Did you ever want Scotty to beam you up?

Started by Seze Mune, May 11, 2012, 11:18:38 PM

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Seze Mune

Well, that era is coming nearer.   ;)

With the awesome potential of beaming nearly anywhere you want on Earth (thanks partially to James Cameron's contributions to motion capture technology via Avatar), also come problems.  If you, as an avatar of yourself, commit a crime, then who is at fault...because who are you, and where are you - really?  You may, in effect, be in two places at once.

Good things could come out of it as well:

"There are many other areas where the technology has obvious applications.

"Beaming sessions could help military morale by giving soldiers based overseas a sense of being back home with their loved ones. The same would apply to workers or businessmen posted abroad.

"A virtual doctor could visit a patient at home, if that patient is unable to travel to the surgery.

"Surgeons can already perform operations via telemedicine and beaming might not only make that routine but also enable medical students in different countries to get hands-on training simultaneously.

"But this also raises the possibility of new types of crime."

........

"As beaming develops, one of the biggest questions for philosophers may be defining where a person actually is - just as it is key for lawyers to determine in which jurisdiction an avatar's crime is committed.

"Even now people are often physically in one place but immersed in a virtual world online.

"Avatars challenge the human bond between identity and a physical body.

"My body may be here in London but my life may be in a virtual apartment in New York," says Haggard. "So where am I really?"

"Could beaming increase the risk of sexual harassment or even virtual rape? That is one of many ethical questions that the beaming project is considering, along with the technical challenges.

.....

Recently hip-hop fans in California were stunned when the late Tupac Shakur was reincarnated using a projector, a mirror and a mylar screen, and this reincarnation performed alongside rappers Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. At least the virtual Tupac, who some likened to a ghost of the rapper gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996, did have the bereaved mother's blessing.

The Kinect technology, capturing an individual's gestures, is potentially a powerful tool in the hands of an identity thief, argues Prof Jeremy Bailenson, founder of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, California.

"A hacker can steal my very essence, really capture all of my nuances, then build a competing avatar, a copy of me," he told the BBC. "The courts haven't even begun to think about that."

Non-verbal behaviour, like the way you walk, is more revealing about you than what you decide to put on Facebook, he said. It is like the difference between biometric data and a standard photo.

Source:  Real-world beaming: The risk of avatar and robot crime

Human No More

Hmm, telepresence is a different thing, really... Still promising though :)
"I can barely remember my old life. I don't know who I am any more."

HNM, not 'Human' :)

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