Thought I’d recombine elements from some recent posts. Let’s take the remote-controlled cyborg bugs that DARPA is working on and combine that with our recent discussions of virtual reality. Part of what DARPA seeks to do is implant some kind of chip into these bugs that will allow them to override the natural impulses of the bugs and control the mechanics of their motion. They would also intercept sensory data. I’ve never really thought about it before but this is probably another form of virtual reality, isn’t it? Instead of projecting your consciousness into an avatar in a virtual world, you would simply be projecting it into another avatar within this world. Assuming it’s technically feasible in the not-too-distant future, you could also probably have a chip right in your brain to connect you to this cyborg bug, or whatever it is. So that you wouldn’t have to be sitting there with a joystick and a video monitor. You would actually be able to physically feel as though you were the bug. And if you could pull this off with a bug-human pair up, what would be to stop you from using other animals? You could be a real-virtual rat, or dog or dolphin or something, feel what it feels, and control it’s body as though it were your own. Following that train of thought, you could - theoretically - also allow animals to have control over human bodies. You could hook up the devices and insert the consciousness of a racoon or a cockroach or a bald eagle into that of a human body. Or you could have two people who trade bodies. Hell, you could have a whole market of body trading and rentals. Or you could one day find out that the body you thought was yours all along was on loan from somebody else, and your real body was actually someplace far away. Outer space maybe. Who knows! Another fun possibility, a la Being John Malkovich and various PKD novels, you could have the ability to insert multiple people’s consciousness into the same avatar, so that a sort of group mind develops, everyone sharing the same set of physical experiences. I imagine if you existed as a transposed group mind long enough, you’d develop into a sort of internal polytheistic pantheon within the body you’re inhabiting. Maybe even one dominant personality would rise to the surface, forming a sort of jealous tyrannical New Ego, with “no other gods before me.” In fact, maybe all of humanity could be combined and distilled down into one body, the Adam Kadmon, filled with the sum total of human emotion, intelligence and experience in one body, the Singularity, the Second Coming of Eden.