Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/5219
the heady new syfy spinoff Caprica offers a glimpse into a near future of human-level Ai SuRFDADDY ORCA On the train, Ben looks extremely nervous and detached as zoe tries to calm him. Ben stands, opens his trench coat revealing a suicide bomber's vest, and yells, "The One True God will drive out all the others." The train explodes. Ben's jihad-like terrorist attack claims the lives of Shannon, Tamara, and zoe. After several weeks of grieving, zoe's father Daniel Graystone learns through lacy that his brilliant daughter zoe (a chip off the old block) has created a life- like avatar with free will in the v-Club prior to her death — a copy of the real life zoe named zoe-A (for "avatar"). He dons a holoband and meets her in virtual space: "You're an avatar, a virtual representation of zoe, nothing more," says Dr. Graystone. "I am her. I'm zoe Graystone," replies zoe-A. "We're like echoes of one another — it's sort of hard to describe," she continues. The human brain contains 300 megabytes of information, not much when you get right down to it." (Alan Dix of the uK's lancaster university came up with the 300 megabyte figure based on what it would take to store an audio-visual record of your complete life experiences.) "You can't download a personality — there's no way to translate the data," she continues, becoming increasingly emotional. "But the information being held in our heads is available in other databases. "People leave more than footprints as they move through life — medical scans, DNA profiles, psych evaluations, school records, emails, recording, video, audio, CAT scans, genetic typing, synaptic records, security cameras, test results, shopping records, talent shows, ball games, traffic tickets, restaurant bills, phone records, music lists, movie lists, Tv shows." "It's possible she could have found a way to translate synaptic records into usable data," acknowledges Dr. Graystone to lacy. Turning to zoe-A, he continues, "But a person is much more than just a bunch of usable data. You might be a good imitation — you might be a very good imitation — but you're still just an imitation, a copy." "I don't feel like a copy," zoe-A responds almost in tears. "Daddy!" (Dr. Graystone hugs zoe-A as he makes a copy of her onto a flash drive.) Constructing a person from memories. Could this happen in the next 20 years, or ever? "Just send nanobots into my brain and reconstruct my recollections and memories," Ray Kurzweil is quoted as saying in a recent Rolling Stone magazine by David Kushner. Kurzweil would like to reconstruct his father. According to Kushner, the nanobots will capture everything, "the piggyback ride to a grocery store, the bedtime reading of Tom Swift, and the moment he and his father rejoiced when the letter of acceptance from MIT arrived." "Father 2.0 could take many forms," Kushner continues, "from a virtual-reality avatar to a fully functioning robot." Dr. Graystone's flash drive copy of zoe-A becomes critical to the pilot's storyline. In a parallel plot development, Joseph Adams cuts a deal with Dr. Graystone to secure Graystone a "Meta Cognitive Processor" (MCP) from rival vergis Corporation — this is the missing controller for his u-87 Cyber Combat unit. Adams initially thinks he wants virtual versions of his wife and daughter, who were killed in Ben's terrorist attack along with zoe. However, when Adams meets his daughter Tamara in virtual space, she panics and screams, "I can't feel my heart beating Daddy, why can't I feel my heart?" Adams walks out on Graystone calling his technology "an abomination." Graystone keeps the MCP, installs it into a u-87 Cyber Combat unit, and attempts to download his zoe-A flash drive copy onto the cognitive processor. To his horror, when this appears to fail, he is no longer able to locate zoe-A in virtual space (why a Ph.D. computer scientist would download a destructive copy is never explained — did zoe-A completely "derez" from the virtual environment?). Will the new robotic "creature" — piloted by a copy of zoe-A, itself a copy of the real life zoe — come to life? The Caprica writers clearly draw on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus here. At one point in Shelley's novel, the creature faces his creator victor Frankenstein on an icy glacier and explains his feelings of isolation and abandonment. victor still does not see he is the one that abandoned this creature, that he was the one responsible to love and devote his time to the creature. The quality he lacks as a creator is the quality also lacking in Daniel Graystone, "the deep consciousness of what they [Frankenstein's parents] owed towards the being to which they had given life." The Caprica pilot ends as we see a demo of the u-87 Cyber Combat unit successfully blow away a number of smaller domestic robots as they scurry around the test chambers of Graystone Industries — this is the birth of the first Cybernetic lifeform Node or Cylon. In the closing scene, we see a Cylon coming to life in its storage bay and walking to a phone. Cut to lacy's face as her cell phone rings. "lacy, it's zoe," says the uber-cool voice sounding very much like zoe-A, except in real space. "I am here and I think I'm going to need your help." zoe-R (for "robot") is born — like victor Frankenstein's creature — cold and abandoned. The scene ends with a sinister-looking trademark Cylon red eye oscillating back and forth. Prequel it may be, but this winter's Caprica Tv series is likely to thrill transhumanists, singularitarians, and SF fanatics who love to contemplate a near future involving rich virtual worlds and downloaded human consciousness — and it certainly won't disappoint most BSG fans. And those new to the BSG universe will be surprised at the depth and complexity in the spinoff series. Caprica grapples with issues of science, religion, technology, and ethics that will likely face humanity in the near future. resources Get Ready for iShades 5G http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/virtual-reality/get-ready-ishades-5g The Caprica Times http://www.capricatimes.com/ When Man & Machine Merge http://www.kurzweilai.net/pressroom/pdf/RollingStone-021909.pdf The Brain and the Web http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~dixa/papers/brain-and-web-2005/ Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus http://www.literature.org/authors/shelley-mary/frankenstein/