Stanley Bing's Blog
December 19, 2017
From PageHabit.com: An Interview with Stanley Bing
An Interview with Stanley Bing, Author of December Sci-Fi Pick, Immortal Life
Stanley Bing is the author of Immortal Life, a satirical take on the quest for immortality and the people that will do anything, bizarre technologies and exorbitant costs included, to get there. He graciously answered a few questions for us over at PageHabit HQ about writing, the (not-so-distant) future of technology, and why he’d go head-to-head with Dostoyevsky in a game of poker.
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into writing? When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I’ve been writing since I was a very young person. I started as a child writing stuff that a little kid would enjoy, mostly wild animals eating other wild animals. When I was a moody teenager, I wrote moody poetry, and I’ve continued to write poetry for myself since that time, although I know I’ll never be a real, professional poet because I can’t stop my poems from rhyming. Over the years, I’ve been an actor, a playwright and, for many years, an executive working for a gigantic multinational corporation is one of the worst kept secrets in business. A long time ago, I took the name Stanley Bing as a pseudonym because I wanted to be like Zorro or Superman and have a secret identity when I went to work as Clark Kent every day. That’s been fun. I was busted a long time ago, however, a fact that can be verified simply by Googling my pen name. So now I live quite openly as two people. Usually one of us is having more fun than the other. Bing does most of the writing, though. Since I created him, he’s written about 12 books and thousands of columns for magazines, when there were magazines.
How long did it take to finish your book? How has it changed since you first began writing it?
I’ve been working on this book for a very long time. The idea started at a business meeting maybe ten years ago or more. We had a futurist in who talked about some trends that were developing. I took notes and began to formulate the entire world that is built into Immortal Life. Of course, I put my own mostly irreverent assumptions and conclusions into it. For instance, lots of people are blowing tons of hot air, in my humble opinion, about self-driving cars. My true attitude about that development may be found in the book, but I don’t think it’s any secret that I think totally autonomous vehicles – and the resulting loss of the right of individuals to drive their own cars – is a stupid idea. About three or four years ago, I began to look into all the areas of science that were developing, particularly the technology behind life extension and personality transfer. There is nothing in Immortal Life that is not being developed and experimented on right now by scientists in the employ of extremely rich organizations and people who don’t want to get old and die. The research part of the book took, perhaps, three years and continued up to the final drafts that were edited for publication. The thing itself took me 18 months to write – it started as Gene, the hero’s, first person story, but my editor gave me the very helpful suggestion to put the book into the third person with an omniscient narrator. Since I myself am omniscient, I found that note very helpful. Once I recast the voice in that way, the storytelling took off and flew.
Do you have any specific or strange writing rituals that get you into a groove?
When I am truly intent on getting something done, I go outside on the balcony of my apartment in Los Angeles and smoke a cigar while I am writing. I smoke a smallish cigar that takes quite a bit of time to burn. I can usually get an hour of solid writing in before it’s gone and then I’m over the procrastination hump well enough to continue with the pacifier. In the early stages of my project – or at the beginnings of new chapters – I also like to write in longhand with a “magic pen,” or one I consider in possession of the spirit of the project. I think the stuff closest to your brain, heart and spleen comes out through longhand writing. Not that computers don’t also put out good writing. But the rough drafts often work best when they flow directly from your hand to the pen and onto the paper.
Which books would you bring with you to a deserted island?
The complete Oxford English Dictionary, which is not only interesting – tracing the full history of every word in the language going back in some cases thousands of years — but helps you sleep. Moby Dick, for the same reason, and either War and Peace by Tolstoy or The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. Big Books you can read over and over again. And let’s not forget a complete volume of John James Audubon’s illustrations of birds. They’re awesome. And when all the real birds on the planet are extinct, we’ll still have that book.
In your opinion, has there ever been a movie adaptation better than the original book?
Yes. The Godfather. The book by Mario Puzo is excellent, of course, but with all due respect for its wisdom, its magnificent story and its excellent writing, it’s not what you would call the best literature ever created by the mind of a man or woman. The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola, on the other hand, is arguably the greatest movie ever made, an infinitely rewarding work of art that one can view again and again and still get insights out of it, particularly if you work in Business, even a legitimate one.
Which three authors would you invite to a dinner party and why?
