Re: what it's like to be uploaded

From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Sat Feb 26 2000 - 10:05:55 MST


Way back when, Nadia asked about what sorts of things folks would do with the
possibilities of uploading. Without any limit on imagination, these are the
sorts of things I think about:

<> Using "remotes", I'd like to spend some time in the oceans. I'd create
some "biotic" robots that could blend into a dolphin pod, or some VERY small
"fishy" remotes that could explore life on a coral reef at a scale of inches.
 I'd also like to build a cheetah remote and live on the Namibian savanna for
a while.

<> I'm guessing that the kinds of folks who are serious about historical
reenactments could have a BLAST. I'd like to spend some time working on very
detailed recreations of periods in history that I've always been interested
in, especially late Republican Rome, T'ang and early Ming China, early
Tokugawa Japan and 18th-century America.

<> I'd like to build some special-purpose "sport" remotes, especially a small
trans-hypersonic glider for reentry surfing and a formula-1-esque road-racing
remote. I'd want to map my sensorium onto these devices, so that, for
instance I could FEEL the aerodynamics of semi-ballistic flight at Mach 20 or
the fine gradiations of the racer's traction.

These ideas are all pretty "primitive" and anthropomorphic compared to the
kinds of abstract experiences an upload with SI capabilities might think up
to have. But, since I'm not an SI, it's hard for me to imagine what kinds of
pleasures I might invent with those capabilities . . . .

      Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
      Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
      http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
                                           ICQ # 61112550
        "We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
        enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
       question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
                                          -- Desmond Morris



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