[ExI] Diaspora

[Giulio Prisco]

Loved Diaspora and all Egan’s fiction until Zendegi (included). More recent
Egan’s fiction, not so much.

On 2020. Aug 23., Sun at 23:21, Anton Sherwood via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> How about a new subject?
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>
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> «Diaspora» by Greg Egan is among my favorite fictions.  The setting is
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> several centuries after most humans uploaded to supercomputers buried in
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> permafrost.  (It is hinted between the lines that this Introdus was
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> driven by, and the cure of, an eco-collapse.)
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>
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> When I'm waiting for sleep, I often think about designing the virtual
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> environment.  Each citizen has a private "scape" and there are also
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> public "scapes".  I imagine my home as a terraformed asteroid (where the
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> laws of physics are fudged as necessary!), with a door to a public
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> promenade loosely modelled on some old city.  An irregular asteroid
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> ought to have some nifty microclimates.  I'd also have several
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> experimental mini-scapes with exotic geometry.
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>
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> Some public scapes are realistic, some cartoony, some look like
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> Impressionist paintings.  In one it's customary to wear a superhero
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> costume of your own design; some are explicitly heraldic (and I
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> sometimes hesitate about how to translate from a shield or flag, a flat
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> surface with an edge, to a skin with no edges).
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>
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> It's mentioned a few times that minds can be copied and merged, but the
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> story doesn't make much use of merging (apart from one poignant scene).
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> Unless it's very costly, wouldn't you want a spare self to answer the
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> doorbell while you work?  (Your memories merge when you sleep, let's
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> say.)  Also: sex; "go fuck yourself" might be very good advice.
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> I recently thought of another application.  To learn another language as
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> a native, you spin off a version of yourself with the language lobes
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> reset to infancy, and that one goes to live in another community; you
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> regularly absorb "its" memories, but "it" remains separate and does not
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> import from "you" until you decide you have learned enough.
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>
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> --
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> *\\*  Anton Sherwood  *\\*  www.bendwavy.org
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