I’m going to assume that it’s okay to invite some dead people and that they would show up in a condition suitable for discussion, not rotting away from their nether regions with clothes all dripping with slime. In that case, I would love to have a chat with Shakespeare, who must have been incredibly interesting to speak with and very brilliant on a variety of subjects, obviously, and also an actor, meaning he was probably charming, eager to be liked and willing to make an extra effort to be entertaining. I’d like to spend some time with Dostoyevsky, because by the end of the evening we’d end up playing a high-stakes poker game and, if his actual history is any indication, I would be able to take him to the cleaners as he got increasingly drunk and prone to losing his shirt. I’d also like to invite Joseph Heller, who wrote Catch 22 and Something Happened. I love his sense of humor, his understanding of large organizations like the Army and Corporations and how they work on people, and how people work on them.
Do you have any advice for young writers?
Sure. Writing is like any other habit. If you do it three times a week, you have a habit. If you don’t, you have to depend on inspiration, which is 100% less reliable if you intend to make writing a serious profession. If you have a bit of a ritual around it, that helps too. There are people who get an idea and sit down and blurt it out now and then without the assistance of habitual behavior. But if you want to really be a writer – and not one of the millions who “could have written if I had the time” – you’ll establish certain rituals that, like exercise, become part of who you are. When I have a column, short story or book in process, I get up very early and begin writing when there is really nothing else to do. I stay away from my iPad and social media then. I just get up, get some coffee, sit down and write. After two hours it’s usually time to get the other part of my day started. I find that if I do this, get a chunk of writing done very first thing, I’m happy, later in the day, to edit what I’ve written and maybe even put down a bit more. I’m a quick writer (except when plotting out new chapters, when I do a bit more noodling and doodling), so if I really do put in two hours or so every day I end up with quite a bit of work after a month or two. I also feel much better about myself as a writer. Procrastination is a weird phenomenon, like drug addiction or gambling. It makes you feel so terrible about yourself you have to keep on doing it. Don’t ask me why. And the only thing that can break it is the establishment of a conflicting habit – like writing.
Another piece of advice is debatable and runs counter to much of the training you will receive if you take writing courses. I hate showing my stuff to anybody while I’m working on it. I despise idiotic criticism that makes me doubt myself and positive reactions are even less helpful. I find I only believe negative comments and am annoyed by praise at the wrong moments. Every time I show my work too early, or even talk about it with loved ones or friends, I end up being unable to continue writing it. Consequently, I don’t do well at workshops with the stuff I really care about. I don’t show my writing to anybody while it’s underway, not even my family or closest friends, not even if I think they would like it, and when it’s done the only person I show it to is my editor. My advice is this: Don’t talk about your project. Don’t show it to anybody while you’re writing it. It may help. But it may also kill your project dead and turn it back into a “good idea.”
Oh, and don’t censor or edit yourself while you’re writing. Most of the time, while you’re working, you may feel “Boy, this really stinks.” Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. But that little voice will destroy your will to write every time. Tell it to shut up and keep writing.
What is your favorite thing you have ever received in the mail?
When I was eight I sent away two dollars for a treasure trove of stamps from around the world. They came in a huge box and there were a million of them from places that no longer exist – countries that have since disappeared from the globe, most of them. But that was fun. The worst thing is that I sent away for what the ad in the comic book said was a fully-functional backyard tent my friends and I could camp out in. What arrived was a gigantic tarp made of low grade plastic of some kind that smelled like an armpit. I threw it out.
What books would you recommend to people intrigued by the themes of Immortal Life?
If you liked Immortal Life, you might also enjoy…
1. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley: One of the great predictive piece of speculative fiction ever written. A future where everybody is on a very mild psychotropic drug that makes them feel pleasant all the time. Zoloft, anyone?
2. 1984, by George Orwell: The original dystopian vision of a future dominated by Big Brother, where truth is lies, war is peace, and freedom is slavery. You can read this or open your morning newsfeed. This is probably more upbeat at this point.
3. Erewhon, by Samuel Butler, probably one of the most intelligent, witty and under-appreciated writers of the last several hundred years. Erewhon (Nowhere spelled backwards, pretty much) is a fictional Utopia that has problems of its own but is still a relatively pleasant place.
4. Utopia, by Thomas More. The original attempt to scope out a perfect society. It was first published in 1516 in Latin, but you should be able to find it in English.
5. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov. Probably the greatest Sci-Fi series ever written. A comprehensive and gripping vision of the future.
6. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick. One of the primary sources for the original Blade Runner. Fantastic book, dark, violent and mysterious, beautifully imagined and written.
