Re: Effects of Enhanced Senses for Designer Bodies

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
19 May 1999 12:34:13 +0200

"O'Regan, Emlyn" <Emlyn.ORegan@actew.com.au> writes:

> Excellent ideas! How about linking yourself up to "spy" satelites, so
> that you can "see" anywhere that you think about (above ground). Our
> vision is interpreted into a 3d model (2D+, but hey), by our brains
> infering missing information from other knowledge. Why not enhance that
> ability, filling in with information from satelites: the 3D image you
> infer from looking at an object might be a lot more realistic, if your
> inferences come from real, live data which can see the "back" of the
> object at the same time that you are looking at the "front". You
> wouldn't "see" in any more detail, you'd just have a better feeling for
> depth.

Might work for landscapes and general geography, but wouldn't be directly personally useful. I would instead go for having a number of drone robots (gnatbots) around me, filling in details of the surroundings. Works better indoors.

> How about a bit of group mind stuff (warning, warning) to enhance this
> further: Say that you can build a GIS that contains the sum of human
> knowledge of what the world looks like at any time. Then, if you are
> connected to such a database, your vision could be filled in with data
> from such a system. You might want to look through walls or not,
> depending on how you feel at any time (your vision still needs to map to
> the 2 and a bit D model that your mind can handle). But you could
> visualise any spot on the globe, and actually "see" it. What's on the
> other side of the mountain? I'll just visualise it as if I was on the
> other side... right, its the other side of the mountain. Oh.

Sounds like a good idea. Maybe you could have markers for uncertain or dated images (like when playing a computer strategy game like Civilization).

Of course, all this assumes that we can interface with the 3D model in our brains, which is nontrivial. A near-term solution would be having wearables allowing something similar - no direct 3D experience, but possible to view the model.

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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