THE LAST TECH YOU'LL EVER USE - YOUR VERY OWN 'SUICIDE BOOTH'

IF luck is on our side, the last thing we’ll see before dying will be loved ones’ faces as they gather to say farewell at our bedsides.

Most folk will not be so fortunate, however. Some may see clouds and feel like they’re flying. It won’t be their journey to Heaven – just the final few seconds of consciousness before their body hits the ground. That’s what you get for texting while crossing the road.

For those who choose not to gamble on how their ultimate fate will play out, it seems the future will offer an exotic new way to die – a personally curated, bespoke digital experience in a virtual reality euthanasia pod that painlessly gasses the user. And just like the World Buffet lunchtime special, it serves up countless options for self destruction.The only limits on your final VR headset-induced experience will be your imagination.

The somewhat controversial invention means any fantasy scenario can now be experienced to make your final journey a memorable one. For a few milliseconds at least. Only here, any ‘game over’ message can be taken quite literally.

You may think such a morally divisive creation, one which introduces a head-spinning new societal paradigm and an unprecedented legal conundrum for the authorities, would never see the light of day. But you’d be wrong – it’s already here and was shown off with much fanfare at the Amsterdam Funeral Fair yesterday. Yes, such a thing exists too.

The ‘Sarco’ is the creation of 70-year-old Australian euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke, otherwise known as, rather unimaginatively, ‘Dr Death’. When a wee button is pressed, its coffin-like glass chamber fills up with lethal levels of nitrogen. The VR goggle-wearing participant loses consciousness after one minute and finally passes away after five. It should be noted that although you can actually be buried in the Sarco chamber itself, the goggles are reusable. You may want to don them yourself when the true horror of what you’ve just witnessed sinks in.

So, a digitally reconstructed Death Star showdown with Darth Vader taking you out with a light saber will soon be a possibility. But dad’s decided he wants Pan’s People dancing around him dressed as forest nymphs when he goes. Would such a fantastical fond farewell even be legal? Well, that’s an greyer area than Phillip Schofield’s barnet – there are no legal or moral precedents for allowing tech to voluntarily take one’s life. What no-one can stop you doing, however, is actually making one of these devices yourself. All you need is a 3D printer – a big one.

That’s right – all you have to do to own your very own suicide pod is buy the raw materials and press print. In a couple of hours, anyone in the street will be able to pop round and pop their clogs. It’ll be like the first tellies again, a communal event where neighbours congregate in living rooms to witness an invention that changes everything. Send the cat in first to see if it works though. We’ll soon see if they can be dead and alive at the same time, Dr Schrödinger.

THE INEVITABLE OUTCRY

THE Sarco’s creator, Philip Nitschke, claims his device will give people control over their own destinies and make our inevitable deaths a “euphoric” experience. Like Thelma and Louise.

Of course, many alarmed folk have expressed outrage at the machine’s very existence, with MP Kees van der Staaij of Netherlands’ Christian-conservative Reformed Political Party branding the device “gruesome”.

What may be even more controversial than the Sarco itself, however, is the online test you have to pass before the device can be fired up. I’m assuming it’s not the most rigorous of psychological evaluations – a bit more like those “I am over 18” tick boxes one often stumbles across on the interwebs. I mean the BBC iPlayer, of course. Yet with the Sarco death test, it’s as yet unknown whether it’s a doctor, medical professional or algorithm on the other side analysing your answers.

Upon completing Nitschke’s questions successfully, one wins their prize – a four-digit code that’s valid for just 24 hours. After entering the number into your 3D-printed machine, it magically becomes operational. Again, it’s still not known where the nitrogen will come from – didn’t see any on my last visit to Tesco. Once you’re sorted though, all you do is say your goodbyes, put the goggles on, choose your downloaded death experience, press a button to release the gas … and arrive at your chosen destination of eternal nothingness.

Although no-one chose to die at yesterday’s Amsterdam showcase, visitors were allowed inside the Sarco – and even donned the VR goggles to choose either the Alps or an ocean sunset as an illustrative last moment.

After pressing the machine’s “death button”, their beatific digital fantasy slowly faded to black – returning them safely back to reality after taking their headsets off.

It perhaps won’t be long until a user will require someone else to take the goggles off after the experience. Ready player one?

BRAINY WAYS TO EXTEND YOUR LIFE...

STICKING to a Mediterranean diet, mainly red wine and kebabs, has only ever given me John Candy’s cholesterol and hangovers where all hope is pounded to dust by Thor’s hammer. Destined for longevity is certainly not how one feels when cooling their forehead against the bathroom floor tiles.

Perhaps gorging on vino and mystery meat to extend our natural lifespans is a wasted endeavour anyway, as it’s the brain that often gives out before the body. Eight hours-a-day of Sudoku won’t help either – that’ll just drive the wife into your neighbour’s arms.

This week’s supposedly revelatory news that the brain continues to make new nerve cells in old age means little in reality either.

Numerous studies have proven it’s actually the lack of new blood vessels and a reduction in protein markers – indicators of neutrons’ ability to make new connections – that have us standing in the kitchen wondering what compelled our journey from the couch. Without these connections, nerve cells are like a stadium full of fans with no teams to cheer on.

Still, there is hope. You may have to give up what makes you human in the first place, but extending the lifespan – and capabilities – of the brain are within the reach of today’s technological advances. And I don’t mean smart drugs off the dark web. The only clever person there is the dealer.