7. Lloyd, What Happened, by Stanley Bing. Okay, I wrote it, and I still think it’s one of the best evocations of organizational life ever done. People don’t really know what it’s like to work in business. This lets you in on a few of the well-guarded secrets and is a heck of a good story as well.
http://blog.pagehabit.com/2017/12/int...
Stanley Bing is the author of Immortal Life, a satirical take on the quest for immortality and the people that will do anything, bizarre technologies and exorbitant costs included, to get there. He graciously answered a few questions for us over at PageHabit HQ about writing, the (not-so-distant) future of technology, and why he’d go head-to-head with Dostoyevsky in a game of poker.
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into writing? When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I’ve been writing since I was a very young person. I started as a child writing stuff that a little kid would enjoy, mostly wild animals eating other wild animals. When I was a moody teenager, I wrote moody poetry, and I’ve continued to write poetry for myself since that time, although I know I’ll never be a real, professional poet because I can’t stop my poems from rhyming. Over the years, I’ve been an actor, a playwright and, for many years, an executive working for a gigantic multinational corporation is one of the worst kept secrets in business. A long time ago, I took the name Stanley Bing as a pseudonym because I wanted to be like Zorro or Superman and have a secret identity when I went to work as Clark Kent every day. That’s been fun. I was busted a long time ago, however, a fact that can be verified simply by Googling my pen name. So now I live quite openly as two people. Usually one of us is having more fun than the other. Bing does most of the writing, though. Since I created him, he’s written about 12 books and thousands of columns for magazines, when there were magazines.
How long did it take to finish your book? How has it changed since you first began writing it?
I’ve been working on this book for a very long time. The idea started at a business meeting maybe ten years ago or more. We had a futurist in who talked about some trends that were developing. I took notes and began to formulate the entire world that is built into Immortal Life. Of course, I put my own mostly irreverent assumptions and conclusions into it. For instance, lots of people are blowing tons of hot air, in my humble opinion, about self-driving cars. My true attitude about that development may be found in the book, but I don’t think it’s any secret that I think totally autonomous vehicles – and the resulting loss of the right of individuals to drive their own cars – is a stupid idea. About three or four years ago, I began to look into all the areas of science that were developing, particularly the technology behind life extension and personality transfer. There is nothing in Immortal Life that is not being developed and experimented on right now by scientists in the employ of extremely rich organizations and people who don’t want to get old and die. The research part of the book took, perhaps, three years and continued up to the final drafts that were edited for publication. The thing itself took me 18 months to write – it started as Gene, the hero’s, first person story, but my editor gave me the very helpful suggestion to put the book into the third person with an omniscient narrator. Since I myself am omniscient, I found that note very helpful. Once I recast the voice in that way, the storytelling took off and flew.
Do you have any specific or strange writing rituals that get you into a groove?
When I am truly intent on getting something done, I go outside on the balcony of my apartment in Los Angeles and smoke a cigar while I am writing. I smoke a smallish cigar that takes quite a bit of time to burn. I can usually get an hour of solid writing in before it’s gone and then I’m over the procrastination hump well enough to continue with the pacifier. In the early stages of my project – or at the beginnings of new chapters – I also like to write in longhand with a “magic pen,” or one I consider in possession of the spirit of the project. I think the stuff closest to your brain, heart and spleen comes out through longhand writing. Not that computers don’t also put out good writing. But the rough drafts often work best when they flow directly from your hand to the pen and onto the paper.
Which books would you bring with you to a deserted island?
The complete Oxford English Dictionary, which is not only interesting – tracing the full history of every word in the language going back in some cases thousands of years — but helps you sleep. Moby Dick, for the same reason, and either War and Peace by Tolstoy or The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. Big Books you can read over and over again. And let’s not forget a complete volume of John James Audubon’s illustrations of birds. They’re awesome. And when all the real birds on the planet are extinct, we’ll still have that book.
In your opinion, has there ever been a movie adaptation better than the original book?
Yes. The Godfather. The book by Mario Puzo is excellent, of course, but with all due respect for its wisdom, its magnificent story and its excellent writing, it’s not what you would call the best literature ever created by the mind of a man or woman. The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola, on the other hand, is arguably the greatest movie ever made, an infinitely rewarding work of art that one can view again and again and still get insights out of it, particularly if you work in Business, even a legitimate one.
Which three authors would you invite to a dinner party and why?
