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} }) </script> </div> </form> </fieldset> <article class="entryArticle content STeditorial"> <header class="entryHeader icon-theme"> <h1 class="entryTitle">Upload </h1> </header><p class='tagLine'>Entry updated 20 May 2024. Tagged: Theme.</p><div class="browsingBtns"> <span> <input class="button PNI previous" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?id=p&entry=upload'" value="Prev" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI next" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?&entry=upload'" value="Next" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI incoming" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/incoming.php?entry=upload'" value="About This Entry" title="What links to the entry; contributor initials explained; how to cite; other information" /> </span> </div> <p>This real-world term for the transfer of data to a remote <a href="/entry/computers">Computer</a> (for example, new or amended web pages to a website host) has taken on a special sf significance as denoting the copying or transfer of a human or other personality to a sentient software representation. Interesting early examples are "Ghost" (May 1943 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>) by Henry <a href="/entry/kuttner_henry">Kuttner</a> and C L <a href="/entry/moore_c_l">Moore</a>, in which the final despair (if not the full personality) of a suicidal depressive becomes impressed on a supercomputer which rebroadcasts the emotion; "Think Blue, Count Two" (February 1963 <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a>) by Cordwainer <a href="/entry/smith_cordwainer">Smith</a>, in which a semi-organic computer based on a "laminated" <a href="/entry/mice">Mouse</a> brain is imprinted with multiple human personalities; "Point of No Return" (July 1963 <a href="/entry/new_worlds">New Worlds</a>) by Philip E <a href="/entry/high_philip_e">High</a>, where soldiers operating <a href="/entry/weapons">Weapon</a> systems by remote telefactoring suffer inadvertent personality transfer to their machines; <i>The Ring of Ritornel</i> (<b>1968</b>) by Charles L <a href="/entry/harness_charles_l">Harness</a>, in which portions of an unwilling human's brain are physically transferred into a <a href="/entry/music">Music</a>-making computer – the result being strictly speaking a <a href="/entry/cyborgs">Cyborg</a>; "The Schematic Man" (January 1969 <a href="/entry/playboy">Playboy</a>) by Frederik <a href="/entry/pohl_frederik">Pohl</a>, whose protagonist encodes himself as a computer program; <i>Midsummer Century</i> (April 1972 <a href="/entry/fsf">F&SF</a>; rev <b>1972</b>) by James <a href="/entry/blish_james">Blish</a>; <i>Catchworld</i> (<b>1975</b>) by Chris <a href="/entry/boyce_chris">Boyce</a>; "Fireship" (December 1978 <a href="/entry/analog">Analog</a>) by Joan D <a href="/entry/vinge_joan_d">Vinge</a>; and <i>Engine Summer</i> (<b>1979</b>) by John <a href="/entry/crowley_john">Crowley</a>, whose hero's aspirations to sainthood are fulfilled by upload into a recording device as an exemplary life which others may experience in full.</p> <p>More recently the notion of uploading human personalities into machinery has been used very promiscuously indeed, being one of the key corollaries of the notion of <a href="/entry/cyberspace">Cyberspace</a>. It is featured in Vernor <a href="/entry/vinge_vernor">Vinge</a>'s proto-<a href="/entry/cyberpunk">Cyberpunk</a> story <i>True Names</i> (<b>1981</b> dos), and became a virtual <a href="/entry/cliches">Cliché</a> in the years that followed. Updating the traditional sf <a href="/entry/cyborgs">Cyborg</a> transformation, the protagonist of Rudy <a href="/entry/rucker_rudy">Rucker</a>'s <i>Software</i> (<b>1982</b>) is transferred as pure information to a <a href="/entry/computers">Computer</a> that transparently operates, but is too large to be built into, his new <a href="/entry/robots">Robot</a> body. Frederik <a href="/entry/pohl_frederik">Pohl</a>'s <i>Heechee Rendezvous</i> (<b>1984</b>), Greg <a href="/entry/bear_greg">Bear</a>'s <i>Eon</i> (<b>1985</b>), Greg <a href="/entry/egan_greg">Egan</a>'s <i>Permutation City</i> (<b>1994</b>), Robert J <a href="/entry/sawyer_robert_j">Sawyer</a>'s <i>The Terminal