I do admit that I could be wrong but I've heard that scientists haven't even proven that they are sending information with quantum entanglement merely linking particles into opposite states that remain there until measured.
That was one interpretation, but I gather it's been disproven. And quantum teleportation of single particles has been successfully achieved.
But even if they do manage to use it for quantum teleportation in all its glory, its still not for me. To each his own in this matter of course, but there is nothing that will convince me to redefine my body ceasing to exist here as being anything other than death even if a totally identical me shows up some place else.
Your body changes over time -- particles are replaced with other particles. It's a myth that every particle is replaced every seven years; some parts of the body, like the heart, keep the same cells permanently, while others, like the stomach lining, turn over every few weeks. But still, there's change over time. The key question is whether you'd perceive yourself as having a continuous consciousness through the process, i.e. if the person you are now would continue to perceive his existence after being rematerialized at the other end. And I think that might indeed be the case, if all the practical problems could be miraculously solved.
Of course, since
that's never likely to happen, it's pretty much a moot question.
I remember reading the novelization of TMP that Roddenberry "wrote"...
Roddenberry definitely did write the novelization. The myth that Alan Dean Foster ghostwrote it is based on an error in the cover credits of the French edition of the novel (Foster wrote the story on which the film was based, and the translators forgot to list the other writing credits), and on confusion with the
Star Wars ("Episode IV") novelization which Foster
did ghostwrite under George Lucas's name. The TMP novelization is written in a style that's totally unlike Foster's, and that's totally consistent with the approach of a screenwriter doing his first clumsy attempt at a prose work (such as an overuse of italics to call attention to key phrases in narrative/descriptive passages, reflecting how scripts use underlining to call out important stage directions). It also very much reflects Roddenberry's well-known preoccupations, such as futurism and sexuality.
and it I believe it very clearly stated that implants for direct computer implants were rejected because people feared it would lead to what was essentially described as the Borg, 1970s style.
Not quite. From the novelization, p. 15-16
n:
Editor's note: At the time of these events, Starfleet Command's senceiver implants were still being kept secret. Undoubtedly, the Admiralty was concerned that the public might mistakenly believe them to be some sort of mind-control device. Clearly, public respect for Starfleet would have been seriously imperiled by anything reminiscent of the horrors that grew out of the politicalizing of behavior-control implants and which led to the bloody Mind Control Revolts of 2043-47.
So not rejected, just kept secret "at the time" of TMP. Since Roddenberry presents the novelization as an in-universe fictionalization of the "true story" of TMP (kinda like, say,
Apollo 13), that implies that the implants are still in use later on and eventually became public knowledge. So at least within the version of the Trek universe posited within that novelization, communication implants were used and eventually accepted, although there had been abuses of similar implants in the less enlightened past.
But you will be displaced and ultimately replaced by those who adapt.
That's an illogical assumption. It's a big planet, and if we go out into space, it's an even bigger universe. There's plenty of room for all sorts of different ways of being human to coexist. If the posthumans are so superior, they could just go off into the cosmos and leave Earth to the people who prefer the old ways.
Only very small, primitive minds assume that everyone has to think or live like them, because their minds are too narrow to contemplate more than one limited set of ideas. Presumably an expanded posthuman mind would be more than large enough to encompass and embrace a diversity of viewpoints, and to be concerned with their preservation.
That's nice, still not worth becoming a Borg drone for me. Because really what is the difference between the Borg's collective mind and having the internet in my head to let see and do whatever I want while computers handle all the drudgery of day to day living?
Oh, there's plenty of difference. That would just be a more integrated version of what we already do. Heck, I've already started to think of Wikipedia (only somewhat jokingly) as an external surrogate memory, because I've gotten into the habit of checking it (or Google) any time I want to remember something accurately, no longer trusting my own internal memory.
Communication and interconnection does not preclude free will or the privacy of thought. Even if you had instant access to all the online information of the world, you could still control what you chose to share with others, like the way you can set Facebook posts or albums to be visible to only certain groups. The Borg are totally different, because the individual drones retain no individual identity. Their minds aren't just connected, but completely suppressed. Rather than the computer network becoming a supplemental knowledge/memory base for its users, the Borg drones' brains are reduced to supplemental memory/processing devices for the computer network.
And evolution doesn't mean that the earlier species disappears unless its killed off by the successor.
Exactly. That's an all too common, profoundly ignorant myth about evolution. If it were true, wouldn't there only be one species on the planet at a time? Of course evolution is about branching outward. More to the point, it's about adapting to one's environment. If a species' environment changes around it, then the old form is no longer viable and the new form will replace it, yes. But if the species splits up, if one group migrates to a different environment while the others stay in the original environment, then they can evolve into two different species that coexist in separate niches rather than directly competing -- like the Galapagos finches whose variations clued Darwin in to the principle of natural selection in the first place.
Indeed, would the Earth even be a viable environment for the posthumans to live in? All that computing power would generate an enormous amount of waste heat, which would not be healthy for our already-warming climate. It would also demand a lot of energy and put strain on Earth's existing energy resources. Posthuman AIs would probably be better suited to living in space, where they could collect all the solar energy they wanted and radiate all the waste heat they produced without endangering their own environment. So humans and posthumans wouldn't necessarily be competing for the same niche, in which case there's no reason to think posthumans would "replace" humans.
