I have a lot of time to contemplate various aspects of life, and... being a big Star Trek fan, some things about the various incarnations naturally require examination. One of these things is the idea of transporting.
In 1999 (or was it 2000?), a company I cannot name accomplished the feat of transporting a photon. So, the journey toward a reality of having transporters has begun. It may not ever be able to transport a living thing, but, since we would never have thought transporters would be possible in the first place, whose to say what really is or isn't possible.
Now... transporters themselves. To accomplish a transport, two buffers are necessary, one to hold the physical pattern and one for the "you" inside you. That got me to thinking... what if you could make copies of that physical buffer and save it for an extremely extended period of time? Consider the possibilities. At age 90, that buffer you've been storing could conceivably restore your body to the same as it was when you were 20 years old. If, along the way, you develop a fatal disease or malady, hop into the transporter and resequence your body's configuration so the condition is eliminated. =) Cancer, diabetes, heart disease... all become nothing but a minor inconvenience.
Such an ability would, at first, only be in the financial realm of the super-rich, but perhaps in time, it may be available more widely at a more reasonable price. By the time transporters could be perfected to the point of transporting a living thing, especially humans, we should have colonies in space, so overcrowding shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Imagine being able to live many, many lifetimes, like Dax... a new body every so often, though the idea of changing sex through each incarnation would not be appealing.
In 1999 (or was it 2000?), a company I cannot name accomplished the feat of transporting a photon. So, the journey toward a reality of having transporters has begun. It may not ever be able to transport a living thing, but, since we would never have thought transporters would be possible in the first place, whose to say what really is or isn't possible.
Now... transporters themselves. To accomplish a transport, two buffers are necessary, one to hold the physical pattern and one for the "you" inside you. That got me to thinking... what if you could make copies of that physical buffer and save it for an extremely extended period of time? Consider the possibilities. At age 90, that buffer you've been storing could conceivably restore your body to the same as it was when you were 20 years old. If, along the way, you develop a fatal disease or malady, hop into the transporter and resequence your body's configuration so the condition is eliminated. =) Cancer, diabetes, heart disease... all become nothing but a minor inconvenience.
Such an ability would, at first, only be in the financial realm of the super-rich, but perhaps in time, it may be available more widely at a more reasonable price. By the time transporters could be perfected to the point of transporting a living thing, especially humans, we should have colonies in space, so overcrowding shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Imagine being able to live many, many lifetimes, like Dax... a new body every so often, though the idea of changing sex through each incarnation would not be appealing.
