Robot Opera and Immortality

Huffduffed by Clampants on March 13th, 2011

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/03/07/robot-opera

In the new robot opera, “Death and the Powers,” humans are history. So is flesh and blood- as ‘so over’ as the dinosaurs.

The high-tech drama, composed by Tod Machover, tells the story of how one eccentric billionaire led the way, by refusing to die. He uploads himself – his mind – into the realm of digital immortality, and leaves his worldly body behind. Machover, known as “America’s most wired composer” and director of the Opera of the Future group at the MIT Media Lab, thinks of his character Simon Powers, as “a combination of Howard Hughes, Walt Disney and Bill Gates,” who rather than wanting to live forever, desired “to leave the world, but leave everything about himself here.”

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