Some days - life just isn't fun. Migraines, work, stress, kids kicking you in the kidneys while you sleep... stuff like that.It's on those days I like to rely on caffeine.
Shitloads of caffeine.
Like... oh, holy shit, that's a lot of caffeine.
Today... is one of those days. I'm on cup #2 of coffee, plus a Mt. Dew kickstarter**... which, by the way, has become my new favorite thing. I imagine there will be more of these in my near future.
But I'm not here to talk about coffee... Well, not SOLELY to talk about coffee anyway. I'm here to talk about... uh... something? I'm not sure. Let's see where this goes.
I took a poll on Facebook to see what exactly I should write about... the answers varied wildly. Music, Politics, artificial lifeforms, listening to people talk about their swolness, travel, driving without a top on my jeep, candy corn... and so on.
And yet... none of these topics moved me. That is because I am a heartless, over-caffeinated monster... I'd make a great villain in a book. Sitting behind my keyboard, laughing maniacally at my computer monitor as I laugh at the people of the internet and ignore their pleas for entertaining material. I would just sit and drink my caffeinated beverages, browse reddit... Wait... that's not very villainous. Sounds like a dude in his 30s.
Crap.
Well - back to the topic at hand - Sentient Robots. Wait... no.
DOWNLOADABLE CONSCIOUSNESSES!!!
Yes! There's a topic we can all get behind.
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| stolen artistic rendering of the afore-mentioned topic... |
Well - we didn't take care of ourselves because we were 20. When we're 20 we want sex, movies, fried foods, more sex, etc... Well, I did... I don't know about you. But why haven't we found a way to grow a new body for ourselves and transfer our brains into it? I mean, shit - we can land a space probe on an asteroid 5 years after we've launched it, millions of miles into space... but we can't take some sort of computer hook-up and download all my stuff into a new body? I call bullshit!
Peter F. Hamilton (who, incidentally, I got to hear talk at SDCC in 2012 along with John Scalzi) wrote "The Commonwealth" books. In which - humans have developed a way to store memories and consciousness and basically upload them into new bodies. Similar things have happened in other books/films throughout my life (Altered Carbon and The 6th Day come to mind immediately) but Hamilton's books are the ones that really made me think that "Yes. This is an amazing idea and we need to get behind it right-STAT now."
Think about it... you're 65... your health is failing, you've got 492 items still left on your bucket-list, your heart isn't what it used to be, and you still want to get laid... SO... you call up the "new you" salon and order up a 20 year old version of your body to be grown and then BAM! You swap into the new body - even after you technically died if you're squeamish about polyproprioception (the strange feeling of being in 2 bodies at once).
So - your 65 year-old self wakes up young, refreshed and ready to go on with your life. You're now basically immortal.
People might actually think twice about ruining the planet now... or making stupid laws. Who knows - people are people - and people suck... but think of the bigger picture - we could finally send people to other star systems. We could live a life unburdened by the ideas of age and death. I could now live without the fear of NOT being alive for my kid's wedding or college graduation.
Hell - even if we just found a way to save memories/consciousnesses into a virtual matrix I'd be happy. I want to see how this all ends...
So - yeah... there's my random post for the day. I'm off to find another Mt. Dew Kickstarter**
Have a great day! Find a scientist friend and tell them to figure this out for me - call it a birthday present!
**I am in NO way endorsed by Mt. Dew - I just really fucking like Blueberry Mt. Dew Kickstarter
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