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Posthuman Spiritual Existence
On Uploading Your Consciousness
I’m almost finished with Charles Stross sci-fi novel, Accelerando. I’ll put together a more formal review of it when I’m done, but in the meantime I wanted to run through an idea it spawned in my head. The novel depicts different stages of the Singularity, leading up to and through the point when humans begin uploading their consciousnesses into machines, etc.
And that got me thinking…
Let’s put ourselves, for a moment into a world where such things are hypothetically possible… That is, the technology exists to distill the essence of our selves and then transfer that essence into other containers. The most obvious example would be uploading your mind into some kind of collective internet. The consciousnet, I’ve called it before. If we could do that though, what would be to stop us from loading our minds up into some other formats? Say, we could experience life from the perspective of a bird, or from a rock, from a tree or from a cloud.
In that sense, when you interacted with objects and entities in a post-Singularity world, you would have a very different reaction to things than you might now. Because any and every object might be occupied by a human or once-human mind. You know how Ikea names all its furniture? I have a folding chair named “Jeff” myself. What if “Jeff” was actually a human who decided to experience the viewpoint of a chair for a while? What if your cat was actually inhabited by your mother who decided to upload her consciousness at the death of her human body into the form of a cat, because she always loved cats?
You probably see where I am going with this… If such a thing becomes technologically feasible in the future, who is to say that it hasn’t already occurred in the past? I maintain that in some very real sense, it already has. Except it didn’t involve computers or anything. It just involved spiritual beings who decided to “upload” (or download) themselves into matter for a while, to see what it would be like. Some of us have decided to be humans. Some have decided to be trees or ponds or television sets or cats. We see this sort of thinking in a lot of animist cultures and it suddenly makes a very real kind of sense to me. Also in Native American mythology, you’ll always hear terms like “Beaver People” or “Wolf People.” And I think what they mean by “people” in that sense is sentient beings who have decided to experience life from these perspectives for a while.
We could even try to link this theory up to science, or at least a loose scientism. We could make up some story about how the Big Bang is simply the last Singularity that the world went through. It is the point where all the spirits came together, transcended their previous reality and decided to consciously take on new forms for a time. If that’s the case, it seems important to remember that we all chose to come here, to exist in our present forms. And that we better stop complaining and start making the most of it - start trying to remember just what it was that appealed to us about this specific pattern of existence that we decided to plunge into it for a while…
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- Spiritual Wealth
- Computer OS of the Future
- Prev: Busting Adbusters
- Next: Living In TV
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:53 pm
It’s hypocritical to rant about the evils of technology on a blog. If you really believe that computers are Satan, put your money where your mouth is and ditch yours.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:13 pm
I’ve thought about these things myself. Taking it further, what if we become able to “upload” our consciousness into fields of energy? Light even…….
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:57 pm
“[In]…Australian Aborigine Dreaming stories, it becomes apparent, that before the time that “time” began, everything used to be fluid, with men being able to shape shift into animals. It was a time when their ancestors were sometimes spirit, sometimes sky, at others, the land itself. If this is the way they say things began, then one could expect that as things begin merging back into Oneness, that a fluid state is about to be re-entered.” St. Clair (
I have no idea who this is. The quote, however, covers what I remember learning about Dreamtime pretty well, as well as running pretty well with what you’re talking about.
Goplat, quit being asinine…Tim has mentioned many times before that science and technology are amoral. He’s just, I believe, pursuing an idea about the cult of supremacy around science and technology being a dangerous trajectory for society. If you honestly can’t tell the difference please back away from the computer…very…slowly…it might bite…
Ronin
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Tim this reminds me a little of the anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex where consious identity is transferable to completely artificial bodies. In the myth that runs through the background of the story (unless I’m mistaken) its possible for one’s consciousness to ultimately transcend the need for any body at all and merger with the NET. I would agree that it seems possible that we’re moving toward our origins as we contemplate the possiblity of transferring our consciousness to media other than
.
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:42 pm
oops
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:00 am
Your last paragraph is provocative and cogent. The earlier parts are old-fashioned rather than futuristic sci-fi, depending as they do on a notion of “the essence of ourselves” and “mind” and implicitly “consciousness”. The idea that these can be distilled, that our essence is “spirit”, is one which belongs to the old philosophies.
In mythology of all kinds, the disembodied spirit is commonplace, but in practice it’s always been a metaphor, pointing to nothing more than man’s restless imagination which flies untrammelled by the gross material of the body. But it makes more sense to conceive this imagination as being a product of the body and ultimately tied to it.
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:11 am
I have to say that I’ve long been entranced by the idea that all events in the sensate universe that we can be aware of (i.e. those that make it through our filters) are taking place simultaneously. This would mean that our nominally “usual” experience of this universe, (i.e. experience of gravity, linear time, topology, etc.) is simply an artifact of our method of percieving the world. Our senses intrepret information in the way they do, which shapes our perception of the universe. Our perception of time as necessarily linear is an artifact of the tools we use to percieve it in the first place. These artifacts are usually taken at face value; one can learn to percieve the universe in ways that do not conform to the models we are given from birth.
This idea of uploading consciousness into computers, however enticing it may seem, is likely to be a lot messier than we think. I believe these perspectives are achievable with nothing more than the tools we were born with. The downside of this is the fact these states and awarenesses are only accessible with the careful application of very hard work.
Have you read much of Deleuze & Guattari’s work on Becoming?
Highly recommended. If a bit dense.
-k
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:16 am
It’s hypocritical
Hey! I own that IKEA item. The Hypocritical a mattress that promises comfort but only delivers painful sex — only without the sex. Its all in my dreams — painful dreams — though, at least I am sleeping! But it would be hypocritical for you to not get my point though, wouldn’t it?
I wonder where the “uploading of consciousness” idea spawned from? I have long thought about it and well before any exposure to the Internet to boot. Yet it is a point in *coming history* (wtf is “coming history”) that I am well awaiting as though it were written in stone. Or a CGI representation of such.
Technocracy, meet your maker. I guess.
Only computers don’t say “I guess” and mean it.
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:59 pm
Wait, where in hell did I say that technology is evil?