META
Even though Fenspace is a techno utopian setting (or at least not dystopic) not all technology, even critically important tech, should succeed. This is a suggestion for some that was both very important, in what it did do, and the sort of failure, that makes people think twice, or even a third time, before risking repeating it.
Dopple Bot - 20/Sep/2012
Generation One
The idea was for fendane on Earth to be able to participate in the building of Kandor. In consequence, (crude stick-figure humanoid) robots made from mined Lunar minerals and with a brain grown from a small living fragment of Brain Coral in a salt water 'brain case' were waved-up in large numbers. The idea was these would be teleoperated from Earth, using a standard PC and a USB 'key' with a waved matching fragment of (dead) Brain Coral. No telecomms bandwidth would be wasted in the process.
These 'dopple bots' became very popular, and there were such things as 'pimp my bot' competitions in 'rest time'. Strangely, some operators seemed to be able to make their d-bots respond faster than speed of light limits would allow. Some operators worked themselves to exhaustion, and this was overlooked in the fever to build Kandor. There were reports of disturbed sleep, waking flash-backs, and body dysmorphism issues. Finally, one operator killed themselves with dehydration and exhaustion, and 'woke up' in their robot, on Luna.
There was an immediate response from the Kandor engineers, and they shut-down the dopple bot program. The robots were a problem, but they were shipped to Earth, Australia, and once they left the Moon they ceased to respond to their operators. Many of them are still in their silica wool nests, in the bonded warehouse, in Australia. The operators got to keep their 'bot keys' as mementos.
The operator who'd transmigrated to Luna ended up in a much better body (though with the same brain), and still lives in Kandor City. People who'd had psychological problems fully recovered after a month or so of not being operators. Some eventually bought their d-bots from the warehouse in Australia, but none of them would work on Earth.
Note that this was supposed to be purely a telepresence system, and at no point was there any 'mind copying'. The robot 'brain' was just supposed to learn from the operator, build up a local image of their physical reflexes and immediate reactions, so that the light-speed lag, caused by communicating between Earth and Luna, caused minimum problems. Somehow transferring your mind to the robot, which the operator had never met or touched, wasn't even theoretically possible.
Generation Two
It was argued that the dopple bots had proved so useful that they were needed as part of the Kandor Project. One researcher had a variant which allowed someone to copy their mind into a bot, which could then work 24/7, and everything was OK as long as the original and bot spent 20mins per day, linked together in a meditative state, 're-synchronising'. The hardware of these d-bots was identical to the G1 variety, except the brains were waved loaves of bread, baked with a drop of blood from the original. This was all claimed to be thoroughly tested and safe.
The d-bots worked brilliantly, and engineers pointed-out that with a d-bot they could do nearly four times as much work, as the bots needed no rest. Some took to dressing their bots up as human, and as near to their own appearance, as possible. Even putting them in pressure suits. Others made them look like weird monsters. The majority left them unaltered, except for the standard name tag, front and back.
A few tried to run more than one d-bot at once. This didn't work for most people,leaving them with problems like blinding headaches, but a small number could run up to seven, and one man, a Carlo Espinoza, could run up to fifty on a good day. These people became very popular for work requiring precise coordination. All seemed to be going well.
Problems began to appear when people skipped the odd re-sync session, for things like health reasons, social pressure, or just bad luck. The following session was particularly intense, and some reported similar symptoms to those that had caused alarm with the G1 d-bots. Clear advice was given not to skip re-sync sessions, and the researchers realised they had no procedure to follow for when someone stopped using a d-bot.
A set of tragic accidents brought things to a head. Carlo Espinoza was shot, dead, by a woman who claimed he was using several of his many d-bots to have affairs with other women. It turned out that the culprit was in fact a cousin of his, who was in fact allergic to d-bot use, and who quietly left Luna to return to Earth. All of Carlos d-bots, except one, went very strange, and a number had to be violently destroyed. The one said that it thought it was him, he'd had a near-death experience of looking down on his shot body, and wanted some time off to think about things.
