Science Fiction is generally one of our best guides to the future, not in detail, but as a general way to explore what’s possible and what it will mean.
However, there’s one thing that I think Sci Fi commonly gets very wrong. Transferring consciousness is something that happens in almost every series, and in many books. It can be the episode where everyone has their personalities swapped around in the team (and hilarity ensues), the episode where someone has their personality moved into a computer or robot (and their body falls empty to the ground, soon to die if they aren’t restored), or transporters that disassemble people into atoms and put them back together in a different place, but can’t make a copy. There are exceptions, but they are generally just that, exceptions. There are very few pieces of fiction in which copies (not transfers) are casually possible, because it’s just too hard to imagine what that would do to a society.
There are, of course, works that float around the idea. Kiln People is about a society that makes copies daily, but the copies either die in a few days or merge back in to the original. John Varley’s universe has a general rule of only one body per set of genes (sucks to be an identical twin). John C. Wright in the “The Golden Age” trilogy thinks about this in some real detail.
However, what most story lines do is transfer personalities, not copy them. In terms of real physics (not magic spells), I can’t imagine a way to transfer a personality, but I can imagine a way to copy one.
Picture a drawing on a piece of paper. Making another drawing on another piece of paper that looks like the first is something we can do, and with the right equipment do almost (but not quite) perfectly. However, we aren’t transferring the drawing, we’re coping it, and usually, the initial drawing isn’t disturbed at all. We can then destroy the original, if we chose. But if we do, we have a copy, not the original on a new piece of paper.
Using a transporter that moves you somewhere instantly is a comfortable idea. Using one that makes a copy of you somewhere else, then kills you , is not. My copy might not mind, but I’d hesitate a very long time before telling Scotty to beam me up! This already uncomfortable idea is made worse when you realize that photocopies are… imperfect. They are a lot like the original, but not identical.
I think that in time, the technologies to make copies of peoples minds will be real (probably computerized copies long before new bodies). I also think that we need to spend a lot of time thinking about this before that happens. If people can copy themselves, then a LOT of things change. Is the sanctity of life to be treasured for someone who copies themselves a thousand times as a joke? Is “one man, one vote” still fair? Is the suicide of a sick person with a copy in a healthy body bad?
I have no answers, just questions. And, of course, a challenge to science fiction authors to start moving these questions further into the public view.
