Re: Maybe thinking meat is a good idea

ilya2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
>>         Are there stories in which a mature virtual population, folks
>> who have had the time to consider and reflect and get used to life this
>> way, come to the decision that it's better (by whatever standard) to
>> live as a complicated biochemical process within a physical body?  And
>> do they act on it?  
> 
> 
> In Stross' "Singularity Sky" Critics, The Fringe, and possibly some
> other Festival hangers-on travel between stars as encoded data, and
> get biological bodies built (not "grown", but nano-assembled) when
> Festival arrives at a stopover. All of their subsequent experiences
> are transmitted to Festival data store, so when Critic version n+1 is
> reassembled at the next star, she has the memories of Critic version
> n, as well as all preceding ones.
> 
> It's not clear what happens to biological Critics after Festival
> departs, but I see no reason why they should not keep on living -- and
> transmitting, -- for a long time. Possibly "Critic version n" will
> still be alive when "Critic version n+1" is activated few light-years
> away.

This is also the star travel technique in Egan's "Glory".

-- 
'"STATOR WNDG MOD 73-A 3-PH 6-P 1800-BPM 5-HP CL-A SQUIRREL CAGE," which 
proved completely incomprehensible, & not at all capable of imprisoning 
a squirrel.'
- _A Canticle for Leibowitz_ by Walter M Miller, Jr
<http://variety-sf.blogspot.com/2008/04/walter-miller-fiat-homo-canticle-for.html>