruled out by the laws of quantum mechanics.

The second catch is a little more disturbing. Every reader of horror fiction, be they fans of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley or H. P. Lovecraft (and his many disciples) knows that any form of reanimation requires an undamaged brain. How gratifying to find that Nectome (for thus they style themselves) are reported in these words:

However, its current process requires a fresh brain.
The product is "100% fatal", the team behind it told MIT Technology Review.

Let us repair to the very top of the castle. Let us bolt the doors and mask the windows. There is a mighty storm brewing. The current is leaping from electrode to electrode. The bodies are strapped down and the scalpels are gleaming. It is surely time for that classic shout to echo across the rooftops