Upload motivations (was SPACE: Lunar Billboard?)

Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pobox.com)
Mon, 06 Jan 1997 11:00:31 -0800


Nadia writes:
>What exactly is "profit" to an upload, (if you mean the kind of transhuman
>upload I am thinking)?.
>
>Why would an upload feel the need to colonize and explore outerspace? Or any
>physical space for that matter? Or am I missing some major facet of this....

Perhaps you are thinking of only one motivation for uploading. I
suspect that people who ardently want to upload might have several
different motivations, and that some of these people might have
more than one such motivation at once.

There are, I'm sure, some people who want to upload precisely
*because* they want to explore outerspace themselves in person,
and because they are well aware that changing over to an entirely
new platform would be a big advantage in such a project. I don't
see that this kind of upload counts as "less transhuman" than some
other kind. I also don't see that the notion of "profit" needs much
adjustment to survive the transition from human to posthuman. Profit
is surplus value in an exchange (preferably accruing to both sides,
because my taste inclines toward positive-sum games) or in a
production activity, and value is a function of what the entities
in question want.

So what sort of motivations did you have in mind for uploading? I'm
honestly curious.

--
Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ http://www.pobox.com/~arkuat/