Would you use a "transporter" if you knew...

Would you use a human transporter?


  • Total voters
    41
Said no...
firstly, I like who I am and that other person wouldn't be mean.
secondly, on concept - I don't see how the science works, where is the second machine that buts me back together? How do you deal with the loss of matter that is taken from the beamin location that is used to make the other me?

Makes nice science fiction, but little if any science fact.

Not being mean could be an improvement for sure! Whoops typo :P

Well the energy from the matter id imagine could power the machine to send the data. But what happens if they just make a pretend machine and start converting humans to energy to power peoples light bulbs. Kind of like the matrix but not having to keep the people alive (which I think would use much more energy than they would produce) and not having to power a huge electronic world for the humans to live in. I thought this was a huge flaw in the matrix story, don't get me wrong it is a great film though!

Edit: No I wouldn't use this machine unless it operated on different principals like the idea of shifting an area of space for another. What's the point in transporting yourself if it is not really you that comes out the other end!
 
It would depend on damage, if any.
Start over? How many didn't want to at least try this?
Same brain, new body ... hallelujah!
Same body, new brain (empty) ... not so much.
Same/same? Well, that's the answer to the energy situation ... isn't it?

all in all, Yes, I would.
 
I'm with Tim on this one - the compexities involved in moving billions of atoms and re-arranging them in the right order while also reconnecting the billions of connections in the brain.... This is a major reason I have not used this form of transport in either of my books!
 
I certainly wouldn't, because "I" would be killed. It would only be a copy of me which would be recreated.

Let me give you this example: suppose it were possible to create a perfect copy of yourself without destroying you, so you would both be alive together (as in Christopher Priest's book and film, The Prestige). Would you then be happy to be killed, knowing that your copy would continue to live? Because that, in effect, is what the Star-Trek type transporter does, only in a slightly different order.
 
But that's just it... it wouldn't be you but rather a copy of you. The "you" right now would end up going away.

I certainly wouldn't, because "I" would be killed. It would only be a copy of me which would be recreated.
That's what I've been saying! :D If there was a transporter that could take me to a more Earthly destination instantly, like to Japan from Philly, would I be interested? Sure, but not if I knew that it wouldn't be "me" walking out of the other end but rather a copy of me. That person would look like me, have the same memories as me, perhaps even the same 'essence' of what makes me to be me, but the first & original copy, me, would go away. I would not be walking around the streets of Tokyo with my own eyes but rather somebody who looks like me; "I" would be gone, never to be seen again.


... (as in Christopher Priest's book and film, The Prestige) ...
That indeed is what I was watching when I pondered this question.

I just couldn't do it.
 
It brings a smile to my face to see you baby step your way through these important questions. There are ways around this problem, several in fact, but "NO" I would not get into or use a transporter of that type...duh! Thats like being one of those ignorant suicide bombers...if you are dead anyway what difference does it make to you that you blew up some people. That just makes no sense at all.
A real transporter though will reassemble you and your consiousness exactly.
 
Maybe only if it was 100% safe, but it is not.
The problem, as portrayed in the movie, is that your 'old' self doesn't simply disappear but rather is still quite alive & functional after the copy steps out of the chamber on the other end. Since you can't very well have two identical selfs running around how do you solve that issue? The solution chosen by the movie is most definitely not one that I think would enjoy very much.
 
I'd prefer to watch my big sister go through it first. I sort of like the idea of the transporter keeping my make-up and current brain content on record, it seems like it could be used to re-set you or re-build you in case of medical disaster.
 
To me, going from point a to point b instantly would be worth the instant travel. So I would gladly go through a transporter or teleporter. Watching movies is one thing but the real life possibility of soon having such devices to instantly travel by dialing up addresses to other locations is fascinating and hopefully soon to become a reality. Even if there were certain risks in the beginning sure why not use it, if time is a factor.
 
As has already been said here, "Transporters" have a number of major technical problems - like converting a physical human being into a form of energy, beaming it to a receiver, and then rebuilding it with all the bots in exactly the right place. Even our own DNA gets rewritten - badly - as we age, doing it electronically each time we transport may present some new 'rewrites' of the code with some interesting effects...

