From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Jul 11 2002 - 23:02:11 MDT
Charles Hixson added the two elements necessary for me
to count as *uploading*:
> The first story where I noticed uploading as a major theme of the story was
> "The Eden Cycle"... The uploaded personalities lived in a virtual reality
> so complete that they essentially lost all contact with the external reality.
> Time apparently ran much faster within the virtual reality than in the
> exterior world...
Yes, speed-up and immersion in total VR are essential parts
of the concept so far as I'm concerned.
While many people think it's merely someone transforming into a robot
by replacement of brain parts, or becoming manifestly mechanical
in some other way, that is a much older idea than *uploading*.
Uploading recognizes the vital point of speed-up: after all,
who would want to be stuck in a robot body when it would seem
to take a day or two just to turn your head?
For some reason, I imagined from the very outset that
an extremely large "chip" perhaps meters perhaps miles
across would house the personalities of those who
uploaded. While occasionally we (I sure hope it's "we"!)
will want to access a remote sensing device to see what
may be happening in the physical exterior world, it'll
be almost always very boring. Time seems to move so
slowly out there (yawn).
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:15:21 MST