The transmission of Consciousness

[alxian]

After quoting Richard Morgan i decided to finally read Altered Carbon

not yet disappointed by it, except by the nature of immortality it suggests.

which was a caveat i developed in childhood after reading through the dune saga.

If a body dies the consciousness within dies too. If you can store the majority of information about that mind while it was functional can you revive that consciousness in a new body? or will it just be a cloned version of that consciousness brought into existence at the instant the new body begins to function?

Ben Bova off the top of my head clearly illustrated the point when he states that without the old memories the same consciousness revived is blank and will become a new person. where you'd then wonder would a template persoona saved at a particular instant also become a new person who has access to clearly confidential information of a dead person?

that new person thus should not have full access to the dead persons life until they actually start acting like them and are willing to accept to reclaim that old life.

besides that impromptu digression.. the point was can you even transmit a consciousness to storage anyway?

where it would be suspended, or where it could exist in a virtual perpetual world until it was recalled from storage?

wouldn't it just be a perfect software emulation of that consciousness and not the essense that drove that person in life?

[InfiniteNow]

As with any good program, you start by defining your variables. So, first define consciousness and then we'll decide how best to program it. You have five seconds... GO!


Seriously, it's a bit like asking if you can put faith in a bucket. Consciousness is ill understand and much more conceptual than tangible.