This is one reason why, in my books, I've avoided 'transporters' and gone for space lifts and atmospheric re-entry along the same lines as Asimov, Clarke and others. Check out "Out of Time" Out Of Time: Amazon.co.uk: Cox, Patrick G.: 9781425959951: Books and "The Eneny is Within!" The Enemy Is Within!: Amazon.co.uk: Cox, Patrick G.: 9781453575512: Books or The Enemy Is Within!: Amazon.co.uk: Cox, Patrick G.: 9781453579411: Books This last one is also available as an E-book from Xlibris
 
Isaac Asimov was the best Sci-fi writers that I have ever seen and Clarke was equally good. I particully liked the style of both writers and have read their books since a youth back in the 1960's. Great imagination mixed with scientific possibilities always makes for great stories and Asimov and Clarke knew how to combine both science and fiction with human emotions and Alien creations to spur the interests of the reader.
 
As has already been said here, "Transporters" have a number of major technical problems - like converting a physical human being into a form of energy, beaming it to a receiver, and then rebuilding it with all the bots in exactly the right place. Even our own DNA gets rewritten - badly - as we age, doing it electronically each time we transport may present some new 'rewrites' of the code with some interesting effects...

This is one reason why, in my books, I've avoided 'transporters' and gone for space lifts and atmospheric re-entry along the same lines as Asimov, Clarke and others. Check out "Out of Time" Out Of Time: Amazon.co.uk: Cox, Patrick G.: 9781425959951: Books and "The Eneny is Within!" The Enemy Is Within!: Amazon.co.uk: Cox, Patrick G.: 9781453575512: Books or The Enemy Is Within!: Amazon.co.uk: Cox, Patrick G.: 9781453579411: Books This last one is also available as an E-book from Xlibris

I try to see beyond the imagination of the beginning of transporters that might rewrite the genetic makeup of DNA to create new lifeforms beyond human thought, and see a day where imagination allows for the perfected transporters and a normal means of travel in a distant future changed by discovery of new worlds and those technically advanced beyond us working together to build a brave new world where most anything is within the realm of thought, even travel using thought. Stories of the future are limitless and the imagination is the only restraint.

Man in my future has a long way to go but also advancement of man also goes a long way as man begins to learn the truth within the mind and the mind grows in limitless knowledge into a future barely thought of by todays imagination.
 
I'd prefer to watch my big sister go through it first.
:ROFLMAO: Yep, with any new technology, nobody really wants to be the first one to step into it.

... I sort of like the idea of the transporter keeping my make-up and current brain content on record, it seems like it could be used to re-set you or re-build you in case of medical disaster.
I think that actually was done a few times in the Star Trek universe.
 
Going back and checking the original post date of this thread I realized that since then real science has caught up with this thread.

in an article dated Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009 entitled Teleportation is Real by Time

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1874760,00.html

(See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2008.) Using a pair of ions, or charged particles, group leader Christopher Monroe and his team place each in a vacuum and keep them in position with electric fields. An ultra-fast laser pulse triggers the atoms to emit photons simultaneously. If the photons interact in just the right way, their parent atoms enter a quantum state known as entanglement, in which atom B adopts the properties of atom A even though they're in separate chambers a meter apart. When A is measured, the information that had been previously encoded on it disappears in accordance with the quirky rules of the quantum world. But all is not lost: because B is entangled with A, B now contains the information that was once carried on A. That information, in a very real sense, has been teleported.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1874760,00.html#ixzz1APVyVVoj

We may actually have to make this decision. Or our children might!
 
It wouldn't really matter if I was a copy at the other end - because I am not the same person I was 10 years ago or last week or even yesterday.
Think of it like this if I had a wooden boat and over the years I replaced parts of it until eventually I had replaced all of the parts - would it be the same boat??
This happens with lots of a human body - and memories and thinking change all the time...
 
Back
Top