A digital clone could operate at
machine speed and make decisions
without bias -- using the same values
you'd use. Think of starting the day
not with hundreds of emails but
maybe just one that required your
personal involvement. Imagine
having a system that would respond
as you would to all of them and then
summarize what it did. Having an
assistant on steroids could massively
simplify your life.
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By Rob Enderle
09/01/14 7:24 AM PT
A very interesting book just hit the market. Written by
Martine Rothblatt -- apparently she is America's top paid
female CEO -- its title is Virtually Human: The Promise -- and
the Peril -- of Digital Immortality. The subject is digital
clones, and Rothblatt goes into depth about what they are,
when they are coming, and the likelihood they eventually
will have equal human rights.
The premise is fascinating, and I now can foresee a future
when we won't be able to survive successfully without one --
and that future is coming damned fast. I'll explain, and then
close with my product of the week: an amazing new set of
headphones from Plantronics.
A Digital Clone
It's interesting thinking about this. As you might
recall, a few years back there was a lot of talk about
creating biological clones and the need for huge
bans preventing the practice for any reason except,
possibly, organ harvesting. I think people were
scared that these things would become monsters or
some such.
The thing is, if you were to print a 3D copy of
yourself, it basically would be a vegetable that was
good only for organ harvesting, because it would
be an adult without any skills -- couldn't walk, talk,
feed itself, comprehend, etc. Even if you taught it
all of those things, it wouldn't be you, which I think was kind
of the goal -- to create a form of immortality by creating
copies of yourself.
Granted, if you could transplant the brain, then having a
brand new body every 20 years until your brain failed could
be a superset of plastic surgery. It might slow down
dementia, but eventually you'd have to deal with the brain
problem. Otherwise, you'd just be a demented person with a
young body.
A digital clone is an electronic copy of your personality.
Virtually Human describes how one of the first digital clones
was created and interacted with.
A digital clone wouldn't be built as you were built. It
wouldn't come into existence biologically and then duplicate
every one of your experiences, interactions and learning
moments. Instead, it would be created to emulate you and
to learn largely by observing or being programmed to act as
you now do. Strangely, the end result would be far more
likely to be a match than if you tried the impossible task of
growing it as you were grown.
Advantages of a Digital Clone
One of the big advantages of a digital clone would be that
since it would exist in a computer, it wouldn't have
hormones. It wouldn't have the animalistic parts of the brain
that often drive humans to be inconsistent -- to do what, in
hindsight, are stupid things, because of emotions. One of the
interesting things is that without those aspects, it isn't a
perfect clone either, so the more stable it is in relation to
you, the less like you the clone is -- the less it actually is a
clone.
A digital clone could operate at machine speed and make
decisions without bias -- but using the same values you'd
use. Think of starting the day not with hundreds of emails
but maybe just one that required your personal
involvement. Imagine having a system that would respond
as you would to all of them and then, in a page, summarize
what it did.
Think of a system that could scan most all of the Web in real
time and just let you know about the stuff, regardless of
where it was, that you'd really be interested in -- as if you'd
looked at everything personally. It would learn about
everything from the cool product you didn't know you really
wanted to a cure for an illness that might otherwise kill you.
Having a clone that could operate like an assistant on
steroids -- but with your value system -- could massively
simplify your life and turn your work week from what it is to
just a few hours. Granted, at some point, you kind of
wonder whether the company might just start paying you for
those few hours, so there is a reason to be concerned-- but
then you could have more than one clone, and you might
have hundreds of jobs and a total income that could be far
greater then you could earn today.
Hmm. Rather than living a simple life, we could all become
CEOs -- at least, the most successful among us -- of
thousands of digital clones of us. For some reason, I'm now
recalling the old Twilight Zone episode, The Brain Center at
Whipples, and it isn't a pleasant memory.
Wrapping Up: The Future
The 8088 -- the processor often credited with creating the
modern computing world -- just had its 40th anniversary.
I've been asked what I think the next 40 years will bring. My
answer is a blend of human and digital components with the
home -- a result that benefits the human race, rather than
catastrophically replacing it.
In other words, I hope that digital clones will make the world
a better place for us -- not that the world will be a better
place because we aren't around anymore. That's something
to ponder.
Product of the Week: Plantronics Backbeat Pro
I like listening to music -- I like it a lot.
However, most of the good headphones
ask you to choose between whether they
are wireless or noise-canceling, and to
pick from a selection of bright candy
colors that make you look like a lollypop.
Even when I was young, I didn't like
wearing extremely bright colors, because I thought they
made me look goofy.
That is why I fell in love with Plantronics new Backbeat Pro
headphones. First, they are black, so they look elegant
rather than designed for a 10-year-old. Second, they have
both active noise cancellation and wireless capability. Third,
they have 21 hours of battery life with everything turned on.
Fourth, they use NFC for setup -- which means if you have an
NFC phone, and I do, you touch the headphones to the
phone and they automatically pair. Fifth, the controls are
intuitive. I didn't have to open the instruction book to find
anything -- often I have to do that these days just to find the
damn on-switch. Finally, they sound fantastic.
Plantronics Backbeat Pro
You'd think it would be easy to create a product like this, but
apparently it isn't, because this is the first set of headphones
I've had that didn't have at least one substantial thing I
hated about it. That alone would be reason to make this my
product of the week, but I really love these headphones,
which actually is why Plantronics Backbeat Pro is my product
of the week.
Rob Enderle i
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