Digital consciousness: the advent of a post-materialist ‘theory of everything’

In his new book, ‘Digital Consciousness: A Transformative Vision’, Jim Elvidge provides a persuasive answer to the great questions of life and existence

So what is digital consciousness? Well, first, what it’s not. It’s not simply a way of labelling human consciousness in our ‘digital age’.

Nor is it the idea that an individual’s consciousness, or personality, could be transferred to, or stored, within a computer, creating avatars or robots that behave like humans: the notion of ‘mind uploading’ (Jim Elvidge does discuss this briefly, but dismisses its efficacy).

For Elvidge, digital consciousness — and the phrase appears to be of his own invention — is ‘the true theory of everything’. In bright and breezy prose, he unravels the abstruse tangles of consciousness studies to advance the cause of post-materialism in our world-view.

In Digital Consciousness: A Transformative Vision (Iff Books, UK £16.99 / US $27.95, December 2018), one finds a passionate and cogent argument against the prevailing reductive-materialist paradigm which is rapidly running out of answers as profound new questions continue to be raised about the role and nature…