Tuesday 10 March 2015

There Came An Echo / Episode 5 / Activating Override


This mission was surprisingly frustrating to complete. Some of it was because it checkpointed badly on my first attempt, some of it was that my voice commands were not reliably understood and acted upon and some of it was that I did not know how to skip the starting cut scene.

Thank goodness that it is over though, it was frustrating enough that I quit out and had to come back to it later.

The point I tried to talk about a few times in the video, but didn't quite get to was the potential uses of some of the technology mentioned so far, even without the ability to print out and download minds into fresh bodies.

The game already explicitly has the ability to upload and store people's conciousness, and to put said consciousnesses into sims, the potential uses both ethical and unethical are amazing.

Imagine if when you joined a company, they reserved the right to make a copy of your conciousness for consultation in the future. You build something for them and it breaks down after you left? No problem, boot up the old copy and ask them about it.

The uses for spying and security are also pretty obvious too, if you have captured someone, you can scan them and then interrogate the digital copy, multiple copies in fact, in parallel, Check each copies answers against each other to try to eliminate lies and the physical version of the prisoner never even gets to learn the questions asked of them.

In fact the potential mix of permanence and impermanence could also be pretty cool and creepy to explore. Imagine an artist who makes a deal for immortality, when her work is purchased a copy of her conciousness is made and sent along side so that whenever it is shown the viewers can question the artist herself.

Assuming that they just reset it at the end of the day, to the these copies of the artist every showing is the first since the purchase, the grand opening. To him there is no difference between the first showing and the last, every past showing makes no impact or impression because they literally were not experienced by him once the power goes off at the end of the day.

How does the original react to this? Does she regret it in later years? How would the staff react at a museum or gallery? To this person who they are increasingly familiar with, but is incapable of growing to know them?

There Came An Echo really isn't interested in exploring these questions which is totally fair enough, but I certainly am.

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