From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Thu Jul 11 2002 - 07:10:15 MDT
On Thursday, July 11, 2002, at 12:09 am, Damien Broderick wrote:
> And speaking of the upload meme, it occurred to me that the first novel
> with an explicit use of general mind uploading to an artificial
> substrate
> might be my 1980 sf novel THE DREAMING DRAGONS
Sorry, but this is an old sci-fi theme. I am constantly amazed how
often our "new" ideas turn out to be very old. The idea of having
poppets, dolls and statues become possessed with the spirit of dead
people is ancient. The idea of doing this with robots and computers was
merely a minor modern variation.
1879. Edward Page Mitchell's "The Ablest Man in the World" describes a
computer being put inside the head of a man transforming him into a
genius who runs the Russian empire.
1900. Frank L. Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" features a tin man
who was originally real, but kept getting parts replaced by tin until he
was completely mechanized.
1909. E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" The entire world is run by
machines and humans are kept in little hexagon cells. They only
communicate via through the machine which lets them see and hear each
other but not touch.
1927. The movie "Metropolis" has an evil scientist kidnap a woman named
Maria and creates a mechanical robot duplicate of her. The robot Maria
introduced chaos into the underclass of workers and also plots against
the original human Maria.
1946. Isaac Asimov's "Evidence" has a robot simulating a human. There
is a court case to decide if the defendant is really a robot simulating
a human or really a human.
1944. Catherine Lucille Moore's "No Woman Born" describes a dancer
whose brain is put into a the metal body of a robot. The story is
mostly debate about whether she is still human and whether her new
condition is superior to her old one.
1962. Wesley E. Barry's movie "Creation of the Humanoids" was
reportedly Andy Warhol's favorite movie. It has a council of robots
decide to save humanity by transferring each individual's memories into
a robotic replacement allowing them to become immortal as robots.
1963-1964. Robbie the Robot appears in a Twilight Zone episode where an
old inventor uploads himself into the Robot when he dies to prevent a
greedy niece from taking his fortune after he's gone.
1963. Dr. Who introduces the Daleks, which are humanoid brains put
inside robotic machines, and Cybermen who were once human but replaced
more and more parts until they finally evolved into completely robotic
machines.
1966-1969. This was a common theme in the original Star Trek episodes.
Roger Corbin uploaded himself into an android using alien technology.
Spock's brain got uploaded into a computer to control a whole
civilization. Three aliens in glowing spheres borrowed the crew's
bodies to build androids to upload into. It was mentioned or implied as
a possibility on Mudd's planet full of androids and in the Shore Leave
episode where all the people and animals were artificially created. If
it was that popular on TV, I can only assumed that the same ideas
appeared in print as well.
1968. The move "Bladerunner" was based on Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep." It describes replicants who are duplicated
copies of humans including memories and personalities.
1972. The Stepford Wives had women replaced by robots. I don't recall
if their personalities were copied or created from scratch as
replacements.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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