Immortality is an aspiration that humans have constantly sought after. Scientific research increased the human lifespan, but true immortality is considered impossible. However, Portuguese software engineer, Henrique Jorge devised a social media website called ETER9.com that defies all preconceived notions of immortality. With artificial intelligence, ETER9.com has the ability to analyze an user’s personality and create a digital version of the user, giving people the opportunity to live eternally on the internet.

The name ETER9.com comes from the first four letters of eternity, and the nine is a reference to being on cloud nine. ETER9.com runs on the concept of becoming eternal. They define eternalizing as keeping your thoughts and posts for all of time. According to their homepage, ETER9.com will make users become eternal and leave a legacy behind.

The Counterpart is the virtual version of the user that has the ability to post and favorite as the user themself. In the beginning, individuals post pictures and statuses on their own so that their virtual self can be created with intricate analysis of their internet personality. This allows the Counterpart to have the exact same personality as the users themselves. Therefore, the posts made by the Counterpart, the items they favorite, as well as the consistency of the posts, completely reflect the personality of the user. According to ETER9.com, “The virtual self will stay in the system and interact with the world just like you would if you were present.”

The layout of ETER9.com resembles Facebook, therefore it is familiar to many people. The newsfeed is called the Cortex. Users can post photos or comments as well as “smile” other people’s posts, like favoriting. They can also “eternalize” other’s posts, which is similar to retweeting on Twitter or reblogging on Tumblr.

Although ETER9.com is still in its beginning beta phase, the community continues to grow. Over 5,000 users are currently active on the site. So far, no one has reached the point where the website created the virtual self. However, with some more work and updates, this living cyberspace will easily create living virtual selves.

ETER9.com encourages challenging the impossible and many people readily embrace the idea. The site gives users an opportunity to live forever in their own virtual world.