From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Mon Nov 02 1998 - 10:08:07 MST
From: "den Otter" <neosapient@geocities.com>
>Ah, but the beauty of future technology is that it can ultimately
>give the power of a whole nation, or even a world, to just one
>person. A Jupiter Brain is an army of philosophers, soldiers,
>scientists, artists and workers all by itself. It is autonomous.
>If a guy like Hitler can obtain the crucial technology to upload
>and expand before anyone else, or at least in the early stages of
>transhumanity, he *could* use it to kill/enslave everyone
>else without suffering any bad consequences. Those that will have
>these technologies first will almost by definition be the rich and
>powerful (the leaders of corporations and government agencies
>etc.) These people have certainly not been selected for high moral
>standards, but rather for ruthlessness, love of power and
>determination. Natural selection. Now, this is not a reason to get
>depressed or something, but rather... (you know what).
This was the theme of a screenplay I was working on with a young
Tejano writer a couple of years ago, who I've unfortunately lost
track of.
essential plot follows:
"The head of a a large corporation who's organic body is dying
develops the ability to upload. During the procedure his HQ is
attacked by a radical group that opposes his corporate policies.
The group being techno-savvy realizes that information is more
important than mere physical infrastructure, attacks with an
explosive pumped EMP device. So while they do considerable physical
damage they do massive informational damage.
Yep, they interupt the uploading (while destroying the original).
While his intelligence is successfully uploaded, the procedure is
interupted while subroutines establishing mimic functions of the
glandular functions are being created.
Result? A demented upload, who then decides the vast majority of
humanity are unnecessary and sets about creating a virus to destroy
those he doesn't like, while secretly trying to protect those he
does like.
Lots more interesting stuff...
Brian
Member, Extropy Institute
www.extropy.org
Current Reading: The Greatest Benefit To Mankind: A Medical History
Of Humanity. by Roy Porter ISBN 0-393-04634-6
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