The second accident was a man who was slowly crushed to death, without anyone being able to stop this. His d-bot went berserk within this time, and ran around grabbing people and other bots, insisting they must help. All the bots grabbed had some sort of attack, very shortly afterwards, and permanently shut-down, for no apparent reason. With so many people without d-bots it was possible to do tests. Quite a few people became deeply depressed, though this cleared-up after a few months. Those who tried to have a new, replacement, d-bot made found they couldn't re-sync with the new bot, and the bot went not at all pleasantly insane, and had to be destroyed. This did, however, seem to stop any problem with depression.
Reluctantly, the project team put in a recall-and-shutdown scheme for all the d-bots. Several people fled Luna, with their d-bots, rather than loose them. All the other d-bots were shutdown in a sealed Luna cavern, cryogenically preserved, for when the problems might be solved.
Note that this was not supposed to 'copy' people's minds, just give them the (temporary) ability to effectively split their attention, do more things at once. A sort of tool for the mind, as most tools assist what can be done with the body. The re-sync was supposed to let the bot owner know what the bot had been doing – the bot was a sort of temporary memory, an extra pair of hands. Unfortunately, some people came to identify too much with their d-bots, just as some people become very attached to tools, or their cars, and in a couple of cases this went so far that their d-bot was all that was left of someone.
Generation Three
Officially, no further work was done on dopple-bots, except research to solve the long-term problems. Unofficially, there were people who were sure there was a solution, somewhere in there, to the chronic Fen manpower shortage. Dr. Asmodeus Grey, who was still a respectable inventor and scientist at the time, was rumoured to dabble in this. Supposedly some of his d-bots went very strange, and did research which was very ethically dubious, though nothing was ever proven. People wondered later if this work had pushed him over the edge.
By accident a researcher discovered a way for an individual to use up to fifty d-bots at a time, with no risk to their sanity. This involves making short-lifespan d-bots, which will automatically cease after 48hrs. No re-sync is ever attempted, though the bots can leave records and notes for their original. The critical trick is entering a light meditative trance in which you think about your mortality, and understand that you could soon die, then linking to and activating one or more new d-bots.
The only researcher who discovered this told Brains one evening, while drinking at a science fiction convention held in the newly domed Kandor City. He said he'd told no one else, destroyed all his notes, and was going off to become a nun. Brains never heard from him again. He did wonder if Emily was somehow involved in this event.
Why did the researcher decide to end his research, burn all notes and vanish?
If you are a moral and ethical researcher working on this sort of project, who have you got to use as an experimental subject? Yourself. The odds are strongly against you getting it right first time. And, by the time you get something that is safe, are you going to be sure that the research was worth it in the first place?
You should consider yourself lucky you can walk away, with your physical health, and with some hope you might fully recover, mentally, in a few years. It's also possible the researcher found out things, both about themselves, and the ways that this tech might be abused, that made them really unhappy. He probably had to 'dispose of' quite a few 'insane' d-bots in the process of 'completing' the research, and still the basic problems haven't been solved. Spiritual and self-image problems driving someone to go off, change sex, and enter a contemplative religious order... There are worse fates.
Brains has every reason to be suspicious as to why he might find out about this, but, he has a habit of talking to some very strange people at science fiction conventions... Brains is almost completely certain that the man who talked to him wasn't Dr. Asmodeius Grey. And, he doesn't think he was talking to a dopple bot. It's worth noting that the man didn't give Brains anything but a description of a process, but, knowing something is possible is often the critical thing in research.
Note, on a meta level, that there isn't known to be any large scale trials of what G3 d-bots could do. They could have some quirks that make people as unwilling to use them as G1 and G2. Again, these are not copies of minds, they are just ways of doing more things than otherwise would be possible. Arguably G3 gives less feedback as to what your d-bot has done than G2 did, and hence is less useful, even though it's claimed that it's 'far safer'.
META - Note: Part of the fictional basis of this is the "Machine Smith" Marvel character (who was 'Mr Fear' before he died and was uploaded by his robots - and was so unhappy about his flawed 'immortality' he tried to commit suicide via super hero), Will McCarthy's "Lost in Transmission", and the golems of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiln_People .
