coffeefog

Be careful Pt. II

Here's another note on last night's accent blog. I'm thinking that I want to be around in 300 or 400 years to hear how funny everybody talks. "But Ethan, your corporeal form is temporary," you might say. Let's look to sci-fi for the answer! Obviously I'm going to go with one of the modern "brain download" schemes rather than one of the old-school 1950's sci-fi cryogenic schemes. So as far as brain downloads go, I figure I've got two choices (from the two sci-fi books I've ever read):

• The flatline "cowboy in a can" Neuromancer approach. They'll download my brain into a computer when I die, where I'll be accessible for all eternity for hackers to talk to. My impression is that I'd live in a kind of stateless existence, with my neurons firing raw responses to questions. Shitty way to appreciate accents.
  
• Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - now THIS guy had a cool idea. In about 300 years, they'll be able to make a backup copy of your brain. If you get sick, you can trash your current body and get downloaded into a fresh one like that. You can also "deadhead", and just turn your conscious brain off as long as you want. In Down and Out people deadhead for 3 hour flights, or for 10,000 years. When you want to wake up they just dump your brain into a new body and you're good to go.
  

Yeah, I guess I'm going "Down and Out" with this one.

Posted by Ethan at July 2, 2003 02:46 PM