Ghost in the Shell

This has always been my favorite picture of Vernor Vinge. I like the way he is sort of secretly peering out from or into a secret world. The interview is good too. Strange Horizons is a really wonderful magazine, in case you're not familiar with it. (Disclosure: I am on the staff, but I still think my opinion somewhat objective).

I was struck by how Vernor Vinge's True Names presages Iain M. Banks' Feersum Endjinn, where reincarnation is possible by uploading one's mind to a data haven called the cryptosphere or simply "the crypt." A constant problem for writers dealing with virtual reality always seems to be the question, "What happens if you die in [the matrix]?" Vinge's consequences are less terminal than those in other novels, perhaps because it's an early instance of this kind of tale or perhaps because the threats in his books often seem tinged with a promise that everything will work out okay or there will be little suffering if things don't.

Still, outside of Vinge's novella, physical death often looms for those who play too dangerously in cyber-reality. Perhaps considerations of virtual death drives considerations of electronic immortality through mind uploading. Or vice-verse. What, then, are the barriers to such an enterprise? The problem must not have to do with the amount of data but the data structure. The Big Blue is working on it, though!