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
Even though Fenspace is a techno utopian setting (or at least not dystopic) not all technology, even critically important tech, should succeed. This is a suggestion for some that was both very important, in what it did do, and the sort of failure, that makes people think twice, or even a third time, before risking repeating it.
Dopple Bot - 20/Sep/2012
Generation One
The idea was for fendane on Earth to be able to participate in the building of Kandor. In consequence, (crude stick-figure humanoid) robots made from mined Lunar minerals and with a brain grown from a small living fragment of Brain Coral in a salt water 'brain case' were waved-up in large numbers. The idea was these would be teleoperated from Earth, using a standard PC and a USB 'key' with a waved matching fragment of (dead) Brain Coral. No telecomms bandwidth would be wasted in the process.
These 'dopple bots' became very popular, and there were such things as 'pimp my bot' competitions in 'rest time'. Strangely, some operators seemed to be able to make their d-bots respond faster than speed of light limits would allow. Some operators worked themselves to exhaustion, and this was overlooked in the fever to build Kandor. There were reports of disturbed sleep, waking flash-backs, and body dysmorphism issues. Finally, one operator killed themselves with dehydration and exhaustion, and 'woke up' in their robot, on Luna.
There was an immediate response from the Kandor engineers, and they shut-down the dopple bot program. The robots were a problem, but they were shipped to Earth, Australia, and once they left the Moon they ceased to respond to their operators. Many of them are still in their silica wool nests, in the bonded warehouse, in Australia. The operators got to keep their 'bot keys' as mementos.
The operator who'd transmigrated to Luna ended up in a much better body (though with the same brain), and still lives in Kandor City. People who'd had psychological problems fully recovered after a month or so of not being operators. Some eventually bought their d-bots from the warehouse in Australia, but none of them would work on Earth.
Note that this was supposed to be purely a telepresence system, and at no point was there any 'mind copying'. The robot 'brain' was just supposed to learn from the operator, build up a local image of their physical reflexes and immediate reactions, so that the light-speed lag, caused by communicating between Earth and Luna, caused minimum problems. Somehow transferring your mind to the robot, which the operator had never met or touched, wasn't even theoretically possible.
Generation Two
It was argued that the dopple bots had proved so useful that they were needed as part of the Kandor Project. One researcher had a variant which allowed someone to copy their mind into a bot, which could then work 24/7, and everything was OK as long as the original and bot spent 20mins per day, linked together in a meditative state, 're-synchronising'. The hardware of these d-bots was identical to the G1 variety, except the brains were waved loaves of bread, baked with a drop of blood from the original. This was all claimed to be thoroughly tested and safe.
The d-bots worked brilliantly, and engineers pointed-out that with a d-bot they could do nearly four times as much work, as the bots needed no rest. Some took to dressing their bots up as human, and as near to their own appearance, as possible. Even putting them in pressure suits. Others made them look like weird monsters. The majority left them unaltered, except for the standard name tag, front and back.
A few tried to run more than one d-bot at once. This didn't work for most people,leaving them with problems like blinding headaches, but a small number could run up to seven, and one man, a Carlo Espinoza, could run up to fifty on a good day. These people became very popular for work requiring precise coordination. All seemed to be going well.
Problems began to appear when people skipped the odd re-sync session, for things like health reasons, social pressure, or just bad luck. The following session was particularly intense, and some reported similar symptoms to those that had caused alarm with the G1 d-bots. Clear advice was given not to skip re-sync sessions, and the researchers realised they had no procedure to follow for when someone stopped using a d-bot.
A set of tragic accidents brought things to a head. Carlo Espinoza was shot, dead, by a woman who claimed he was using several of his many d-bots to have affairs with other women. It turned out that the culprit was in fact a cousin of his, who was in fact allergic to d-bot use, and who quietly left Luna to return to Earth. All of Carlos d-bots, except one, went very strange, and a number had to be violently destroyed. The one said that it thought it was him, he'd had a near-death experience of looking down on his shot body, and wanted some time off to think about things.
