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"I wrote many novels which … contained the element of the projected collective unconscious, which made them simply incomprehensible to anyone who read them, because they required the reader to accept my premise that each of us lives in a unique world."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Cortical Stack | ||
| Implanted hardware device that contains a backup copy of your mental self. |
It would be a shame to be killed if you could just copy your mental self and then record it somewhere at regular intervals. That way, if you were killed, your mental self could just be downloaded into a new body, and you would be as good as new.
| "You can't kill me just by wiping out my cortical stack." "You've got remote storage. How regular is the update?" Bancroft smiled. "Every 48 hours." He tapped the back of his neck. "Direct needlecast from here into a shielded stack over at the PsychaSec installation at Alcatraz." |
| Technovelgy from Altered Carbon,
by Richard Morgan. Published by Del Rey in 2003 Additional resources -
|
However, the problem is that you would be missing the interval of time that extends from your last backup to the point where you were killed. You might want to know what happened in that interval; Lauren Bancroft certainly does.
Compare to the virtual immortality that Arthur C. Clarke offers in his 1956 novel The City and the Stars.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Altered Carbon
More Ideas
and Technology by Richard Morgan
Tech news articles related to Altered Carbon
Tech news articles related to works by Richard Morgan
Cortical Stack-related
news articles:
- 'Mind Uploading' Issue Now Downloadable
- Neural Implant To Treat Memory Loss
- Will You Upload Your Mind Anytime Soon?
- Save Your Brain's Connectome, Upload Yourself Elsewhere
| Cortex 1 - Today A Warehouse, Tomorrow A Calculator Planet |
| Is Agentic AI The Wrong Kind Of Smartness? |
| Jetson Orin Nano Super 70 Just $249 |
| Automatic Bot Traffic Is 38 Percent Of HTTP Requests |
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'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
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'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