I’m going to assume that it’s okay to invite some dead people and that they would show up in a condition suitable for discussion, not rotting away from their nether regions with clothes all dripping with slime. In that case, I would love to have a chat with Shakespeare, who must have been incredibly interesting to speak with and very brilliant on a variety of subjects, obviously, and also an actor, meaning he was probably charming, eager to be liked and willing to make an extra effort to be entertaining. I’d like to spend some time with Dostoyevsky, because by the end of the evening we’d end up playing a high-stakes poker game and, if his actual history is any indication, I would be able to take him to the cleaners as he got increasingly drunk and prone to losing his shirt. I’d also like to invite Joseph Heller, who wrote Catch 22 and Something Happened. I love his sense of humor, his understanding of large organizations like the Army and Corporations and how they work on people, and how people work on them.
Do you have any advice for young writers?
Sure. Writing is like any other habit. If you do it three times a week, you have a habit. If you don’t, you have to depend on inspiration, which is 100% less reliable if you intend to make writing a serious profession. If you have a bit of a ritual around it, that helps too. There are people who get an idea and sit down and blurt it out now and then without the assistance of habitual behavior. But if you want to really be a writer – and not one of the millions who “could have written if I had the time” – you’ll establish certain rituals that, like exercise, become part of who you are. When I have a column, short story or book in process, I get up very early and begin writing when there is really nothing else to do. I stay away from my iPad and social media then. I just get up, get some coffee, sit down and write. After two hours it’s usually time to get the other part of my day started. I find that if I do this, get a chunk of writing done very first thing, I’m happy, later in the day, to edit what I’ve written and maybe even put down a bit more. I’m a quick writer (except when plotting out new chapters, when I do a bit more noodling and doodling), so if I really do put in two hours or so every day I end up with quite a bit of work after a month or two. I also feel much better about myself as a writer. Procrastination is a weird phenomenon, like drug addiction or gambling. It makes you feel so terrible about yourself you have to keep on doing it. Don’t ask me why. And the only thing that can break it is the establishment of a conflicting habit – like writing.
Another piece of advice is debatable and runs counter to much of the training you will receive if you take writing courses. I hate showing my stuff to anybody while I’m working on it. I despise idiotic criticism that makes me doubt myself and positive reactions are even less helpful. I find I only believe negative comments and am annoyed by praise at the wrong moments. Every time I show my work too early, or even talk about it with loved ones or friends, I end up being unable to continue writing it. Consequently, I don’t do well at workshops with the stuff I really care about. I don’t show my writing to anybody while it’s underway, not even my family or closest friends, not even if I think they would like it, and when it’s done the only person I show it to is my editor. My advice is this: Don’t talk about your project. Don’t show it to anybody while you’re writing it. It may help. But it may also kill your project dead and turn it back into a “good idea.”
Oh, and don’t censor or edit yourself while you’re writing. Most of the time, while you’re working, you may feel “Boy, this really stinks.” Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. But that little voice will destroy your will to write every time. Tell it to shut up and keep writing.
What is your favorite thing you have ever received in the mail?
When I was eight I sent away two dollars for a treasure trove of stamps from around the world. They came in a huge box and there were a million of them from places that no longer exist – countries that have since disappeared from the globe, most of them. But that was fun. The worst thing is that I sent away for what the ad in the comic book said was a fully-functional backyard tent my friends and I could camp out in. What arrived was a gigantic tarp made of low grade plastic of some kind that smelled like an armpit. I threw it out.
What books would you recommend to people intrigued by the themes of Immortal Life?
If you liked Immortal Life, you might also enjoy…
1. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley: One of the great predictive piece of speculative fiction ever written. A future where everybody is on a very mild psychotropic drug that makes them feel pleasant all the time. Zoloft, anyone?
2. 1984, by George Orwell: The original dystopian vision of a future dominated by Big Brother, where truth is lies, war is peace, and freedom is slavery. You can read this or open your morning newsfeed. This is probably more upbeat at this point.
3. Erewhon, by Samuel Butler, probably one of the most intelligent, witty and under-appreciated writers of the last several hundred years. Erewhon (Nowhere spelled backwards, pretty much) is a fictional Utopia that has problems of its own but is still a relatively pleasant place.
4. Utopia, by Thomas More. The original attempt to scope out a perfect society. It was first published in 1516 in Latin, but you should be able to find it in English.
5. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov. Probably the greatest Sci-Fi series ever written. A comprehensive and gripping vision of the future.
6. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick. One of the primary sources for the original Blade Runner. Fantastic book, dark, violent and mysterious, beautifully imagined and written.
7. Lloyd, What Happened, by Stanley Bing. Okay, I wrote it, and I still think it’s one of the best evocations of organizational life ever done. People don’t really know what it’s like to work in business. This lets you in on a few of the well-guarded secrets and is a heck of a good story as well.
http://blog.pagehabit.com/2017/12/int...
December 16, 2017
The Downloadable Brain: We're closer than we think to immortality
Stanley Bing considers rooting for the bad guys in search of eternal life
December 8, 2017 By Stanley Bing (Originally published on LitHub.com)
Two millennia ago, a young carpenter appeared in what is now Israel and, in addition to suggesting some guidelines on personal behavior, offered the gift of eternal life to those who believed in him. This went over well, since the prevailing religion of his people was noticeably weak in that department, lacking clear rewards for the virtuous. His apostle presented the deal in no uncertain terms: “He that heareth my word,” said John, “and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life.” So far nobody has come back to testify to the veracity of this offer on the next plane of existence, but no one has disproved it, either. So that works for some people. It still doesn’t get to the nub of the matter, though. You still have to die in that scenario.
Some have searched for magic poultices, creams and liquids. In the 16th century, it was Ponce de Leon who reportedly searched Florida for waters that would stave off his rapidly approaching old age. Today, people follow in his footsteps, settling down in Boca, Hollywood and Jupiter Beach to achieve the same objective, with much the same lack of results, and in Beverly Hills, gorgons with crimped, distorted mouths and desiccated eyesacks roam Rodeo Drive, tweaking and slicing into themselves as they worship at the shrine of perpetual youth. Some even look okay at a very great distance.
It’s discouraging. Even if one buys into the notion of reincarnation, you are still only preserving the spirit; consciousness doesn’t make the trip from one life to the next. Plus, there is also the possibility that one will return in the next life as a stoat, or a guy whose karma involves the weekly cleaning of portable toilets at construction sites. Not the true vision of eternal life most of us would like, which involves sticking around without ever shuffling off this mortal coil at all, seeing the world change and evolve over generations.
No, for true advancement towards humanity’s most elusive goal, we must turn to the religion that we tend to like now: Technology. And the good news is that in this area we may actually be on the brink of success. For today, enormous gains are being made in the branch of computer science that is working to deliver eternal life to those who can afford it. Those in the hunt are far from snake-oil salesmen or alt-right marketers of nutty fluids. These are distinguished scientists making the prognostications. Nick Bostrom of Oxford University described the concept: “If emulation of particular brains is possible and affordable,” he wrote in a 2008 paper, “and if concerns about individual identity can be met, such emulation would enable back-up copies and ‘digital immortality.’”
Let’s take a moment to consider why this whole idea is not just futurist bushwah. The human brain, while based on an organic platform, is essentially a vast electronic switching station. If such is the case—or even fundamentally the case, with some, as it were, gray matter on the edges—why not work toward a method of emulating the brain-based persona of the individual in its entirety the way you would make a disc image on your laptop and then, when the operations and digital activities are mirrored in this manner, simply backing it up? Once it’s backed up, it can then be stored in a suitable, safe digital warehouse and then, when that receptacle has been created, downloaded into a young, vital living entity and voila. Old mind. Young body. Just what you always wanted. A hundred years later, you can do it again.
There is already significant scientific literature on the issue of personality transfer. Nobody writing about it doubts it can be done. Christof Koch, Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, and Giulio Tononi, who holds a Distinguished Chair in Consciousness Science at the University of Wisconsin, offered this view on the circular of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, “Consciousness is part of the natural world. It depends, we believe, only on mathematics and logic and on the imperfectly known laws of physics, chemistry and biology; it does not arise from some magical or otherworldly quality.” Once one assumes this sort of materialist view of the mind, it’s not difficult to imagine moving the contents of this mechanical entity from one housing to another.
“Immortality will be like Tesla—available at first only to the very, very, very rich, then, after a while, commoditized for the upper middle classes but pretty much stopping right there.”
Now, it is true that the task of performing a digital upload of an entire individual consciousness—its knowledge, earned experience, memories going back to the womb—the tech on that part of the process is in its infancy. But gains are being made. Thoughts and simple commands are now being transmitted over short distances by individuals with gizmos attached to their heads, moving little objects around at a distance by the power of their thoughts. It’s not much. But it shows that brain activity can be digitized and transmitted.
But let’s face it. We’re not going to go around with wires sticking out of our heads. The good news is that this really shouldn’t be necessary, not the way things appear to be going. Within just a very few years, the transporting of the electronic entity that is the human brain and all its contents will be vastly advanced—indeed, made possible—by a tremendous development in digital communications: that is, the widespread implantation of the cell phone and all its many wonderful functions right into your cranium.
Do you doubt it? I don’t. Go to any Starbucks, any airport, hotel lobby, public space, and you will see the entire strolling pageant of humanity with their noses firmly attached to a screen. Couples in restaurants. Kids hanging out at home. Staring into the little device. It’s not sustainable. It’s only a matter of time until a new way of inputting that data will be made available to those who want it and can afford it—driven by that ultimate arbiter of product development—consumer demand.
Tell the truth. Isn’t it a pain to be constantly carrying that thing around all the time? How many times a week do you lose it? Wouldn’t you like to be able to employ its many functions simply by touching your head, or maybe even just thinking about something? How would it be to be in touch with the Cloud 24/7? I propose the mastoid bone behind the ear. It’s unoccupied at the moment, totally unmonetized. It’s near the ocular and auditory systems, not to mention the wetware of the brain. It won’t be messing with your spine, which is complicated enough. The mastoid bone is perfect. And won’t it be nice to have your hands free?
Issues of storage have already been solved. The Cloud has already given us so much. Now it can be given the job of housing the collected personas of the ruling class, and still have room for all the pictures, music, movies and personal preferences of every mind on the planet. It is the quintessential storage container necessary to keep your consciousness safe while it awaits your brand new body. Until then, if your old body conks out, don’t worry. You still exist.
That’s it—a solution to the problem of death. Those now in the hunt are powerful, enormously wealthy, and have succeeded in every enterprise to which they have put their imaginative and well-funded minds. And they’re all at the precise age when the prospect of death rears its bony head. They’re also, it’s safe to say, with all due respect for their towering achievements and wealth, toxic narcissists who cannot imagine a world that might continue without them bestride it. If this was a start-up, I’d invest in it.
I figure that when it happens, immortality will be like Tesla—available at first only to the very, very, very rich, then, after a while, commoditized for the upper middle classes but pretty much stopping right there. The rest of humanity will either have access to a very inferior product or have to go ahead and die. When that day comes, there will officially be just two classes of homo sapiens: human beings and immortals. The human beings, all implanted and plugged into the corporate Cloud their entire lives, may not end up being all that sapiens. And as for the immortals, I don’t think they’re going to be very nice. After all, they haven’t been very nice this lifetime around, have they?
You may have noticed that we have yet to consider the final step of the process: the download. I have saved it for last because, frankly, it presents, I believe, a virtually insurmountable problem that attends this entire enterprise. What is this body that is created to house the ancient rich person paying for the procedure? Or, more accurately, who is that? Is it a person? A thing? Some combination of both?
Here are things it won’t be. It won’t be a baby, stuffed with the mind of an Elon Musk in its tiny cranium. It won’t be a mechanical person, a robot, because nobody with a trillion dollars in the bank and a lust for food and sex and power and fast cars is going to want to go around in an unfeeling casket like the ghost in the shell. They’re paying for immortality. They want to roll down the windows and let the wind blow back their brand new hair. And I don’t think any real mogul wants to wait for several years while a pod person grows in its cocoon.
Which is why the final step of this technology will have to be the creation of fully baked, living, organic human beings ready for download, empty of any consciousness whatsoever. And such creatures will refuse to exist. Because with life comes consciousness. And with consciousness comes the drive to exist.
Any brain capable of receiving an entire person has to be functioning on its own. It must be generating rudimentary thoughts of its own. It probably needs to be jump started into some form of consciousness to prove that the download will work. It must be a life. And as a life, it will have all the things that come with that blessing. And here comes the big, rich motherfucker to take that all away? How do we think that transaction is going to work out?
Still, the portability of consciousness is a very seductive and beautiful notion, isn’t it? Personally? I’d rather be housed in a cactus looking out the window of a cottage in Palm Desert than moldering beneath the earth for eternity. So I’m rooting for the bad guys here. God bless tech.
http://lithub.com/the-downloadable-br...
___________________________
December 8, 2017 By Stanley Bing (Originally published on LitHub.com)
Two millennia ago, a young carpenter appeared in what is now Israel and, in addition to suggesting some guidelines on personal behavior, offered the gift of eternal life to those who believed in him. This went over well, since the prevailing religion of his people was noticeably weak in that department, lacking clear rewards for the virtuous. His apostle presented the deal in no uncertain terms: “He that heareth my word,” said John, “and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life.” So far nobody has come back to testify to the veracity of this offer on the next plane of existence, but no one has disproved it, either. So that works for some people. It still doesn’t get to the nub of the matter, though. You still have to die in that scenario.
