From: Brent Allsop (allsop@extropy.org)
Date: Sun Sep 08 2002 - 13:16:47 MDT
What about the notion of "effing"? Has anyone ever used this term in a
story, or anywhere else for that matter? Effing the ineffable like when we
enhance someone's (or some AI's) brain and then stimulate it in the proper
way and say something like: "This is what salt tastes like to me." To which
might come the reply: (Oh THAT'S what salt tastes like.) Surely I'm not the
first to use the term "effing" in this way am I? There are a few hits in
google for "effing ineffable" but non of these that I have seen talk about
enhancing and properly stimulating the brain to accomplish this.
A more advance but similar notion would be merged or shared conscious
awareness? Has this idea ever been put forth in any science fiction story?
For example, we have conscious awareness of our bodies and everything they
are touching, including our bodies coming in contact with our partner, the
bear rug, and so on. But we have no conscious awareness of what our
partners bodies are touching or feeling. Has there ever been a story in
which a person can not only feel what their body is touching and feeling -
but also what their partner's bodies are touching and feeling?
I've included these ideas in a draft of a short story I've just completed
entitled "1229 Years After Titanic". It is a story about how our
descendents worship their ancestors as their literal creators. It is a
story about the resurrection of the characters that were in the movie
Titanic.
Another idea in this story is what I call an "Estate". In the future
instead of breaking up and giving away estates of those that have died -
estates are preserved, collected, restored... AIs are created for all
people known to have existed to manage their estates. These AIs, called
"Estates" work to discover, collect, maintain, and grow anything to do with
their namesake. As an ever more detailed history of the past is achieved by
society these "Estates" work to manage and restore every thought and memory
that their namesake ever had. In other words, in addition to the goal of
accumulating wealth or acting as their namesake would have acted, it is the
ultimate goal of these AI "Estates" to achieve a history detailed enough to
enable the resurrection of their namesake into the state they were in just
before they died.
Of course those that were cryonically preserved get restored many hundreds
of years before people that were say cremated. Basically - the better you
and anything to do with your life history are preserved, the sooner it is
possible for your "Estate" and descendents to restore you. At this point
the "Estate", or rather a subset of the "Estate" is precisely what the
person ever was or has been.
The achievement of a sufficiently perfect restoration is celebrated by
performing a resurrection of the original person into the state they were in
just before they died. Everything the Estate has, including the perfectly
restored memories, is then turned over to the person being resurrected.
Once most people are resurrect to their pre dieing state, they choose to be
uplifted to the state of the art, have the "Estate's" memories implanted in
themselves, and so on.
Has this kind of an "Estate" idea ever been put forth or included in any
kind of a story before? I don't know of any stories that have had these
kinds of ideas. It upsets me that no one, that I know of, has ever put any
we love and appreciate our parents ideas like this in a story. I think the
complete lack of these kinds of stories, containing things like people
attempting to pay back their parents for creating us and giving us
everything we have, is one reason there is so much hostility to the idea of
cryonics and progress in general. That's why I've made this attempt to
write a story like this.
If anyone is interested I have a draft of this short story here:
http://home.attbi.com/~brent.allsop/
I'd love to hear any feedback anyone might have! Is it illegal or unethical
to use characters from someone else's story or movie like this?
Thanks
Brent Allsop
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
Sent: Friday, September 06, 2002 10:23 PM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: Re: VR Science Fiction
At 12:26 PM 9/6/02 -0700, Ross F. wrote:
>I wonder when is the first use of the term "feelies" which are
>whole-sensory immersive environments or interactive direct neural
>playbacks.
1932. Aldous Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD. `There's a love scene on a bear rug;
they say it's marvellous. Every hair of the bear reproduced.' This idea has
been around a long time, in general terms: E. M. Forster's `The Machine
Stops' years before that, in 1909.
Damien Broderick
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