[ExI] immortal

[Ben Zaiboc]

There's an assumption here that I think may be false, and if it is, it 
changes the argument completely.

Why assume that the infrastructure to host an individual mind has to be 
outside the control of the individual?

The ability to create an entire film or a symphony in your bedroom with 
a laptop at virtually no cost except your time would have been thought 
outrageous and impossible not long ago. Now it's commonplace.

The assumption was that a complex thing like a film has to involve 
hundreds of individuals, millions of pounds, and a vast array of 
equipment to make. Then someone came along and made The Blair Witch 
Project on a smartphone. Admittedly, it was a fairly crappy film, but it 
broke the assumption. The same thing with music. It used to take 
professional recording studios and a crowd of audio experts to make a 
record. Now spotty teenagers are able to create (technically) 
high-quality music with a laptop, some free software and a pair of 
headphones. Most of it might not be worth listening to, but that's not 
the point.

The point is that technology advances on an accelerating curve, that 
puts previously inconcievable abilities into the hands of ordinary people.

I'm pretty confident that once uploading technology matures (assuming 
it's possible at all), it won't be long before it becomes cheap and 
easy, no matter how hard and expensive it was to develop in the first 
place. I also expect the physical sizes of the systems will become much 
smaller than they need to be at first. There's nothing new in any of 
this, we've been seeing it happen for quite a few decades now, in all 
sorts of other technologies.

This means that at some point, ordinary people will be able to upload 
themselves into a system that they own, that they can control, that has 
the ability to operate real-world agencies (robotic bodies, etc.), and 
can connect to a network of other virtual spaces.

I used to be a fairly intense user of Second Life, some time ago (before 
Linden Labs got too heavy-handed with it), and my avatars, that I 
usually created myself, used to visit virtual spaces that other people 
had created. I had a job in there, earning money, interacted with people 
from all over the world, had a blast making scripted objects, for myself 
and other people, and had lots of interesting experiences, some of which 
would only be possible in a virtual world. All - within some practical 
limits - under my control, using my own computer, at no cost other than 
my internet connection and electricity. When the owners of the software 
that made it all possible started changing things, generally making life 
harder for people, I stopped using it and found another similar system 
created by more liberal-minded developers.

This seems to me to be a fairly close analogy to what uploading could be 
like. No doubt there will be efforts to create walled gardens, 
controlled by big corporations, governments will try to interfere and 
censor, and there will be what Second Life used to call 'griefers', 
individuals who just wanted to be destructive and cause trouble for 
people, but these are all just part of life, challenges to be overcome 
as and when we meet them.

"if we live in a giant computer..."

Rather than the common picture of people being helpless pawns in a vast 
machine that they have no control over, I imagine a vast network of 
autonomous individuals, each one in their own independent container, and 
connecting as and when they want to billions of others, in common 
virtual spaces that they build for themselves. So it becomes "if we live 
in our own computers..."

Which is not so different to what we have now, really, with each person 
in their own brain, in their own body that they have a limited degree of 
control over (biology being what it is), communicating with other people 
as and when they want to and need to. We are responsible for keeping 
ourselves healthy, sometimes with the help of a healthcare system, and 
for providing ourselves with shelter and food. Being an upload shouldn't 
be that different in principle, just the actual items and actions we 
need will be different. Antivirus software updates instead of 
vaccinations, etc.

The real difference is, as an upload, your possibilities are much 
greater, and the downsides are fewer.

Provided we do it in the right way.
But, as always, there will be many ways. There will be the equivalents 
of Microsoft, Apple and Google, and the whole world of proprietary 
software, then there will be the equivalents of Linux and BSD, and the 
world of free software. There will be people who live in 'a giant 
computer', and those who live in their own individual computers.

I suppose it should be said that these 'computers' won't be like the 
computers we have now. Max Headroom will never be a real thing. The term 
'processing space' might be better, and hopefully makes the similarity 
to biological brains clearer.

To go back to Bill w's original question, "How will you pay for your 
upkeep?", there are probably as many answers as there are to the same 
question asked of biological people. In Second Life, I used to teach 
people to make furniture and jewellery. I expect there will be plenty of 
job opportunities for uploads, if that's what they need or want.

-- 
Ben