Digitize Me!

I'll set the stage for you: It's 9AM...early for a college student. I have a coffee in one hand and a pen in the other, dutifully writing down the main points of the lecture (also known as transcripting the Power Point slides).

We were discussing some of the driving forces behind globalism; companies crossing international boundaries to do business, be it sourcing or selling. Of course we mentioned comparative competition (where a country makes the products that it is most efficient at making and trades with other nations for the other products it needs, overall lowering the costs of production and making the economy more efficient), also mentioned was the nations that are quickly crossing the line from 'third world' into 'developing countries' such as India and China.

All of this was interesting of course, but it was the comment on the growing sophistication of technology that got my attention. I will attempt to quote my professor, though my memory is fuzzy as I had not yet finished that coffee. "We have managed to digitize photgraphs, blueprints, memos, corporate reports and even phone calls. Pretty soon, we'll just digitize ourselves."

I sat there for a moment pondering this, because as a member of a virtual society I had to wonder if he was right. There are people here who carry on normal-seeming lives, but there are also those of us who run businesses. Others do research in various fields. Some are here in an attempt to find other meanings and dreams that have eluded them in their first lives. The reasons for 'being' in SL are as numerous as there are citizens. Just as in our first lives.

On a side note, as an International Business major, I constantly find myself trying to figure out if SL is a glimpse at the 'global society' that is mentioned every day in my lectures. (The global society is a far-off-in-the-future concept that our profs love to guess at; one with no country borders, no tariffs or trade sanctions and with a centralized government. This idea is beyond nightmarish for some and would be a dream come true for others.) There are no physical boundaries here, no trade barriers, no governments pitted against each other, and while there are clearly different types in our society, they are not divided up into groups. (Yes there are sims set aside for these groups, but they are not bound to them; they are free to come and go without beurocratic red tape.) We do have a form of centralized government, though it is not called government of course. Also, there are no trade barriers in SL. (Wouldn't that be interesting?)

Are we on the way to digitizing ourselves? Have we done it already?

What an intriquing thought.

Global Society

I think SL is a great example, albeit a fantastical one. If society evolved (devolved) into something similar to SL as it stands, there would be tremendous damage. Imagine the griefers in RL. I paint a story...

You go out one day to go shopping and maybe a little club hopping. The music is playing, people are happy and smiling. A faint sound is heard in the distance of a chopper approaching the location. Without warning, the entire place erupts into flames as griefers bomb the club... The death toll is in the hundreds.

Of course, in some parts of the real world, this happens on a daily basis already. While I am all for a unification of the planet under a centralized government, I think that the logistics of running a world government would be insane. We would still have the degradation of individual beurocracies. IE Kingdoms with Lorships. Even within one kingdom, the lordships tended to fight amongst each other.

Digitizing Ourselves

Some people have... Kinda. I have seen AV's that use photos from people to literally create themselves in SL. Myself personally, I dont exist in SL. I view SL as a giant Virtual Roleplaying arena. I go in there, I play a character, and I leave. The character does not traverse the digital gulf into my RL, and my RL does not cross into SL. They are seperate and distinct entities.

Of course, some people might say this is a sign of mental disease. Multiple Personality Disorder

The simple answer is: Yes. There are some places where people can go and have themselves laser-scanned. Most often this is for putting themselves into a videogame (e.g. scan, convert to game model format, mod the game by adding your personalized character). It's also been discussed as a way to sell clothing. I'm not sure where things are on the front. In general, I don't hear about it very often.

Now, combine that with some of the holographic display technology (didn't Bono use it recently to "be" in a room across the ocean?).

Anyway, we'll be seeing more of this. And I expect that we'll also eventually have not just "surface" representations, but "solid" data of our bodies recreated from the kinds of scanning tools currently employed in some cutting edge medical facilities.

Question is: can I have an AI duplicate - and maybe even a backup "ghost"?

whoops. No sooner said, then.... custom shoes made from scanned footsies

I'd love to digitize myself into VR, as a backup AI ghost.

But why would I force my ghost to look just like me? If my ghost thought like me, HE wouldn't want to just look like one person all the time. And if he didn't, he wouldn't be much of a backup.

My problem isn't Multiple Personality Disorder.

You must have seen "Ghost in the Shell". The ghosts didn't necessary have an associated shape or gender.

I would be very careful about the ethical implications of an AI 'copy' of oneself.


Could you put a price on such a construct?


And if not, would freebie copies of yourself be sold to noobs next to the jetpacks and sex poses?


I'm almost kidding...

Some of these future issues actually help to shape some of my positions today.

If nothing else, the UN Protectorate has absolutely NO humor when it comes to double-sleeving. Stick to a backup.


For Takeshi Kovacs, it was a life.


They'd be piled up in great charnel heaps with the cervical vertebrae still attached.


Is that a near miss or a near hit?