The second accident was a man who was slowly crushed to death, without anyone being able to stop this. His d-bot went berserk within this time, and ran around grabbing people and other bots, insisting they must help. All the bots grabbed had some sort of attack, very shortly afterwards, and permanently shut-down, for no apparent reason. With so many people without d-bots it was possible to do tests. Quite a few people became deeply depressed, though this cleared-up after a few months. Those who tried to have a new, replacement, d-bot made found they couldn't re-sync with the new bot, and the bot went not at all pleasantly insane, and had to be destroyed. This did, however, seem to stop any problem with depression.
Reluctantly, the project team put in a recall-and-shutdown scheme for all the d-bots. Several people fled Luna, with their d-bots, rather than loose them. All the other d-bots were shutdown in a sealed Luna cavern, cryogenically preserved, for when the problems might be solved.
Note that this was not supposed to 'copy' people's minds, just give them the (temporary) ability to effectively split their attention, do more things at once. A sort of tool for the mind, as most tools assist what can be done with the body. The re-sync was supposed to let the bot owner know what the bot had been doing – the bot was a sort of temporary memory, an extra pair of hands. Unfortunately, some people came to identify too much with their d-bots, just as some people become very attached to tools, or their cars, and in a couple of cases this went so far that their d-bot was all that was left of someone.
Generation Three
Officially, no further work was done on dopple-bots, except research to solve the long-term problems. Unofficially, there were people who were sure there was a solution, somewhere in there, to the chronic Fen manpower shortage. Dr. Asmodeus Grey, who was still a respectable inventor and scientist at the time, was rumoured to dabble in this. Supposedly some of his d-bots went very strange, and did research which was very ethically dubious, though nothing was ever proven. People wondered later if this work had pushed him over the edge.
By accident a researcher discovered a way for an individual to use up to fifty d-bots at a time, with no risk to their sanity. This involves making short-lifespan d-bots, which will automatically cease after 48hrs. No re-sync is ever attempted, though the bots can leave records and notes for their original. The critical trick is entering a light meditative trance in which you think about your mortality, and understand that you could soon die, then linking to and activating one or more new d-bots.
The only researcher who discovered this told Brains one evening, while drinking at a science fiction convention held in the newly domed Kandor City. He said he'd told no one else, destroyed all his notes, and was going off to become a nun. Brains never heard from him again. He did wonder if Emily was somehow involved in this event.
Why did the researcher decide to end his research, burn all notes and vanish?
If you are a moral and ethical researcher working on this sort of project, who have you got to use as an experimental subject? Yourself. The odds are strongly against you getting it right first time. And, by the time you get something that is safe, are you going to be sure that the research was worth it in the first place?
You should consider yourself lucky you can walk away, with your physical health, and with some hope you might fully recover, mentally, in a few years. It's also possible the researcher found out things, both about themselves, and the ways that this tech might be abused, that made them really unhappy. He probably had to 'dispose of' quite a few 'insane' d-bots in the process of 'completing' the research, and still the basic problems haven't been solved. Spiritual and self-image problems driving someone to go off, change sex, and enter a contemplative religious order... There are worse fates.
Brains has every reason to be suspicious as to why he might find out about this, but, he has a habit of talking to some very strange people at science fiction conventions... Brains is almost completely certain that the man who talked to him wasn't Dr. Asmodeius Grey. And, he doesn't think he was talking to a dopple bot. It's worth noting that the man didn't give Brains anything but a description of a process, but, knowing something is possible is often the critical thing in research.
Note, on a meta level, that there isn't known to be any large scale trials of what G3 d-bots could do. They could have some quirks that make people as unwilling to use them as G1 and G2. Again, these are not copies of minds, they are just ways of doing more things than otherwise would be possible. Arguably G3 gives less feedback as to what your d-bot has done than G2 did, and hence is less useful, even though it's claimed that it's 'far safer'.
META - Note: Part of the fictional basis of this is the "Machine Smith" Marvel character (who was 'Mr Fear' before he died and was uploaded by his robots - and was so unhappy about his flawed 'immortality' he tried to commit suicide via super hero), Will McCarthy's "Lost in Transmission", and the golems of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiln_People .
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind