(2019-04-26) Rucker Lifebox For Telepathy And Immortality

Rudy Rucker: Lifebox for Telepathy and Immortality.

What is a Lifebox?

Producing basic lifeboxes is well within our current abilities. And over time the AI layers may evolve to pass the Turing test.

Lifebox Use Case: Interactive Memoir (cf Replika)

Training a Lifebox

The initial market for the lifebox is simple. Old people want to write down their life stories, and with a lifebox they don’t have to write, they can get by with just talking

The lifebox uses hypertext links to hook together everything you say.

I imagine a white-haired old duffer named Ned

At some point Ned dies. But he’s trained his lifebox. His grandchildren, little Billy and big Sis, play with Ned’s lifebox.

A lifebox would serve as a conversational context. Sharing lifebox contexts replaces the mass of common memories and cultural referents that you depend on with friends.

Lifebox Use Case: Natural Language Recognition

Telepathy

suppose now that we come up with something like a brain-wave-based cell phone. I call such a device an uvvy. An uvvy might instead be like a removable plastic leech that perches on the back of a user’s neck.

The most obvious use of an uvvy would be to use it like a videophone, sending words and images. But I want you to imagine people sharing direct links into each others’ minds! I refer to this type of advanced telepathy by the word teep.

Lifebox Use Case: Understanding Teep

as well as using the ethereal brain-wave-type signals, you’ll want to use hyperlinks into the other user’s lifebox context. The combination of the two channels can make the teep comprehensible

Lifebox Use Case: Blocking Ads and Impersonation

Recipe for Consciousness.

Immortality

Long answer, from Antonio Damasio

Images of objects.
Image of self.
Movie-in-the-brain.
Consciousness = Watch your self watching your movie-in-the-brain

Lifebox Use Case: Juicy Ghosts

You don’t want Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook or their like to own your ghost. You want your ghost to be a free agent.

you might be a juicy ghost—living in the brain of a dog, a bird, or a rat.

See also my online lifebox prototype, “Search Rudy’s Lifebox,” at http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/rudys-lifebox.

I discussed the lifebox at some length in my futurological novel Saucer Wisdom, and in my nonfiction tome, The LifeBox, the Sea Shell, and the Soul.