Being Digital

In my Mars Wars series (two more parts still to go), I mentioned the concept of a digital lifeform several times. I thought I'd write a little about what exactly this means as well as the advantages and disadvantages of being digital.

A digital lifeform is a kind of life in which the personality, memories, and all other distinguishing aspects of an individual can be encoded digitally. When simply stored as a collection of bits, such a lifeform is inert. However, when the bits are executing in a suitable host, the lifeform becomes alive and conscious. A crude analogy for this is a computer program, which is a bunch of bits that don't do anything until they're executing on a computer. Similarly, a CD contains bits that don't sound like anything until they're played on a CD player.

Humans are clearly not currently a digital lifeform. There is no known way to digitally encode our mind. Instead, we are an analog lifeform whose mind is inextricably tied to our brain; when our brain dies, so does our mind. Which clearly sucks.

Fortunately, as we understand more about how our own minds and brains work, we will eventually figure out how to create a new kind of mind that is digital instead of analog. What will be the consequences of this? Well, here are some of the advantages that a digital lifeform would enjoy:

Immortality

Since a digital lifeform can be encoded as a collection of bits, it can be replicated and backed up an arbitrary number of times. For example, you could arrange for an automatic backup of yourself to be made every 10 minutes. If for some reason your host died, your last backup could be rehosted and you'd be just like before, minus the last 10 minutes of memory.

Self-modification

Humans spend a vast amount of time and energy trying to change their behaviors, using techniques such as self-help books, therapists, and motivation seminars. Digital lifeforms, on the other hand, can change any aspect of themselves by directly editing their digital representation. Don't like your sense of humor? Edit it. Don't like a particular memory? Erase it.

Massive Memory Capacity

It's a pretty safe bet that by the time we figure out how to create digital life, we'll also have awesome hardware capabilities that put current computer architectures to shame. Memory capacity in the range of petabytes will be just scratching the surface. One of the benefits of this is that digital lifeforms will be able to remember virtually everything that happens to them in amazing detail.

Instant Learning

Since all knowledge in a digital mind can be represented as bits, anything learnt by a digital lifeform can be shared instantly with other digital lifeforms. A good example of this is the scene in the Matrix where Trinity needs to learn how to fly a helicopter and the operator uploads this information in a matter of seconds. There are many ramifications of this. When created, a digital lifeform would have instant access to most of the acquired knowledge of past generations within a few seconds. No more need to go to school! Any any new invention or concept could be propagated through an entire population in seconds. Compare this against humanity; how many people understand the theory of relavity, or have even heard about it? Maybe 0.0000001%? In a digital society, it would be close to 100%.

Upgrades

When you upgrade your computer system, many of the programs you already own run better. But humans have no way to upgrade a brain, which effectively runs your mind. Digital lifeforms, on the other hand, can run on different hosts with different characteristics. Over time, host technology would improve, which in turn would allow digital minds to perform better.

Speed-of-light Travel

Digital lifeforms can travel between two points at the speed of light as long as there's a host at the destination. For example, to travel from Earth to Mars, a digital lifeform could leave its host (presumably after a backup), stream itself via laser to a receiver on Mars, and then be remotely rehosted. In other words, the mind is transfered but the brain is not. There's no mass to transmit, so it's incredibly fast and inexpensive. Analog lifeforms, on the other hand, are chained to their bodies and thus are much harder to move at high speeds. In a nutshell, digital lifeforms are much better suited for space travel than analog lifeforms; the meek might inherit the earth, but the digital will inherit the universe.

Lots of Senses

Humans are born with a fixed set of senses, including two eyes, a nose, and two ears. When we need input that these senses can't provide, we obtain it from other sources such as radio telescopes, sonar devices, and X-ray machines. The output from these external senses is typically converted into one of our existing senses so we can process it. For example, an X-ray photograph is converted into a picture that our eyes can understand. Digital lifeforms can accomodate and natively assimilate input from any kind of digital device by incorporating hardware that directly processes information in its most natural form. A digital lifeform would be able to experience the universe in a much richer and more powerful way than an analog lifeform possibly could.

More Interesting Sex

The purpose of sex is to create new generations of life. Sex between analog lifeforms randomly mixes genes from the male and female to create a new lifeform that may or may not be better at succeeding in the environment. It's a primitive mechanism that does quite well. But digital sex can do so much more. For example, a new digital lifeform can be created from a blend of traits from any number of parents. These traits can also include memories, if desired. [I have a lot more to say on this topic, but i'm tired so I'll continue it soon]

No Need to Sleep

As I wrote in a previous blog entry, I don't believe that sleep serves any cognitive processing purpose such as reorganizing memories. Instead, I think that sleep is a time when neurons collectively enter a mode during which they stop processing input and instead dump their waste products and regenerate. If I'm correct, digital lifeforms won't need to sleep at all.

Interestingly enough, the evolution from analog to digital is a commonly recurring theme in modern times. Computer hardware went from analog vacuum tubes to digital processors. Music went from vinyl records to CDs. Photos went from film to digital. Movies are going from analog film to digital recording. It's just a matter of time before life itself makes the transition.

Comments

[Hemant]

Graham,
Interesting thoughts.

>> It's just a matter of time before life
>> itself makes the transition.
But with the speed which we growing this
"matter of time" would be atleast x century away, where X can be anything between 1 to 10. And sometimes even I wonder whether our earth will still be there with us ...

[Nathan Lee]

Digital sex?
Hasn't that been around since the very start of computer chat rooms? ;)

[Bill Eisenhauer]

Graham,

You need to take a read of "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil. There are similar ideas there and so you'd probably enjoy the book. Warning: he's pretty far out there.

Bill

[Lynne]

I don't think this digital thing will happen except if youre a Trekkie . You do have some interesting thoughts, though you lost me on this one.. Off to reading about grunting... Cheers

[nice guy]

Hope the digital life memory doesn't crash like our hard drives.