I'm in the middle of the first draft of GHOST SPIN, and it's got me thinking about the practical problems of uploaded personalities. The biggest problem as I see it is one that people barely ever talk about: data storage. I mean, any way you slice it an uploaded human being is one bigass pile of bits.
There's a lot of interesting physics research going on right now that could have implications for how we might this kind of massive data storage problem. For instance, by using Bose-Einstein Condensates to slow down the speed of light. Or, more cheaply, by simply broadcasting large streams of bit into deep space for subsequent retrieval. I stumbled on this piece about deep space data storage recently and it got me thinking....
Broadcasting is cheap, especially if you're not worried about encryption (more on that below). I mean, basically, we're already storing large amounts of data in deep space, including every single radio and television program ever broadcast. If you ask me, American Idol and Rush Limbaugh aren't the way I'd advertise human civilization to any aliens who happen to be listening in. But as cheap, reliable data storage, broadcasting can't be beat.
So. Now you can store your uploaded self for free. Even better, you can pick up the broadcast anywhere within Earth's future lightcone, so your upload would always be on tap in case your current incarnation suffers an unforseen mishap. New body, new lease on life, but all the old sweet memories. It's virtual immortality. The only catch is that you wouldn't be able to access the data that was still in transit when you were downloaded back into your new body.
We've all read about characters who wake up in cloned bodies knowing nothing about their last life except that someone hated them enough to murder them. (Walter Jon Williams and Sean Williams have both written excellent novels based on this premise, which makes me wonder if their shared last name is just coincidence or something more sinister....) But murder is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to unencrypted personality uploads.
'Cause here's the thing. There are solutions to the missing memories problem. But none of them are free. And if there's one thing we know with absolute certainty, it's that when there's a rock bottom cheap way to wriggle out of providing adequate health care benefits, some employer somewhere will inflict it on their employees.
Yep. I'm seeing pathetic hordes of uploaded personalities wandering the galaxy in search of their missing memories; coughing up exorbitant "download" fees to get their loved ones out of transmission limbo; playing legal shell games with the lawsuit-proof companies that hold their reincarnation service contracts. And spending multi-year "transmission lags" wondering what they don't know about their last life because their employer decided not to optimize their upload.
Naturally, the skinflint principle would also apply to encryption. Encrypting your upload costs. But the cost of not encrypting? Knowing that anyone in your future lightcone can pirate an illicit copy of you and do whatever they damn well please with it. I can just see the advertising copy: "Some things are priceless. For everything else there's EncryptoCard...."
There's gotta be a story in this. I'll get back to you once I've rounded up the usual suspects and managed to find some likely victims . . . er, characters . . . to inflict it on.
10 comments:
So, transmission = storage?
Don't you have to get out in front of the wave to retrieve your data? Or have it received and re-broadcast from somewhere else? And even then it's not continuously available, but only when the rebroadcast data passes on its return, yes?
Exactly. That's what I've dubbed the "missing memories" problem. And it's precisely that problem that makes this a fun idea from an SFnal standpoint. Because it leaves uploadees with a series of difficult choices. Regardless of whether your uploaded information goes on a one way trip or a round trip, it is only accessible at specific points in time. And how frequently these points in time occur depends on the number and location of receiving stations. In other words, interstellar transmission DOES offer cheap memory storage ... but a kind of storage that functions more like a certificate of deposit than like a checking account. Once the information goes in, you can't change your mind and get it out again. And, to extend the CD/checking account parallel, you would get a more advantageous storage fee/interest rate the longer the time intervals.
Alternatively, I could imagine a system where everyone is uploading all their information constantly and broadcasting the datastream. In such a system if you died unexpectedly, you could dial up a new download any time you wanted. However, because you still have the same time/distance issues, your complete information would not be available everywhere at any given point in time. So you'd face a complex series of choices about balancing optimal download location against optimal memory retrieval.
And again, the more dense your network of transmitters and receivers was, the more choices you'd have. So again, you'd have the situation that I find so intriquing: Immortality would be cheap ... but taking all your memories with you into the next life would be expensive.
What a fascinating idea. A few more problems (and thus opportunities for stories!) would be the possibility of things like man-in-the-middle attacks - a transciever pulling in your broadcast and sending out an edited version of your backup, by posing as the original sender, while drowning out your original transmission from that point on. And then there's the jamming issue, and the sheer worry about bitrot -- you have to expect a hell of a lot of noise is going to corrupt that signal pretty quickly.
I'd also be curious about how one could stuff enough data into a powerful radio signal. As far as I know deep space packet transmission is not noted for high bandwidth even across interplanetary distances.
