Exactly what I was thinking.

I like K. Sounds good.

Yesterday I was wondering if we would have to lose the blue bits off the union flag.

Good Point. :) As long as they wash their hands.

Ditto. I loved my BBC Micro model B. Some times I still hear the two tone 'turning on' sound in my head. It was so loud and had no mute switch. I used to try and muffle it with a jumper so I wouldn't be caught turning my computer on when I shouldn't be.

7 ish BBC Microcomputer 1984 type 'old' then 'list' after hitting the break key during a game and then randomly changing lines of code to see what happened. This progressed into changing in game messages to say rude stuff. :-D

Rob Grainger wrote:

It's also worth considering that none of our PC's have a speaker ;-)

Surprisingly, someone asked me for an internal speaker beep to be added to a VB6 application recently, for users without speakers. I had a look into it and, ignoring the fact that there would probably not be an internal speaker, a modern Windows O/S will divert the beep to the soundcard if there is one (even if its integrated) which needs speakers. So unless you have a machine with an internal speaker running Windows 98 or something, it just won’t do anything. For some reason that made me feel sad and I briefly missed not being able to make things beep in such a simple manner!

That would be good. If sleep was optional, I'd choose Thursdays.

It does worry me that the more complicated the computer gets, the more we need to turn it off and on again to fix some unknown intermittent and random problem.

Sounds like a typical Monday.....

If we manage to do it before we destroy ourselves, we can destroy our digital selves over and over again.

Yes it will. Yes it will. Yes it will. ;P Sorry. That felt like when I watched a program as a child that said we would never travel at light speed. I got sulky and grumpy. Fair points raised though.

Perhaps we are just fooling ourselves. Maybe consciousness is something that doesn't really exist and we just think we are.

Troy.Thompson wrote:

There is evidence that neurons operate using electrons in a hyperpositional state, meaning that it is entirely possible what we think of as information in the brain only exists as it interacts with the world.

That is an interesting idea. In my head it combines not being able to measure both the position and speed of an electron, with Descartes 'I think therefore I am' .

SeattleC++ wrote:

then the result would be that there are two "yous", each wanting to live, each wanting to control the assets "you" own, each rapidly diverging into different identities as their experiences differed.

I have thought about this bit a lot. I think you are right with rapid. I think we change with every microsecond of experience. Two identical consciousness would remain identical for only the smallest measurement of time if at all. Uploading would be interesting. Perhaps instead of the death sentence you could have your mind overwritten. That probably amounts to the same thing. The film 'freejack' just popped up from a small dark corner at the back of my mind. Are you saying that physical variances in the development of each individual neuron, play a part inthe definition of who we are? Kind of like, Ill attempt an analogy of what I think you said: its not just about if the switch is in an on or off position but also the physical dimensions of the switch, what brand it is, which shop you got it from and how much you paid for it and who made it and whether or not they are happy in their job and remembered to feed the dog before they left for work that morning.

But we can use bacteria to store data and cells from a leech to process data. They are both examples of digital to biological. Why could we not do the reverse. Biological to digital.

patbob wrote:

Will we develop an artificial consciousness? I think we're starting to approach it in the right ways, but I'm not sure we'll recognize when we succeed. Personally, I'm beginning to suspect we've already succeeded.

Do you mean the internet? Apparently it looks a bit like the cover of the last Muse album. Or do you mean something else? Are we living inside a big simulation?

AMD then? I couldn't resist. :)

I'm not sure why, but that reminded me that praying mantis have two brains. I don't know if that's relevant or I'm just getting tired.

Bruce Patin wrote:

My own experience tends to agree with this.

That sounds interesting. Have you had a near death or outer body experience?

I admit that I only skim read about the Abhidarma. I got sidetracked as it made me imagine digitizing our brains in order to ascend.

AAC Mike wrote:

So how could you save it if you don't have a clue what it is?

I do that with my code sometimes.

As long as we get to choose our own coloured light I don't mind.