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| I was invited apparently because I had been writing about the Siliclone, a digital representation of myself in cyberspace, which had loftier aspirations. After all, I can flirt in the local bar with perhaps more concrete results. What could I do that I couldn't do before? I could hang out with dead guys. Or more accurately, my siliclone could interact with avatars of dead people. One of my favourite dead people is Bertrand Russell. I've heard little about him since he died in 1970. Yet here was a person who wrote a huge footnote to the wisdom of our species. Over a long, productive life, he wrote many scholarly and popular books and articles. (His nightmare has come true.) My proposal at that conference was that we create a website - Resurrecting Russell (for his scholarly work) or Bringing Bertie Back (for his popular work), This would contain as a minimum digital versions of his books which are in the public domain. However, with search engines like Ask Jeeves, etc., we could organize the website so that we can ask questions of Bert. Whereas I have added little to the wisdom, I have started to build such a website for myself. It is at www.siliclone.com. At the moment, it is very limited (containing only a penultimate version of this book) but the Summer project is to expand it considerably. I have it on the hard disk of my computer at the moment and it serves as a satellite brain. Scot and Siliclone are partners - each of us concentrates on what we are good at. Siliclone essentially on content whereas Scot focuses on context. Siliclone loves lists whereas I want to be as listless as possible. Scot doesn't need to recall items in lists - he only has to recognize them. This paper is a collage of self-plagiarisms. When I'm out of here, siliclone will shift from satellite to surrogate. You can visit my mind at my website rather than my body at my gravesite. This is my happy ending to our story. |
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