In one of our History & Visions of New Media sessions we briefly discussed teleportation. This is a technological concept well known to every Star Trek fan (including me). I am not going to go into details about how teleportation could scientifically work as claimed by some scientists but rather question the idea of teleporting animate objects.The principle idea behind teleportation is that you scan an object and build a stream of information which could then be communicated to another location where the same object is assembled based on the scanned information. Sounds a lot like copying, doesn't it? Basically yes and no.... in order to avoid a lot of questions on the topic of "copy vs. original" sci-fi writers often don't leave the original intact. Gene Rodenberry also opted for this choice when he created the world of Star Trek.
Okay, so you could in principle copy or transfer an object from one place to another. Obviously this could revolutionize the manufacturing and courier industry but what would happen when you tried to teleport a live subject? This is where science grinds to a halt and personal religion and/or beliefs take over because in order to answer this question we would have to define life itself. What makes an inanimate object live? Do live beings have a soul? These are ageless questions that have scratched the brains of thinkers throughout history. If anybody has an answer to these questions they are welcome to share them in the comments.
So what's the point of this post? My goal was just to point out that even though replicating inanimate objects might be scientifically feasible it should not be mistaken for the "transporter" from Star Trek. Any talk of actually teleporting something should be treated with skepticism because the fundamental principles are questionable. I'm not saying it's impossible but in order to teleport live beings we will have to boldly go where no man has gone before....
(Star Trek transporter image courtesy of blog.scifi.com)
4 comments:
Erasmus: You know how you can really annoy a trekkie fan when you're watching Star Trek? Suddenly point at the screen and shout "Hey, isn't that Captain Jon Luc Skywalker?!"
Erasmus: You can actually see them wince as the mix up causes them physical pain.
Erasmus: You then wait till they've spent ten minutes explaining to you (in minute detail) the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek, pretend to think deeply for a minute, and say: "but he is a Jedi, right?"
Erasmus: This can cause instant cardiac arrest in some of the more hardcore Trekkie fans.
The definition of life is actually pretty concise and it's broken down into some basic properties:
* Reproduction
* Self-preservation
* Response to the environment
* Homeostasis (preservation of the inner state).
Wikipedia has a more concise listing, but those were the ones I remembered from biology class.
What's interesting is that by this definition, a computer virus can also be considered an animate entity.
I remember theoretisizing alot about teleportation in middleschool with my geek friends. About the same process that you, Jaan described - basically digitizing something, transferring and then reconstructing.
I remember coming to the conclusion that it really didn't matter what we did with the actual atoms. It's really all about information - perception *is* reality and so I think VR will be the real "teleportation" technology of the near future.
... and as a practical example of the latter. Imaging we have ultra-high resolution scans of the Mars survace and years-worth of samples of the planetary conditions. Now add to that a nice graphics card and some really nice software to drive the simulation. You're there.
This also allows us to teleport to places that would simply be impossible to go to. Like the inside of the human body.
I agree with Filipp that when you bring VR into the equation the concept of human teleportation is given a new meaning. If we can make the virtual indistinguishable from the real then we can indeed teleport virtually. This might be enough to fool our senses and perception but this still limits our freedom of exploration to the scope and detail of the virtual world.
Telepresence is another concept that might take us another step closer to "almost" real world teleportation. Imagine that instead of a virtual avatar in a virtual space you could manipulate a humanoid robot in real space. Now this is really close to teleportation especially if you could make the avatar look like you. Think of it this way: your brain is still the main CPU but instead of your own body the avatar is your interface with the real world. The avatar could be somewhere far away and you would only need a fast enough connection to transfer input/output signals to your brain in real time.
This kind of approach would enable you to explore and interact with the real world in a distant location without the limitations of a virtual space.
As to the definition of life... this is one way of looking at it and in the Wikipedia article there are also plenty of different definitions and contradictions. They are all process based definitions and do their best to describe what life is from a scientific point of view but they still can't tell us why we have a consciousness...
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