BUTLER@MIT-DMS@sri-unix.UUCP (07/28/83)
If you were to use the recorded pattern of a man to reconstitute him at a younger age, why would he "remember" anything that had happened to him since that recording was made? None of those things happened to him; as a result, he would be in the position of the main character of a John Varley novel (The Barbie Murders, I think) in which the central figure has paid to have a recording of his(her?) personality made, in case he/she dies. S/he does die, and when the clone comes out with the imprinted memories of its original, it does not know what events led to its original's death. When the clone is murdered, its successor is in the same boat, since it is given the same memories #2 was given. As a result, #3 knows that numbers 1 and 2 have been mur- dered, but does not have their interpretations of events, which would help #3 figure out what is happening. Now, as I recall, those animated episodes had people being restored to youth AND remembering things that never happened to the recorded version of the character. Humph. As regards Gene Roddenberry's attitude toward this use of the trans- porter, it is all well and good to say "No, you cannot do that for dramatic (or any other) reasons, but it is too late. The djinn is out of the bottle. If the transporter can record a man's pattern long enough to reassemble him on a planetary surface, there is no reason that pattern could not be recorded permanently. The pattern can't be too complex or gargatious in space requirements for the computer to handle, or the transporter wouldn't function in the first place. The problems resulting from the opening of this can of planaria are enough to drive a man to drink (or Reformed Sufiism). --RL "verbosity is ITS own reward" Butler
davidl@orca.UUCP (David Levine) (08/02/83)
Once again we come to the bane of any series written by more than one person,
especially SF television series: the fact that some ignorant or hurried (or
both) writer included a bonehead idea in one episode makes it part of The
Mythos, and there's nothing we can do about that. The worst example I know
of of this sort of behavior was the Superman comic book in the 60's, when
several writers insisted on coming up with new super-powers at the drop of a
hat. (Did you know that super-ventriloquism works in a vacuum?) From the
invention of any new idea such as this, it must be considered in each new
situation. This makes exciting new plots harder and harder to come by as good
solutions become easier and easier. For this reason Superman has had to
"forget" many of the powers he picked up in earlier years. This is also the
reason Larry Niven stopped writing the Known Space stories: with the
introduction of the Slaver stasis field, third quantum hyperdrive, Ringworld
floor material, and shadow square wire (aka Sinclair monofilament and
Stonecypher cable) it became increasingly difficult to come up with
situations which couldn't be solved by some device he hadn't thought up
earlier (this from the introduction to "Tales of Known Space," if I'm not
mistaken).
There seem to be several solutions to the matter of "can the transporter
restore a dead but recorded person":
A) No. Those incidents in the series of restoring the old to youth
with memories intact and recording some signals while passing others
through must be discarded as the errors of a few bonehead writers.
B) Yes. The implications of this technique of immortality have been
covered in John Varley's excellent novel "The Ophiuchi Hotline."
C) Yes, but it's too expensive for civilian use (see my previous
article for my reasoning behind this). This relieves us of having to
restructure the Star Trek universe around the idea of matter
duplication as a consumer service (my mind reels at the very thought)
but does not prevent the technique's being used in an exceptional
circumstance such as bringing Spock back from the dead.
There are more, of course. I think that the usual series-TV approach of
conveniently forgetting or altering the past will most likely continue to be
used. Due to the pressures of series TV inconsistencies are bound to creep in,
and the Star Trek legacy is pure series TV. Recall the problems with
Gumato/Mugato and Vulcan/Vulcanian to present just two trivial examples.
-- David D. Levine (...decvax!teklabs!tekecs!davidl) [UUCP]
(...tekecs!davidl.tektronix@rand-relay) [ARPA]gcsherwood@watcgl.UUCP (Geoffrey C. Sherwood) (08/06/83)
Why does the transporter need to store any data at all? All it needs to do is scan and reconstruct the object/person. If the two are done simultaneously, no storage at all would be required. Even to make them young, think of the transporter as a stream editor. You can edit an arbitrary-size file with one even though you don't have the storage required to read it in. Agreed though, it is too much magic. - geoff sherwood - - U. of Waterloo -
hoey@NRL-AIC@sri-unix.UUCP (08/10/83)
From: Dan Hoey <hoey@NRL-AIC> Gary Samuelson, in V8 #44, brings up a ST episode (which I haven't seen) called ``The Day of the Dove''. In this some Klingons had their transporter trip put in a holding pattern. Scotty claimed that they were in the transporter during the delay. Gary concludes that ``if information ... can be stored, it can be copied.'' In the case of Star Trek, I am not sure that objects enroute via the transporter are information. Perhaps they are some third state of matter/energy, or some sort of astral essence. I have enough disregard for ST's internal consistency to consider the question worthless. But Star Dreck aside, I am very uncomfortable with Gary's last statement. Known ways of transmitting information, including transmission into and out of a storage medium, do involve copying. But I can't think of any reason why the ability to transmit and store information implies the ability to copy it. Any takers? Dan
RMann.HDSA@SYSTEM-M.PHOENIX.HONEYWELL@sri-unix.UUCP (08/16/83)
From: Roger Mann <RMann.HDSA @ SYSTEM-M.PHOENIX.HONEYWELL>
From: Dan Hoey <hoey@NRL-AIC>
Subject: Re: The Transporter; why it can't do that
But Star Dreck aside, I am very uncomfortable with Gary's last
statement. Known ways of transmitting information, including
transmission into and out of a storage medium, do involve copying.
But I can't think of any reason why the ability to transmit and store
information implies the ability to copy it. Any takers?
Good point.
I think that the ability to store data on a medium and retrieve it
unchanged implies the ability to copy, and the ability to store
data is a necessary but not sufficient condition to copy . After
all, there are Write Only Memories (WOMs) that are used to store all
those bits that shift off the end of shift registers that nobody wants
to see.
-Roger