Some have searched for magic poultices, creams and liquids. In the 16th century, it was Ponce de Leon who reportedly searched Florida for waters that would stave off his rapidly approaching old age. Today, people follow in his footsteps, settling down in Boca, Hollywood and Jupiter Beach to achieve the same objective, with much the same lack of results, and in Beverly Hills, gorgons with crimped, distorted mouths and desiccated eyesacks roam Rodeo Drive, tweaking and slicing into themselves as they worship at the shrine of perpetual youth. Some even look okay at a very great distance.
It’s discouraging. Even if one buys into the notion of reincarnation, you are still only preserving the spirit; consciousness doesn’t make the trip from one life to the next. Plus, there is also the possibility that one will return in the next life as a stoat, or a guy whose karma involves the weekly cleaning of portable toilets at construction sites. Not the true vision of eternal life most of us would like, which involves sticking around without ever shuffling off this mortal coil at all, seeing the world change and evolve over generations.
No, for true advancement towards humanity’s most elusive goal, we must turn to the religion that we tend to like now: Technology. And the good news is that in this area we may actually be on the brink of success. For today, enormous gains are being made in the branch of computer science that is working to deliver eternal life to those who can afford it. Those in the hunt are far from snake-oil salesmen or alt-right marketers of nutty fluids. These are distinguished scientists making the prognostications. Nick Bostrom of Oxford University described the concept: “If emulation of particular brains is possible and affordable,” he wrote in a 2008 paper, “and if concerns about individual identity can be met, such emulation would enable back-up copies and ‘digital immortality.’”
Let’s take a moment to consider why this whole idea is not just futurist bushwah. The human brain, while based on an organic platform, is essentially a vast electronic switching station. If such is the case—or even fundamentally the case, with some, as it were, gray matter on the edges—why not work toward a method of emulating the brain-based persona of the individual in its entirety the way you would make a disc image on your laptop and then, when the operations and digital activities are mirrored in this manner, simply backing it up? Once it’s backed up, it can then be stored in a suitable, safe digital warehouse and then, when that receptacle has been created, downloaded into a young, vital living entity and voila. Old mind. Young body. Just what you always wanted. A hundred years later, you can do it again.
There is already significant scientific literature on the issue of personality transfer. Nobody writing about it doubts it can be done. Christof Koch, Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, and Giulio Tononi, who holds a Distinguished Chair in Consciousness Science at the University of Wisconsin, offered this view on the circular of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, “Consciousness is part of the natural world. It depends, we believe, only on mathematics and logic and on the imperfectly known laws of physics, chemistry and biology; it does not arise from some magical or otherworldly quality.” Once one assumes this sort of materialist view of the mind, it’s not difficult to imagine moving the contents of this mechanical entity from one housing to another.
“Immortality will be like Tesla—available at first only to the very, very, very rich, then, after a while, commoditized for the upper middle classes but pretty much stopping right there.”
Now, it is true that the task of performing a digital upload of an entire individual consciousness—its knowledge, earned experience, memories going back to the womb—the tech on that part of the process is in its infancy. But gains are being made. Thoughts and simple commands are now being transmitted over short distances by individuals with gizmos attached to their heads, moving little objects around at a distance by the power of their thoughts. It’s not much. But it shows that brain activity can be digitized and transmitted.
But let’s face it. We’re not going to go around with wires sticking out of our heads. The good news is that this really shouldn’t be necessary, not the way things appear to be going. Within just a very few years, the transporting of the electronic entity that is the human brain and all its contents will be vastly advanced—indeed, made possible—by a tremendous development in digital communications: that is, the widespread implantation of the cell phone and all its many wonderful functions right into your cranium.
Do you doubt it? I don’t. Go to any Starbucks, any airport, hotel lobby, public space, and you will see the entire strolling pageant of humanity with their noses firmly attached to a screen. Couples in restaurants. Kids hanging out at home. Staring into the little device. It’s not sustainable. It’s only a matter of time until a new way of inputting that data will be made available to those who want it and can afford it—driven by that ultimate arbiter of product development—consumer demand.
Tell the truth. Isn’t it a pain to be constantly carrying that thing around all the time? How many times a week do you lose it? Wouldn’t you like to be able to employ its many functions simply by touching your head, or maybe even just thinking about something? How would it be to be in touch with the Cloud 24/7? I propose the mastoid bone behind the ear. It’s unoccupied at the moment, totally unmonetized. It’s near the ocular and auditory systems, not to mention the wetware of the brain. It won’t be messing with your spine, which is complicated enough. The mastoid bone is perfect. And won’t it be nice to have your hands free?
