[ExI] transhumanism in fiction

[Adrian Tymes]

--- On Tue, 6/22/10, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just about every novel or film before about 1990 seems a
> waste of time
> to the younger generation.
> They stare in puzzlement at every plot crisis moment and
> say 'Why
> doesn't she use her mobile phone to get help?'
> Every 'lost' occasion brings 'Doesn't the GPS in her phone
> work?'
> When the actors don't know something important to the plot
> - 'Why
> don't they Google it?'   The young just lose
> patience with all this
> seeming nonsense.

One could do a children's series, about a kid with a mobile
phone who uses apps on it to solve problems that baffle the
adults.  Bonus points if the only ones who are not slow to
catch on and imitate, are the crime-and-corruption types the
child works against, eventually leading the kid to lecture
friendly but somewhat luddite adults about the proactionary
principle (but not calling it by that name, since neither
the work's audience nor the kid's in-world audience would
know it, and in any case this child may have independently
reinvented it).

A possible extension: the child has the phone implanted, and
brain slowly rewired (over the course of the story) to a
silicon simulation - and sped up.  The child starts off
identifiable; the audience sees the path to the conclusion;
the audience may still identify with the post-uploaded mind
even as it distributes among dozens of shells and starts
breaking out the custom-designed nanotech.  Even the
fraction of the mind that consciously seeks to rewire and
improve can be likened to a martial artist's self-training
(though, it is important that this not be depicted as the
sole activity: yes, the mind is improving itself, but as a
means to some other end).