Experiment</i> (<b>1995</b>) and Tad <a href="/entry/williams_tad">Williams</a>'s <b>Otherland</b> quartet – beginning with <i>Otherland: City of Golden Shadow</i> (<b>1996</b>) – all propose that various kinds of software afterlife may one day be more or less universally on offer. The attractions of such <a href="/entry/virtual_reality">Virtual Reality</a> versions of Heaven are obvious, if slightly dubious: is copied brain-state information a true representation of personal <a href="/entry/identity">Identity</a>? <i>Permutation City</i> suggests some more practical drawbacks, including shortage of processing power and lack of real-world depth in virtual scenarios, and further difficulties emerge in David <a href="/entry/langford_david">Langford</a>'s "New Hope for the Dead" (26 May 2005 <a href="/entry/nature">Nature</a>). The ship's computer in <a href="/entry/red_dwarf">Red Dwarf</a> (<i>1988</i>-current) can supposedly maintain only one uploaded character (Rimmer), though occasional exceptions are made for the sake of comic storylines. Charles <a href="/entry/stross_charles">Stross</a> develops uploading on a grandiose scale in <i>Accelerando</i> (fixup <b>2005</b>), with much of the solar system being dismantled and reprocessed into a Matrioshka Brain (see <a href="/entry/dyson_sphere">Dyson Sphere</a>) whose vast computational power is required to sustain the post-<a href="/entry/singularity">Singularity</a> upload of most of humanity. More modestly, the protagonist of Calvin <a href="/entry/kasulke_calvin">Kasulke</a>'s <i>Several People Are Typing</i> (<b>2021</b>) finds himself trapped in his PR company's Slack online-chat network.</p> <p>David <a href="/entry/brin_david">Brin</a>'s <i>Earth</i> (<b>1990</b>) offers a somewhat implausible variation on the theme, with Earth itself acquiring an internal "nervous system" of quasi-synaptic pathways into which a single human personality is uploaded to become, as it were, the planetary goddess <a href="/entry/gaia">Gaia</a>. A rare note of intelligent dissent is sounded in Justina <a href="/entry/robson_justina">Robson</a>'s <i>Silver Screen</i> (<b>1999</b>), where the result of an eagerly sought upload is a disconcerting amalgam of static human memories and fluidly alien machine sentience. Much earlier, in Cordwainer <a href="/entry/smith_cordwainer">Smith</a>'s above-cited "Think Blue, Count Two", a character asks whether the upload-carrying mouse brain is dead, and is answered: "No. Yes. Of course not. What do you mean? Who knows?"</p> <p>Film treatments of the theme include <a href="/entry/tron">Tron</a> (<i>1982</i>), which fudges the issue somewhat by allowing its laser deconstruction of a human body into a cyberspace entity to be a reversible process; and, more recently, <a href="/entry/transcendence_film">Transcendence</a> (<i>2014</i>). [DRL/BS]</p> <p><b>see also:</b> <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/amazing_digital_circus_the">Amazing Digital Circus</a>.</p> <p><b>previous versions of this entry</b></p> <ul><li><a href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/upload' target='_blank'>Internet Archive</a></li></ul><br /><br /></article></div> <div class="sideBarsWrapper"> <div class="sideBarsColsWrapper clearfix"> <div class="column sideBar12 clearfix"> <div class="columnForm"><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2>Recently visited entries<span style="background:url(/images/thingSFE2.png) !important"></span></h2><ul style='width: 50%; float: left;'> </ul> <p align=center style="float:right; padding-top:20px; padding-bottom:20px;">ISSN 3049-7612<br /> <a href="/facts.php?id=logo"> <img src="/images/VitMan.gif" width=150 height=150 title="Click for larger version of this SFE logo"></a><br /> <b><a href="/donate.php"><img src="/images/Paypal-Donate.gif" WIDTH="92" HEIGHT="26" BORDER="0" /></a><br /><a href="/">Home/Welcome page</a></b></p><div style="margin-bottom:10px;"></div></div> </aside><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2><i>SFE</i> Special Features<span></span></h2><p style="margin-top: 10px;"><input type="button" value="What’s New" style="width: 150px !important;" class="button primary" onclick="window.location.href='/whatsnew.php'">  Latest entries; 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