We’re tied to the idea of individuality because our consciousness is trapped in a vessel with limited means of interface. My current view is that the notion of Hive Mind will be a very important issue should we ever obtain the technology for total neural interface.

Consider teleportation. If the vessel is demolecularised, sent via the internet or some other form of transport, and remolecularised at the destination then the individual is merely ‘copied’. The information or consciousness (in its current state) lives on, but the original vessel is quite dead.

If the human body is a vessel for information then is the vessel only as important as the information it is transporting at any given moment in time? If it was possible to assimilate the thoughts and experiences of others then what would be the value of one particular consciousness? Rather the value would be placed on the information carried, or the programs (or functions) processing that information and the further information resulting. Are we only special as individuals whilst we have limited interface capability? I have a strong feeling that the technology in question here would meet strong resistance from the vast majority of the human race should it come to fruition.

The other issue here is copying (or forking) consciousness. With the capability of total interface, a copy (or infinite copies) of an individual consciousness could be made and assigned to vessel anew. Of course the consciousness would not be a copy and more of a ‘fork’ due to its emergent nature – within a matter of seconds the consciousness would build new information based on new perceptions – of environment, and perhaps change of vessel – and over time the two consciousnesses would diverge and share only past memories in common. The new information would colour the old, resulting in changes of opinion and behaviour in the two (or more) subjects.
Unless of course some kind of synchronisation occurred at regular intervals between the copies in order to keep them as copies, rather than forks. At this point, no singular consciousness needs to exist. And the information is spread amongst many, significantly reducing the cost of vessel death.

On a more unfounded note. What if we were to discover in fact that ‘death’ as we know it was only the assimilation of our experience to an unseen consciousness. We become little more than reconnaissance drones. Do you still feel special?