Subject: (urth) Human JPEGs

From: Nigel Price <nigel.a.price at virgin.net>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 00:39:27 +0000

Dan Meliza wrote:

>>But then, there must be some way
>>to vastly compress an intelligence
>>if you're going to send it through
>>the optic nerves in a few seconds.

All I wanted to do originally with this thread was point out the possibility
of Lupine wordplay around the idea of "two byte word"/"two word bites"/"two
word bird", but then I was foolish enough to put down that idle bit of
nonsense about the 48K Spectrum.

Having failed to learn my lesson, I have to confess that I too, like Dan,
have been whimsically speculating to myself whether, in the Whorl, the
copies of personalities which are transferred between windows and people and
windows and night choughs might not in fact be radically compressed in some
way, or use some sort of wonderfully super-advanced lossy algorithm which
gives such an accurate approximation of a personality that you really don't
miss the bits that aren't there. In other words, Scylla didn't unload a
"bitmap" of herself into Oreb, it was more a sort of "human JPEG".

Only speaking metaphorically of course.

Nigel

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 05:35:27 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nigel Price" <nigel.a.price at virgin.net>
> way, or use some sort of wonderfully super-advanced lossy algorithm

Human beings seem to understand themselves best by using the machines the
build as parables of their nature.   Strange fact, because our machines are
probably nothing at all like us: yet our imagination insists they are.

    hartshorn

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From: Jason Ingram <j_ingram at mac.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 08:09:18 +0000

One question that has perplexed me is why multiple copies couldn't have 
been 'downloaded' at the same time, and why all the 'data' seems to have 
left mainframe whenever downloading occurs.  I can think of reasons why 
the narrative might demand this, but I'm not sure what the logic is.

One possibility: there is a 'one copy per person' limit because of a 
rough analogy to  a soul (not identity, since Typhon and others seem to 
retain their personality even after uploading; and Silk remains 'in' 
Silk, presumably, even as Pig contains a downloaded Silk.  The timing of 
the last part might warrant some scrutiny, however).

If it's just data, why not have three or four or four hundred versions 
at the same time?  Perhaps Typhon wouldn't have trusted himself; maybe 
it's hypothetically possible, and an innate desire to think ourselves 
unique prevented duplication; but I seem to remember hints that the data 
were irreplacable . . . no backups possible.

Strange, considering Severian--or perhaps a purposeful contrast.  Serial 
versions of the new sun, single duplicates in the long sun, bilocation 
and identity sharing in the short sun.

Of course, maybe I've gotten my facts wrong again.

PS I hope this is now in plain text format.

Sepia

>> copies of personalities which are transferred between windows and 
>> people
> and

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 06:41:26 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason Ingram" <j_ingram at mac.com>
To: <urth at urth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 9:09 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) Human JPEGs

> left mainframe whenever downloading occurs.

Maybe it's a quantum computer?   Maybe the brain is a quantum computer?

Qubits can be entangled and projected elsewhere, but not "copied" in the
sense bitts can be.

      hartshorn

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From: Dan Meliza <meliza at ocf.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 17:26:22 +0000

The other possibility, I suppose, is that the gods upload (download,
whatever) fragments of themselves into people and animals which can later be
recombined into a full personality.  In fact, fragments of holograms display
the same image as the full hologram but at a lower fidelity.  So any
intelligence can serve as a substrate for personality transfer but in
proportion to the size of the brain.  What we see in Oreb is actually the
interference pattern between Scylla and Oreb proper expressed in the limited
vocabulary of a two-bite bird.  As Nutria points out this is a fine metaphor
for human interaction, a tidy attack on modernism's atomic individual; and
it goes a long ways toward explaining why Scylla's personality is more or
less admirable depending on who she's occupying.

never one to capitalize after a colon,
dan

-----Original Message-----
From: Nigel Price [mailto:nigel.a.price at virgin.net]
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 5:39 PM
To: urth at urth.net
Subject: (urth) Human JPEGs

Nigel

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 18:15:38 +0000

> probably nothing at all like us: yet our imagination insists they are.

I don't know of any natural phenomena we understand as well as the things
we make ourselves.  Naturally, we try to explain what we don't understand
in terms of what we do.

-Rostrum

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