"Ian Watson - Ahead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

would never call those motives selfish. Immortality is not a selfish concept
but is a watchword of faith in the survival and advancement of the human
race. Immortality treasures what we have been, what we are, and what we
shall become in the huge aeons ahead of us.

In a state of considerable excitement, we of the Immortalist Network
confided the motives which we had inserted in our box.

To share in the Future.

To know what will be.

To reach the Stars. (That was mine.)

To strive, to seek, to find.

Manifest destiny of Homo Sap!

p = fp nc fl fi fc . (Which is the famous Drake Equation for the number of
extraterrestrial civilisations out in space.)

Even: To go boldly.

And, wittily: I want to keep ahead. (To Keep A Head. Ho!)

In the future world, would our heads be provided with new bodies? New
bottles for the old wine, as it were? The Forethought Institute assured us
that nanotechnology was just around the corner. Another thirty or forty
years, judging by state of the art and according to Delphi Polls. Eighty
years at the most. Working in vats of raw materials, millions of molecule-
size programmed assemblers would speedily construct, if not living
bodies, then at least excellent artificial prosthetic bodies. These might be
preferable to living bodies, being more resilient and versatile.

Even failing this, surely our minds could be mapped into electronic
storage with the processing capacity to simulate entire virtual-reality
worlds, as well as interfacing with the real world. Those who had
despaired would be fulfilled. Idealists would reap their reward.


file:///C|/3278%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Ahead.html (3 of 14) [1/17/2005 6:51:08 PM]
Ahead! - a story by Ian Watson


Ought criminal Obligatories to receive resilient versatile new bodies?
Should their electronic versions be allowed full access to a virtual-reality
domain? That was for the future to decide -- a future where the roots of
mischief were better understood, and could be pruned or edited.

With what hopes and longings I approach the decapitation clinic on this