On Nov 9, 2004, at 3:12 PM, David Brin wrote:
Funny you ignore the singularity aspect of KP. SERIAL immortality is really rather churlish, stealing from our descendants. What busy people REALLY want and need is PARALLEL immortality. The power to get more done now.
Looking at transcendence in your books, I think I've noticed a trend toward something like critical mass -- that is, until a certain quantity of essences/minds/whatevers accumulates, it doesn't happen.
Of course most of my research materials (_Earth_, _Uplift_, etc.) are in storage so I can't confirm that. I was wondering if anyone else noticed it, or if you can dis/confirm my hunch here.
What you allude to above is one of the things I liked about KP -- the idea of parallel lives; I found it interesting that you suggest the baffling tendency of some to send dittos off to do things (such as take classes) and then *not* inload their memories.
I suppose it's a subtler form of dittOpression than outright treating the golems as mere chattel -- it's not as bad as abusing them directly, but it's still remarkably callous and, almost literally, closed-minded. If such a tech ever does get developed, it's safe to assume there will in fact be such people doing such things.
I'd assign a ditto to answering email....
What color? (Some days a green would be adequate, methinks.)
To me what was probably most interesting about KP is the story you told with the scenario you conceived. (I mean the contrast of what you explored versus what I would have done given the same starting point.) I would have gone down a totally different exploratory path -- one you mentioned tangentially, as it happens -- body-swapping and species swapping. (Gender-switching alone would make for an interesting character study.)
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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