Sleep is weird. People object to the transhumanist idea of "uploading your brain" into a computer, which I think you are hinting at with "encode your consciousness" because there will be a discontinuity when the wet brain turns off and the electronic brain turns on. But we lose consciousness every evening and come to in the morning. What kind of continuity do we have now?

Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this lately, which has entirely too much to do with having seen Ex Machina and Chappie within the last couple of weeks.

I would contend that today's humans (and all other animals that sleep) have full "continuity of consciousness" between the sleep to awakeness transition, or vice versa. We're not fully alert while asleep, but still certainly conscious, and the processes in the brain just change between the two differing states.

The moment of discontinuity when uploading/encoding a consciousness into a new form may serve as barrier that we can never cross. If you simply make a copy of yourself and boot it up (so as to circumvent "pulling the plug" on your wet brain), all you've done is clone yourself. Here's an even better mindfuck; let's say we think we've been successfully transferring wetware to hardware. How can I guarantee that it isn't just the clone saying "Yeah, I made it into the computer just fine, thanks!", and that you have actually died, but the copy you made of yourself shortly before your death was booted up, and behaves just as you would? Maybe if we copied someone without their knowledge, killed them, and then booted up their file? Oh god, this is fun, but is, at present, unknowable.

Another aside: Although I've never heard it put into these terms, believers in reincarnation seem to subscribe to some sort of "conservation of consciousness" theory. Again, unknowable, at least this side of death (and very possibly the other).

Feynman did some interesting personal research on sleep which you have probably seen.

I've only seen a little bit of it, truthfully. Definitely have a dream journal laying around here somewhere that only has maybe 10 entries. Had a few lucid dreams before, but I always end up either choosing to fly or have sex with a woman not too dissimilar from Mouse's "woman in red" in the Matrix. Pretty boring, considering the endless possibilities.

Edit: Ah, and I managed to achieve some form of sleep paralysis back in high school. I never slept at night, and fell asleep during class with my head in my arms on my desk. My mind would often wake up, receiving audio, conscious of my breathing, but was unable to conduct any physical motion, including opening my eyes, yelling to pull myself out of this purgatory state, punch myself in the head, anything. Sleep paralysis is terrifying, it's true, especially the first few times.

He also experimented with sensory deprivation, which sounds like something that would make for a memorable experience.

Ever seen Altered States? Heh, interesting flick.

I do find it fascinating that humans are reportedly unable to cope with total silence. I'd love to get in an isolation tank and see what happens.