From: Hubert Mania (humania@t-online.de)
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 01:54:17 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Now imagine a trillion cameras throughout the Earth
> and solar system, equally responsive to you in a
> similar way. Yes, you can see the insides of
> particular machines that are running you, or at
> least their cases, but you can also see all the
> locations at which you used to live, all the cities,
> mountains, deserts, and faraway moons and planets.
> And you need do no more than, so it seems, move
> your eyes.
>
> Cries of freedom, knowledge, and liberation from
> provincialism will issue from the first truly
> uploaded, and will go far to persuade their brethren
> of the advantages.
Beautiful vision. A preliminary stage of that goal would be a kind of
virtual riding out before breakfast which has always been one of my
favourite dreams. To log in the cameras of different satellites, to inspect
my favourite places on the planet, to float calmly over the Aegean Sea and
beckon the ships over, pilot them generously through the strait of Corinth
with a wave of my hand and switch to another satellite camera that zooms to
the peak of Mount Everest where I can see the last steps of a roped party in
high resolution.
I would not be interested in real omniscience though. I would rather call it
a kind of *omni part taking* without the intention to rule over situations
or people, an anarchical observer state in the Kantian sense of
"interesselosem Wohlgefallen" (indifferent pleasure).
The abuse that arises in animal brains while being logged into trillions of
cameras is obvious. First we have to get rid of greed and lust for power.
And I believe, this state of mind is much harder to achieve than a first
class consciousness transfer or an omnipresent camera system. The
moral obligation to appease reptile and monkey layers in our brains
seems to be the more urgent task in my opinion.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jun 26 2003 - 02:06:32 MDT