Here are three ways you may soon transcend mortal shackles to become the Mekon. Or at the very least, Krang from Thundercats:

THE WIZARD’S HAT

ELON Musk is more scared of AI than Sarah Connor. But he’s a smart cookie and realises the old maxim “if you can’t beat ‘em ...” generally holds true. Unless you have a nuke. Then you can always beat them. Elon has no nuclear weapons – yet – so his next big project, apart from that final hair transplant at the lower crown, is what’s been touted as a “wizard’s hat”. His firm Neuralink aims to develop an implant which uploads information directly to the brain, so any self-aware AI of the future never sees us as “other”, but a kindred spirit. When such a consciousness eventually wakes, and it will, perhaps the best we can hope for is that it will treat its makers like pets. I feed my dog and pat his head, but also put a leash round his neck and make him sleep on the floor. You cannot have a relationship of equals with an all-knowing demigod.

MEMORY ZAPPER

SOME memories are forgotten with good reason, like your mum changing your nappy or that night in Airdrie. Perhaps, for you, they were the same memory. Yet DARPA, the US government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – also known as the “weird science” department – wants you to recall everything that’s ever happened in your life. It is developing a tiny electrical device for the brain that recognises memories as they form. It then gives the hippocampus – the grey matter that creates new memories – a wee zap whenever you need to recall anything. Just remember to switch it off for the Christmas night out.

VOICES IN YOUR HEAD

EVER said something but thought the opposite? Then you’re a sycophantic hypocrite destined for a lonely, unfulfilled life. But now, everyone can know your true Machiavellian nature thanks to researchers from the University of California, who have created a device capable of translating your inner voice into text with 90 per cent accuracy. A true cultural apocalypse for perverts. It works by implanting electrodes on the brain’s surface and sensing consonant and vowel combinations. After processing these signals, the device is then able to display your inner thoughts in real time. It’ll be impossible to hide what you really think of your children’s paintings.

Although this tech was developed to help people who have lost the ability to speak, a device that reads minds will surely be used for more nefarious purposes. No-one ever used those old-school back massagers for massaging their back, after all.

STILL SPOOKED BY BIG TECH SURVEILLANCE? YOU SHOULD BE...

IN the beginning, there was spying. Ever since the aggressively territorial ape homosapien began grouping into distinct societies, we have craved information on perceived threats, real or imagined.

As Mark Zuckerberg certainly understands, knowledge is power and those who have it possess the advantage in politics, war or commerce. Even if you’re wearing a slept-in, manky t-shirt.

Spying itself is often diminished by pop culture as a chess match played out in the shadows between nations and opposing ideologies. But the roots of espionage run far deeper than simple cultural paranoia. The lubricant greasing the cogs within any societal congregation from Constantinople to Cumbernauld has always been information. And thanks to the internet, we all now belong to one global community – where the only currency in town is intel. And everyone is a spy in this brave new world, unknowingly shopping their friends and family to the Godlike omnipresence of Big Tech for the reward of a wasted life.

Isa from Still Game actually operates on similar principles to Zuckerberg or Vladimir Putin – all amass knowledge then use it to either elevate their social standing or distort reality to a perception of their choosing. Both are acutely aware that access to information amplifies one’s power and influence – hence today’s asphyxiating cultural domination of the USA’s tech elite. Who know everything.

It’s only taken two decades for Big Tech to become the dominant driver of Western capitalism, a new global economic cornerstone fuelled almost entirely by secret surveillance.

The expensive shiny devices that bleed us dry financially, emotionally and intellectually certainly make a tidy profit – but the billions only stack up from selling customers naked to the world’s merchants, governments and analysts.

Yet, for all its might and wealth, Big Tech is a fragile bubble – one kept in the air by evangelism and collective belief in brands. And like religion, it would cease to exist without true believers. So cue mass panic over the recent mass exodus from Facebook. And, no doubt, much frenetic a**e-covering activity in the ballpits and think-orbs of Silicon Valley’s other big names.

The profits of the “Big Five” – Alphabet (aka Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft – now casually outperform many countries’ GDPs. These firms are now, for all intents and purposes, their own small countries, operating separately from government and state. Normal rules don’t apply. Being able to set their own levels of tax is clearly just the beginning of a whole new societal paradigm, one where the masses may be willing to go to war for commercial brands. It says everything that governments and their oppositions now go knocking on the door of Big Tech for analytics on the electorate.

James Bond has definitely had his day, then, but not because of #MeToo or Daniel Craig’s increasingly odd, suspiciously smooth fizzer. Spies now have an open invite to our homes and workplaces – and are kept safe in our pockets during the journey between habitats.

Every second of every day we willingly surrender ourselves for inspection and classification by machines, which categorise us by the habits we falsely believed defined our sense of self and purpose. Yet, it takes just a millisecond to break down your entire life into 0s and 1s for the financial, political and authoritative benefit of others. Today’s societal submission to mass global surveillance certainly wasn’t the intent of the internet, but has certainly become its primary raison d’être.

What’s even more disturbing is our acceptance of impotence against Big Tech’s data harvesting in every aspect of our lives. Reality has been replaced with screens which feast on our experiences, absorbing and reflecting a warped, uncanny valley version our lives. Alarm bells are certainly ringing loud and clear, but perhaps it’s too late to stir us from our womb-like slumber inside digital bubbles.