Interesting Article on Consciousness

In the not-too-distant future the holy grail of technology will be the brain to computer interface. It is already possible, of course, to control machines by thought impulses, but a true interface will be able to connect with the conscious functioning of the brain. It will then be possible for the human mind to merge with the "neural network" of a computer. And when this technology becomes a reality, its most important implication will be that it will be possible to permanently store individual consciousness in a machine. The physical body would be redundant. But developments in other fields - especially genetic engineering, nanotechnology, tissue transplantation and bionics - may, by then, have already made replacement or rejuvenation of body parts possible. So the question will be whether human life migrates to what would be a "super web" running on quantum computers, or incorporates that computational power into the physical-synthetic body. In effect people will be able to live and move in two realms: the physical realm, and the computer-generated neural realm.
Interestingly, if you transferred the entire population of the world onto a quantum stick, it would probably be no bigger than a matchbox. And this may already have happened on countless other planets.