I’ve toyed with this kind of idea when attempting to explain (or even unify) religions from a SF standpoint, e.g., feedback loops, constructive interference, etc. I go on to explain why fundamentalists have the strongest, oldest, most stable signal, having been designed in ages past to be reinforced by the simple thoughts of those who choose to believe.
As a follow-on to what Bjørn said above, and since these thoughts are just radio waves, what happens when they get near a black hole? Well, that’s how I use this idea to present Hell: An inescapable, tortured jumble of thoughts, happening for eternity.
“God” had his thoughts so perfectly tuned to avoid black holes. If you follow, and believe, your personality will get swept up in the transmission and live forever. If you don’t, you’ll hit a black hole.
Of course, I also throw out the idea that one could, to use Lovecraft’s terms, think of the great old ones and their ilk as nanite-repaired bodies that have to lie dormant while being repaired, and the broadcast of their ancient memories is traveling around the hyperspacial curve of the universe. The body is dead, but the thoughts are racing around—“Dead Cthulhu lies dreaming”.
Hence the statement that “when the stars are right” they awaken, because that’s the best translation that can be made of the millennia-old languages that try to describe nanites and hyperspacial curve.
I have always loved the old quote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I just like to make it cyclic, not linear.
I like that idea about fundamentalists. It's not very complimentary, but I think it's true. I often get the depressing feeling that the more simplistic and narrow-minded a religious sect is the more staying power it seems to have . . . .
And thanks for the Lovecraft connection! I had completely forgotten that aspect of the Cthulu Mythos. This is just more proof that Lovecraft is the secret wellspring of half of modern science fiction. I guess so many of us read him so avidly as kids that it's got to come through in our writing somehow.
In fact, I caught myself describing my current work in progress (GHOST SPIN) the other day by telling someone it was "sort of a space age version of The Shadow over Innsmouth. Oops! Was that a plot spoiler? Nah, not really. There's so much going on in that story that it could inspire a hundred novels and none of them would be anything like the others.
So there. Count me as a paid up member of the H. P. Lovecraft fan club. And I will definitely have to go back and look at the Cthulu Muthos stuff again. I had forgotten that there was a whole astronomical subtext to "when the stars are right..." Good stuff!
Never thought the 'day job' would spawn a story idea, but data storage should be protected on the fly as well as at rest. So what happens if someone breaks your rich-person encryption, sneaks in and plants false memories (or modifies the personality profile) in that man-in-the-middle attack?
All of this brings new meaning to Identiy Fraud, eh?
I know the last comment on this thread was over a year ago, but the idea is just so intriguing. I recall seeing this concept in a recent story (within the last 2-3 years) where the "broadcast as backup" idea was used. (Unfortunately, my aging brain cells have come up short on retrieving the actual title.)
In the story, the transmission is tight-beam, not broadcast, and encrypted. The beam is bounced from relay station to relay station around the solar system, in a continuous loop. Each relay station also acts as an amplifier to keep the signal from degrading.
I'm not an expert on physics by any means, but this would seem like a neat way of keeping your personal upload both private AND locally accessible, wouldn't it?
So, Moriarty, when is Ghost Spin coming out? Do you have an ETA yet?
I know this is an older post, but you should (if you haven't already) check out the Takeshi Kovacs novels by Richard K. Morgan. RKM discusses memory storage and retrieval very nicely. (Although the storage is in "cortical stacks"...)
Hmmm....
Your link to the original article is broken, so I can't check that out. Accordingly I'm only going on what you posted...
The problem seems to me to be that the broadcast (or tight-beam narrow-cast) is travelling away at light-speed, so going after it (or even sending another message) will never catch it up!
The cure for that is simple, either send a preamble message asking for recipients to send the data back, or, as bsakelly said, keep the data zapping around a (relatively) local loop.
The trouble is, as I see it, that whoever is asked to send the info back (option one) or who maintains the local loop, will want some recompense. That means this method of data storage stops being free.
There may be a possible solution by analogy to reciprocal links between websites: once there is a network, participants may be happy to provide a back link just on the principle that whatever goes around, comes around.
It's still not free: even if you use your own server, you still need to pay an ISP for the connection. The equivalent - a high-power radio station - seems likely to cost rather more.
Even using Bose-Einstein Condensates to slow down the speed of light/radio-waves requires someone to sell/lease the medium.
Sending the data out could be cheap, but getting it back seems to me to be likely to be expensive (in comparison to the ever dropping cost of hard disks - and whatever follows them), unless you fantasise about FTL travel - and the fantasy that that would be cheap still seems unlikely.
I don't like to rain on your parade, but...
All the best, (my aim is constructive criticism :)
Roger
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