I am a Star Trek fan. Not a trekkie, but I enjoy the concept,
the characters, and many of the philosophical questions that thread through the
plots, especially in the series Star Trek Voyager, which to me is the pinnacle
of the franchise.
Those who have watched are familiar with the
Transporter. For those 3 people on the planet who don’t know what that is, it
is a teleportation device that dissolves you and sends your molecules to a
remote location where it reassembles you. Teleportation is a concept that is
being researched, and I think it likely that if the world continues even
another 100 years without entering a new Dark Age, the technology will be
developed to accomplish something similar to Star Trek’s transporter. And this
raises a lot of questions for me.
Will the real transporter actually transport your
molecules? Unlikely. It seems much more
realistic that what will be sent is information. You will be read and enough
information sent to immediately clone or rebuild you on the other end. But what
about the spiritual component? Now, for those who think that we are each just
connected cells, this is a vain point. But for those of us who believe that
there is an energy in us that is not physically produced, this has meaning.
Maybe the universe is such that the energy pattern that is your spirit will go
to where you are. I don’t know, but it is an intriguing question.
Will the new assembly really be you? Or will it be a
new person that just happens to have your memories? Some people seem to think
that if it has your memories and exact constitution, it is you because those
things are what define you. But suppose there was a way to replicate you
without the original You disappearing, would that new creation be you? And, if information
is what is being transported, then would there be a need to destroy the
original You in the process? Or would the original survive just like the
original does in a photocopying process?
If so, then that would create an interesting phenomenon: a new You every
time “you” transported. If we have too many people for available resources now
(which I do not at all believe), how would that
work out?
The new You would be making new memories that would
separate them from you and define them as a different person. Or would there be
some invisible spiritual connection that would inform you of each other? Maybe
you would see, in something like an hallucination, what they were seeing, and
vice versa. That would get mighty confusing, and you would likely want to
integrate again.
Once the purpose of the teleportation was satisfied,
then what would happen to the copy? If you were teleporting to India to attend
a cousin’s wedding while the original version of You stayed home, after it was
done, would the copy have to report back to the station to be destroyed? That
person might flee instead. Will we have a planet full of run-away clones on the
lam?
If the pattern of what is you is copied so that the
information can be sent to inform a remote assembly of a copy, couldn’t it be
kept for emergencies? When you die,
couldn’t that information be used to rebuild you? But would that new build be
you? Or maybe you’ve had a bad time of
it the last few weeks, and you want to do a reset back to the last time you
transported, so you just have a technician destroy you and rebuild you from the
last recording.
There are many issues involved with transporter
technology. Maybe it’s so complicated that we’ll stick to transporting rabbits
and kitty cats.
I really enjoy philosophizing over future tech, and this was a great exploration of the teleportation concept. I think you're absolutely right that it will be information, not actual molecules, that are sent. I may actually take this a step farther, and say that if it is ONLY your information being sent, then maybe there is no point to even making a physical re-creation of your body. Maybe "teleportation" will in fact just be uploading your mind to a network that allows it to jump around and take in / spread information. Then the real you could download the new information at your leisure. This is fairly removed from the traditional idea of teleportation, but it may still get the job done in most cases. Thoughts?
ReplyDelete"Thoughts" you say? Hmmm.. with the interesting model you present, I had better be careful about my thoughts....they may be captured and sent to who-knows-where. I think that the reason for teleportation is to make available to "you" a physical body for locomotion and interaction with the place to which "you" have been sent. I think you are suggesting a neuro-network similar to what has been predicted by Ray Kurzweil when he talks about "the singularity". The concept is that our brains will be linked to a computer network which will extend our thinking capacity. The next step is that we would be able to read each other's minds through this inter-connectivity and ultimately be one mind. Sounds awfully lonely to me though, but is that a fair depiction of the concept you are presenting?
ReplyDeleteIf you respond, I will present to you a twist that may color your view.