Issues of storage have already been solved. The Cloud has already given us so much. Now it can be given the job of housing the collected personas of the ruling class, and still have room for all the pictures, music, movies and personal preferences of every mind on the planet. It is the quintessential storage container necessary to keep your consciousness safe while it awaits your brand new body. Until then, if your old body conks out, don’t worry. You still exist.
That’s it—a solution to the problem of death. Those now in the hunt are powerful, enormously wealthy, and have succeeded in every enterprise to which they have put their imaginative and well-funded minds. And they’re all at the precise age when the prospect of death rears its bony head. They’re also, it’s safe to say, with all due respect for their towering achievements and wealth, toxic narcissists who cannot imagine a world that might continue without them bestride it. If this was a start-up, I’d invest in it.
I figure that when it happens, immortality will be like Tesla—available at first only to the very, very, very rich, then, after a while, commoditized for the upper middle classes but pretty much stopping right there. The rest of humanity will either have access to a very inferior product or have to go ahead and die. When that day comes, there will officially be just two classes of homo sapiens: human beings and immortals. The human beings, all implanted and plugged into the corporate Cloud their entire lives, may not end up being all that sapiens. And as for the immortals, I don’t think they’re going to be very nice. After all, they haven’t been very nice this lifetime around, have they?
You may have noticed that we have yet to consider the final step of the process: the download. I have saved it for last because, frankly, it presents, I believe, a virtually insurmountable problem that attends this entire enterprise. What is this body that is created to house the ancient rich person paying for the procedure? Or, more accurately, who is that? Is it a person? A thing? Some combination of both?
Here are things it won’t be. It won’t be a baby, stuffed with the mind of an Elon Musk in its tiny cranium. It won’t be a mechanical person, a robot, because nobody with a trillion dollars in the bank and a lust for food and sex and power and fast cars is going to want to go around in an unfeeling casket like the ghost in the shell. They’re paying for immortality. They want to roll down the windows and let the wind blow back their brand new hair. And I don’t think any real mogul wants to wait for several years while a pod person grows in its cocoon.
Which is why the final step of this technology will have to be the creation of fully baked, living, organic human beings ready for download, empty of any consciousness whatsoever. And such creatures will refuse to exist. Because with life comes consciousness. And with consciousness comes the drive to exist.
Any brain capable of receiving an entire person has to be functioning on its own. It must be generating rudimentary thoughts of its own. It probably needs to be jump started into some form of consciousness to prove that the download will work. It must be a life. And as a life, it will have all the things that come with that blessing. And here comes the big, rich motherfucker to take that all away? How do we think that transaction is going to work out?
Still, the portability of consciousness is a very seductive and beautiful notion, isn’t it? Personally? I’d rather be housed in a cactus looking out the window of a cottage in Palm Desert than moldering beneath the earth for eternity. So I’m rooting for the bad guys here. God bless tech.
http://lithub.com/the-downloadable-br...
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December 13, 2017
Immortal Life is available now!
Bring Bing home for the holidays this year! #ImmortalLife is out now in stores and online!
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-...
Barnes and Noble:https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/immo...
Books a Million: http://www.booksamillion.com/p/978150...
Will only the rich cheat death? Will a world with the downloadable brain exist in the future?Order your copy today!
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-...
Barnes and Noble:https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/immo...
Books a Million: http://www.booksamillion.com/p/978150...
Will only the rich cheat death? Will a world with the downloadable brain exist in the future?Order your copy today!
November 29, 2017
Immortal Life
My new book is Immortal Life. It's about the effort to achieve just that -- digital immortality. The big dudes in Silicon Valley are working on it. How would it be done? Easy. You upload the contents of your brain -- thoughts, ideas, personality, consciousness -- into the Cloud. Let it sit up there for a while until a new body is created for you -- that will be done soon too -- and then BAM! Download your self into the brand new housing. The new body is young, strong, all you ever wanted. Your old one is no longer necessary. A hundred years or so from now? When the new body is all worn out? Just do it again! And again! And there you have it -- eternal life, just like you pictured it. The moguls and preparing for it. They'll be able to afford it. But will you? -Stanley Bing
Pre-order "Immortal Life," out December 5th from Simon & Schuster. Immortal Life: A Soon To Be True Story
Pre-order "Immortal Life," out December 5th from Simon & Schuster. Immortal Life: A Soon To Be True Story
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