[ExI] The Surrogates, graphic novel

[Mike Dougherty]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 6:31 AM, Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Seems to me that the story sacrifices common-sense for the sake of having a story.
>
> That kind of technology would make the need for remote surrogate bodies unnecessary.  People would just, as Max says, upgrade their own bodies, and be cyborgs.

Sure, but the general population has a hard time understanding even
the dumbed-down parts.

I was a bit annoyed by the suddenly super-human acts of robot jumping
- as if being a robot allows a surri to violate gravity at will.  So
yes, it was Hollywood for the sake of a telling a story.

In those scenes where surri were mangled, my wife had a visceral
emotional response.  I asked her if that was because she was thinking
about the surrigates as people.  She admitted that she was.  I found
that interesting because people rarely have such reaction to a car
accident.  It's the same loss of personal property, but if the human
operator walks away the response is usually "Well at least nobody was
harmed"  - Why does a machine that looks like a person warrant the
extra attention?

I commented that the "dread camp" were effectively neo-Amish.  They
really made no sense to the culture, but provided a plot device that
was easy to understand.  I think it might have made a more interesting
story for us to imagine the clash between the embodied real world
presences and the disembodied/uploaded virtual world presences.  (the
usual competition for resource utilization/etc.)  I think Greg Egan's
"Diaspora" has a nice treatment of fleshers, gleisner robots and
citizens.  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)]