Yes, porting and emulation from raw voxel data scans seems far enough
from current tech. However, Destructive scans that output raw voxel
data at needed fidelity is almost possible now (and almost affordable
if you are B. Gates). Of course, the only thing gained over cryonics
is room temperature and multiple location backup storage. Also, with
good compression, possibly much less real estate will be needed.
Mabey 100 people in a box of "Super Ultra DVD XXXIV" ROMs or
something. Room temperature storage means no maintenance and that with
the multiple backup storage locations gives enough advantages to
destroy cryonics. Although all of cryonics technology will be needed
in the scanning procedure. So I don't want to sound like I don't
appreciate the work in this area.
I also see a good possibility for non-destructive scans in this time
frame. Possibly using a technology mentioned on this list before. A
light source is pulsed on one side of the head and only the photons
that made it through without any collisions are recorded on the other
side. The head is slightly rotated and this is repeated 360 degrees.
Since most of your head is empty space (at least mine is) the
non-empty space is recorded per voxel.
Since I've gone from being conservative on my first point to being
speculative on my second, I may as well step out there on the fringe
for my third.
There has been some recent discussion about traveling into the past on
this list. I've always been more interested in the possibility of a
"peering into the past technology" (PIP Tech) rather than actually
traveling into the past. I define PIP Tech as the ability to peer
into the past focusing on known coordinates at a specified past time
with the ability to scan a biological brain with near molecular
resolution. I do not see PIP Tech as having some of the paradox and
contradiction problems associated with time travel. Although the
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle causes some concern. I just want to
throw this long shot idea out for the space time engineering types to
consider because it is obviously outside of my area of expertise. The
idea of using a black hole as a lens into the past by re-mapping the
distorted star field would not work here because I don't think you
could use the nearest existing black hole to peer through our
atmosphere at that resolution. But what if we had a similar machine
to the light pulsing and rotating one described above pointed to the
nearest black hole. Such a machine could be built cheap with todays
tech because the difficult part is receiving only the photons in that
very short window that underwent no collisions. And that part would
be accomplished by the future machine. This is just one possible path
to (machine in the present) assisted PIP Tech. That is, we build a
machine now in anticipation of assisting a future machine to peer into
the past. I really have no sound working theory for PIP Tech. The
above example was just to get the idea across so the space time
engineering types could ponder the idea. But I cannot dismiss it
because of the immediate grand impact it would have. The present
machine along with a sound theory for the future machine(as opposed to
a working model)would have an immediate impact. Thats a first. We
use a sound theory for a future machine to get immediate results
before building that machine. If nothing else, I guess this could
make for some interesting sci-fi.
Joe Jenkins
Joe_Jenkins@yahoo.com
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