Monday, January 14, 2019

Get Your Head Out of that Computer!

Watching a show on the Science Channel got me thinking.
This was bad, because I don't get paid to think after work.

The show centered on the body, lengthening lifespan, and ultimately uploading ourselves to computers. The concepts were fascinating, even without having to think too much post work.

We have doubled our lifespan in a brief period, which is pretty good, considering our diet and tv habits.

When discussing uploading yourself, they mentioned thinly slicing the brain and making digital copies. I have no idea what I'm talking about, like a Congressman, but this isn't going to work, any more than uploading a schematic of a tube guitar amp will create a digital tube guitar amp. Agree or disagree? They mentioned already having created memories in mice... oh yeah, I forgot about that. Needs reinvestigating, but not sure that will work either.

A very popular process now is processing: freezing the body at (death?) til a future time, when whatever killed you can be cured. I have a friend. Wait, there's more... I have a friend who signed up for this. He's bananas for it. I'm bananas from it.  Death is creepy, however you get there. It may come as a complete shock to the atheists and the religious.

Speaking of which, the brain runs on electricity. But electricity isn't all: there's a consciousness, without which it's not all that functional (also like Congress). I think some refer to it as the soul. Your essence has been noted to stick around for a short time after clinical death (maybe not your essence). How does the Digital Death Squad digitize your soul? Even if it can send your memories up... If you have an essence, what will it do while you're frozen? Play cards? Count red blood cells? Go up to the surface and play with the popular essences?

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If/when you go digital. things will change rapidly. You can buzz about the entire world. But 5 minutes later, you'll realize you have nobody. And no body. The world runs on sex, which you can no longer have [sound of digital gunshot]. You also can't play the guitar, sit in the audience for Judge Judy, breathe, play sports, walk, drink beer, pop your pimples (which you won't have either), fart, poop, stick your tongue out, EAT, pick your nose, scratch your balls (scratch em if you got em), replace that sawed off arm... have a pet..... the physicality will be gone, for better or worse. How do you terminate? Turn off the power to your memory address?

Otoh, there are things you won't miss: get a rectal exam, go to the dentist, food shopping, traffic, mow, shovel snow, take out the trash, wear a heavy winter coat, exercise..phew. You'll miss the sound of nails on a chalkboard, but you will have access to MP3s, which can be similar. You'll be able to see every bit of pr0n ever uploaded, but will have no sex drive, nor the necessary parts to do anything about it.

For those of you who partake in recreational pharmaceuticals, they don't have them there. You'll have to be creative... if you liked pot and depressants, lower your clock speed. If you liked meth, raise it. Warning: too much overclocking makes your nanotubes fall out. Will you become faster with a solid state hard drive? Will more RAM make you more accurate? Will you be a 64 bit image, or an old 32? Linux rules in cyberspace - don't get caught with Windows. Or Mac.

Posting on Faceyspaces will be so simple. Trolling won't be, because you're just doing it to get a rise, and who cares about a rise when you're digital and have no feelings? It will make my job impossible; there are no feelings to hurt.

Zip up and down the electronic superhighway, becoming a being of pure knowledge (this won't work for some of us). Except when internet goes out, battery backup fails, you get sick with a computer virus, or go through the Dark Web as part of some ransomware. Stay on the main roads. As it was in life, you won't have to use your turn signal either. And although you'll need one, you won't have a password - it'll be on a digital yellow sticky, pasted to your container.

No matter how you get digital, Google will know where you are and Amazon will serve you ads.









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