From: Luke Howison (lukeh@ihug.co.nz)
Date: Tue Dec 12 2000 - 02:39:55 MST
Hi Extropians,
I was recently reading _Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st
Century and Beyond_ by Michio Kaku. It is a pretty good book aout the
future, written for the layman. In it however Kaku cruelly tosses aside
nanotech because it hasn't been done yet (I've written to him about this).
At the end of the book he questions how 'Beaming Up' - matter transference
for the purposes of transporting humans over planetary or interstellar
distances - could possibly be achieved. Because of his ignorance of
nanotech, he maintains that this is pretty impossible for many centuries.
We know better.
The way I see it, nanotech beaming up is pretty simple . . .
1. Place human body into suspension (= no biological activity)
2. Note position of all cells/atoms in body.
3. Send this info to the reciever
4. Build human body to specifications recieved; check as many times as
desired for accuracy.
5. Activate human body.
There is a single problem with this: it inadvertantly creates Copies (and
if the human body being sent is destroyed, thats pretty messy, in a phsycial
and an ethical sense).
So you can imagine yourself in the 'Send' chamber, waiting to be transported
to Gallius IV, and you open your eyes ... to be informed that you are in
fact still on Earth. "Sorry 'bout that, but your copy got there!" This
can't be right!
What we want is to have a singular, relatively continuous instance of your
consciousness in the Universe at a time. So how about this modified beaming
up . . .
1. Send body as above.
2. Keep 'Earth' body in suspension indefinitely (cost can be borne by the
sent person) --> bypasses ethical issue of destroying a sentient being.
3. When/if the 'Gallius IV' body wants to come back, get 'Earth' body
again, and _alter its brain structure_ to contain 'Gallius IV's'
experiences/consciousness. Add any new physical changes, such as sex
changes, muscular enhancements, what have you, and activate the body!
Voila! A relatively simple way of taking the ethical issues out of Beaming
Up via Nanotech. Criticisms, improvements, comments, if you please.
LH
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