Mind uploading in science fiction

I have written a review of mind uploading in science fiction (and perhaps, someday, science and social fact). Many reviews mention only the perils of mind uploading, but I prefer to think of the promises of mind uploading. Read more on the Space Collective website.

My review of Greg Egan's Zendegi at H+ Magazine

My review of Greg Egan's Zendegi is online at H+ Magazine. The novel describes a possible scenario for the early development of mind uploading technology.

In 2012, the Australian journalist Martin is in a politically troubled Iran at a time of major changes, and the young Iranian refugee Nasim is in the US working as a computational neuroscientist in the Human Connectome Project. 15 years later, both Martin and Nasim live in Iran. Martin is married to a woman he met in the first part of the book, and they live with their young son Javeed... when Martin becomes terminally ill he asks Nasim to upload him to [the virtual world] Zendegi so he can continue to be present in his son’s life. They only want to build a credible emulation for Javeed, but others supports the project because they see it as a precursor of uploading and personal cybernetic immortality... Read the rest at H+ Magazine.

After writing this review I have started reading again the first part (Iran in 2012), with a description of a popular uprising against the theocratic regime, which is eventually brought down. It is quite similar to what is happening now in Egypt. The governments shuts down the Internet and cell phone systems, and the citizens react by creating ad-hoc mobile mesh networks. The government tries to shut off these as well, and the citizens react with more and more ingenious solutions.

It is bad to see governments at war against their own citizens, but I am afraid we will see more and more of that, and not only in the “developing world”. There is now a very disturbing trend – that big governments and big corporations now want to control the Internet much more. I have written a short article on this, with links to some countermeasures that we citizens should begin to adopt.

Thank you, Sir Arthur

New York Times - Arthur C. Clarke, 90, Science Fiction Writer, Dies: "Arthur C. Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90... Mr. Clarke’s reputation as a prophet of the space age rests on more than a few accurate predictions. His visions helped bring about the future he longed to see". The images above and below are taken from Sir Arthur's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie that made so many of us interested in our future in space.

Of course I was very strongly impressed by 2001, especially by the passage below. I have been a transhumanist ever since. Sir Arthur:

Call it the Star Gate.

For three million years, it had circled Saturn, waiting for a moment of destiny that might never come. In its making, a moon had been shattered, and the debris of its creation orbited still.

Now the long wait was ending. On yet another world, intelligence had been born and was escaping from its planetary cradle. An ancient experiment was about to reach its climax.

Those who had begun that experiment, so long ago, had not been men - or even remotely human. But they were flesh and blood, and when they looked out across the deeps of space, they had felt awe, and wonder, and loneliness. As soon as they possessed the power, they set forth for the stars.

In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms, and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night.

And because, in all the galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped.

And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.

The great dinosaurs had long since perished when the survey ship entered the Solar System after a voyage that had already lasted a thousand years. It swept past the frozen outer planets, paused briefly above the deserts of dying Mars, and presently looked down on Earth.

Spread out beneath them, the explorers saw a world swarming with life. For years they studied, collected, catalogued. When they had learned all that they could, they began to modify. They tinkered with the destiny of many species, on land and in the ocean. But which of their experiments would succeed they could not know for at least a million years.

They were patient, but they were not yet immortal. There was so much to do in this universe of a hundred billion suns, and other worlds were calling. So they set out once more into the abyss, knowing that they would never come this way again.

Nor was there any need. The servants they had left behind would do the rest.

On Earth, the glaciers came and went, while above them the changeless Moon still carried its secret. With a yet slower rhythm than the polar ice, the tides of civilization ebbed and flowed across the galaxy. Strange and beautiful and terrible empires rose and fell, and passed on their knowledge to their successors. Earth was not forgotten, but another visit would serve little purpose. It was one of a million silent worlds, few of which would ever speak.

And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals. The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and of plastic.

In these, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They were spaceships.

But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter.

Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a thousand worlds, the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a mindless dance of death, then crumbled into rusty

Now they were lords of the galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could rove at will among the stars, and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space. But despite their godlike powers, they had not wholly forgotten their origin, in the warm slime of a vanished sea.

And they still watched over the experiments their ancestors had started, so long ago.