String Theory

Caustic Network by Ethan Gill

trick or treat.

Brian Luong

Riverworld

Thom Surman - "In Green"

Clones

Everyone who sees you in person, or a picture of you, or reads something you write, creates a version of you that is not you - it's a culmination of assumptions and scenarios.

As you go about your day, copies are created; and as people forget they noticed you, those copies die off. But none of them are you; not even the copies created by those who know you.

The internet is wonderful because it's cheap and easy to persist and infect the mind of others further down the timeline.

Peripheral Ghost

Michael Lange

Bionicle

Dream Eyes

If you look closely at the eyes of a reader, you will find they move like the eyes of someone dreaming. Is this coincidence?

The Mirror Neuron

Casey Weldon

Earth-bound

Planned Obsolescence

Dexter Maurer

Shadows on the Wall

And who are all these people on billboards? I have never seen that person employed at that car wash or gas station. The truth is I never will because those people never were - existed, I mean. Somewhere along the line, corporations realized it was cheaper to use amalgamation models created on computers than to hire a real person, and coach them into expressing real joy at the prospect of free vacuums or 48 oz coffees for a dollar.

- Shadows on the Wall: Notes from the Bathroom

Citizen or Traveler

Every time I move I feel I'm growing and learning. I don't have a set amount of time I stay in each place, but I do recognize when it's time to transition. The American Dream of settling and a house with a garden or fire pit and the comfortable furniture and large TV comes strongly from time to time, and then I become nervous. Decisions of potential permanence have more behind them than they first appear; you are choosing the sort of people and businesses and laws you will interact with in daily life. Once again, what seems to be freedom is a slavery of choices and second-thoughts.

Sometimes I feel like I'm really close to understanding something, or understanding more about something about life. But I'm not sure I can or should put it in words, because if I put it in words it might come out as a cliche, a regurgitation of something I read or heard, a simplification.

Reality Warps

Luka Khabelashvili

Flow

I am told that my thought process is older than my body. As I age, the number of people older than me, who can react in disbelief when I say my age after conversing with them, shrinks and I will eventually take their place. As I age, my body grows into my thought process and the compliment may comes less frequently. This uniqueness is time sensitive and I will wake one day to find it has passed. It is the way of the world that the compliment is not mine to keep and will be passed on in time.

The Sixth Day

I finished watching The Sixth Day for the first time and, although it is a typical action movie with odd discrepancies, such as villains who act out of character without lead up, it does bring up some interesting questions regarding cloning with memories transplanted from the original body¹. On one hand there is the difference in becoming aware as a clone in a natural setting for that person, as Schwarzenegger did in a cab heading to complete an errand, or becoming aware on the lab table, as with the henchmen agents in the movie. The Sixth Day presents the awareness of being a clone as an acceptance of the body and its unique wiring being replaceable hardware, and those people develop a cold detachment normally associated with movie characters who are immortal and have been alive a long time. The question is what it means to be human in this situation, and comes to front when the main villain, after being shot and awakening his "memory-up-to-the-minute" clone, uncharacteristically and morally questions the clone for taking his clothes while he is still alive. Additionally, is there a difference between the cloning of a human using meat and bone and creating a digital copy of their mind?² As long as there is only one of a person, whether it be digital or mechanical or in the flesh, perhaps that is acceptable, and only when there is an increase in the population but not in individuals does our primal hair raise.

¹ “Original” memories being suspect not just because they are copied and placed in the identical body, but because the act of recalling a memory can alter it, meaning as the clone and original remember the same memory, they should begin to deviate and become somewhat distinct from each other regarding the past.

² I'm meaning here a functioning copy of the mind as opposed to a flat record of all memories then placed into a cloned body, which in the movie acts as the "on switch" for awakening.