Good news – instead of killing you, slicing up your brain, freezing it and keeping it on ice so they can revive your consciousness centuries in the future, scientists might now be able to scan your brain and just store the pattern for later use. The bad news – they still have to kill you, slice up your brain, and freeze it first before they do the scanning. And of course there is still the old Star Trek transporter problem – when they save your pattern, disintegrate your matter, and recreate the pattern somewhere else using new matter, is it really still the same you, or is it a different you with the same memories as the original you? The new you won’t know the difference, and you won’t know the difference either because you won’t exist, so does it matter? Well, the technology still has a ways to go before we really have to worry about any of this. If they can ever find a way to save a detailed copy of your brain without killing you first, there would be very little downside to trying it. And before you ask, yes, I have read the book Altered Carbon, and no, I have not seen the new show Altered Carbon.