Re: The Upload Economy

YakWaxx@aol.com
Tue, 7 Oct 1997 15:17:51 -0400 (EDT)


Anders Sandberg wrote:

> > > However, there are a lot of other things that can be traded: virtual
> > > environments of differing complexity and uniqueness, access to the
physical
> > > world, knowledge and experiences.
> >
> > None of which are directly beneficial to you (unless someone agreed to
copy
> > you in return, although knowledge and experience may be a mild form of
> > copying)
>
> Huh? Why would they not be useful to me? If I decide I'm bored with the
> immense fantasy VR world I inhabit and want (say) a tropical forest world
> instead, I would definitely have a use for a VR world. And if I want to
> build a private Game of Life universe in a jupiter brain, I would need
> physical access and the necessary skills (which does not need to be
> copied, I might just as well hire somebody) to do it.

I was looking from the perspective of the seller and not the buyer, and in a
world of unrestricted power. Surely, if I wanted a tropical rain forest, I
would just think "I wan't a tropical rain forest" and there it is. If I
wanted a tropical rain forest as envisioned by Anders Sandberg, I'll just
copy the parts of your mind filed under 'tropical rain forest creation' and
use them to make my tropical rain forest. That way I don't have to waste
your time and I'm doing you a favour by increasing the amount of Anders
Sandberg in the world. That's my idea of an upload economy.

> > > Now you know why I want to become an open standard for information
> > > gathering and organisation... :-)
> >
> > Better start submitting yourself to the ISO.
>
> Judging from the standards they come up with, no thanks. Self mutilation
> is not my thing. I would prefer the IETF.

Maybe you should be a self-regulating standard (that just gave me a really
really good idea) in the Sun/Java sense. Instead of "Jump to Java", you
could have "Skip to Sandberg"... maybe not.

--Wax