@Monkey:
Having gone through that existential crisis feeling of "the human body is insanely fragile, and subject to random bullshit", the idea of just putting the brain in perfect exoskeletons that look like humans sounds pretty boss to me.
Robot bodies really would be such an awesome thing, but I don't know if they could be used to keep a brain alive forever. Maybe if the technology was pushed to the limit, a human brain could be kept alive for an incredibly long time inside such a body, but it would still probably die eventually. Well, that's if we can't get these medical nanobots to work, anyway.
The problem lies in our physical construction, which is bound to degrade over time, even at the cellular level. On the other hand, if we can find a way to perfectly model or simulate a self conscious mind, then we may be able to break away from the bonds of physicality as we see it. Of course, the information will still have to be stored and processed by some physical object, but that object may be replaced and its hardware and software redesigned/reprogrammed and even upgraded as desired.
Sure opens up a huge can of worms, though. It's probably a good thing that not a lot of these technological advances are going to happen overnight.