Imagine tens of billions of nanobots in a swarm performing molecular nano-assembly contained in a nutrient/energy grid. Imagine now that there was enough energy and speed from each nanobot to assemble an entire, living cell in less than a millisecond, with the entirety of an organism coming together in less than the blink of an eye. That’s the future, and the kind of immortality likely to exist. We’ll exist as digital/organic hybrids who occupy created bodies. Maybe some people will only feel comfortable being in one body at any particular time. Maybe some will be able to control hundreds of such bodies. And imagine the kind of consciousness that would compose being able to have multiple bodies in multiple locations. Each one reporting back to the core and sharing its experiences. Sort of a clone node. Would that cheapen human life? What if each clone node had the same rights as the whole? Its possible to percieve that laws against personal aggression would have to become far more strict. Imagine feeling what its like to get beaten up three times at once - or imagine if someone raped one of your bodies. Or murdered you. And you’re still alive with those memories. How much worse is that for a psyche?

And what happens when a clone-node becomes seperated, is no longer a part of the network for long enough for it to be considered an independent copy of *you*. Cause, every single node would have to be considered legally you - since any one of them can be you at any point in time.

Of course, such a future will have solved a lot of problems. Resources, for one, would be highly recycled. We tend to think in terms of expense - but really the human body is just about $2000 worth of raw materials. You could buy a body like you could a used car. The nanobots assemble themselves and would be ubiquitious. The energy - lets face it we’re either going to have alternate energy soon or there won’t be a humanity to worry about it. I think we’re going to be harvesting solar energy from space once we have the space-resource harvesting down. We’ll build hundreds of 10km radius solar collectors which have the added benefit of being able to block a tiny portion of the sun’s energy while collecting it and beaming it back to earth. When you think in those terms, the resources to create dozens of clone nodes - not much in the grand scheme of things.



Here comes the future. One molecule at a time. :)

