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Comment by exit | Hacker News Reader

you should read the work of "greg egan"

in particular his novel "schild's ladder", in which space travel mostly involves digital brains being transmitted by laser between physical outposts

sometimes "people" send along specifications for biological hosts in which to be embodied, sometimes not

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You barely beat me to mentioning Egan. I find it interesting that he's able to write engaging stories using AIs as the principal characters, as if to say that most of the attributes we normally attribute to being "human" are actually general properties of sentient minds in general, and we just conflate the two because we happen to be the only sentient minds we know about.

Traveling by "AI over laser" is a clever cheat for the speed of light that I hadn't thought of. But how do the physical outputs on the receiving end get there in the first place? <:)

> It has been theorized that a self-replicating starship utilizing relatively conventional theoretical methods of interstellar travel (i.e., no exotic faster-than-light propulsion such as "warp drive", and speeds limited to an "average cruising speed" of 0.1c.) could spread throughout a galaxy the size of the Milky Way in as little as half a million years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft

citing http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ComparisonReproNov1980.htm

> Traveling by "AI over laser"

I hope the error correction is good. Imagine getting bits of the transmission knocked out by dust.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'm going to be doing some traveling later this week & have been looking for some reading to take along!

I cannot recommend Hannu Rajaniemi enough. Mind. Blowing. This goes for the whole HN crowd: read his books.

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