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Welcome To Life

tomscott.com

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Re: Welcome To Life

#11

Post by drostie »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #5

Very cool. There were a lot of parallels to a handful of different things. I loved it but if you're looking for so,e feedback I'd suggest maybe a bit more focus on any one subject. If I didn't know better I'd guess this was inspired by Vanilla Sky. But back to focus, I saw references to Vanilla Sky, tiered subscription services, and copyright. While the message of each gets across fine they all don't seem to fit real…

The copyright issue that they've raised is actually one of the parts of copyright that I consider mind-blowing. The idea that memory is copying changes a great deal of the discussion -- for example, when the movie industry says "oh man, we're losing profits because all these people are getting free copies from the Internet," there is a direct parallel to them saying, "oh man, we're losing profits because all these people are remembering." Imagine, they spend all those millions of dollars on new films when they could just spend that as a one-time cost and zap us all with a Forgetting Ray as we leave the theater. Did you feel entitled to keep those memories? Ugh, kids these days, feeling entitled to copy our movie and share it with their friends.

What is not really addressed here, and you're hinting at it, is whether your after-death experience requires working for a living. The premium service mentions a 'subscription' so I assume it does. It's not strictly true that "Dead people don't buy things again." I mean, you might not buy physical clothes again, but you might pay the Life Store for trendy clothing-data that someone has coded for them.

I especially liked the "you can either agree to our Terms of Use or die, your choice."

Re: Welcome To Life

#13

Post by arethuza »

drostie wrote: post #12
sandieman wrote: post #4

What happens if you don't agree to TOS?

Then you get to go to heaven. Which might sound better at first, but you might have to agree to an even stricter TOS to stay there.

Or a copy of your mind could be put into a virtual hell - a rather disturbing concept from Iain M. Bank's novel Surface Detail:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail

Re: Welcome To Life

#15

Post by oskarth »

Lets just hope the use of "traffic accident" as a euphemism doesn't increase in order to end a trial prematurely. I would prefer to use my trial version for as long as possible (or would I really? Look at all those nice plugins!).

Some (rather lame) lingo for the coming pay model of life:

Cheapskate, you're such a trialler

You haven't really lived until you lived with Life TM.

He hasn't upgraded in a long, long time

Do this for me and I'll make you live forever

You gotta commit suicide at least once, the rush beats base jumping hands down, and the white tunnel effect is pure bliss - and it's legal

Well you know, I could sponsor your life subscription if that would help the situation

Re: Welcome To Life

#17

Post by lordlicorice »

arethuza wrote: post #14

If you find this interesting then I can recommend Greg Egan's novel Permutation City: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City

The "rate limited" option in the video reminds me of slow clubs from that book.

For people who haven't read it, in the novel there are virtual parties called slow clubs where poor consciousnesses go to meet. Everyone agrees to limit themselves to the processing speed of the slowest (poorest) person there, so that people who can only afford the occasional spare clock cycle can have meaningful human contact.

Re: Welcome To Life

#18

Post by pirateking »

sandieman wrote: post #4

What happens if you don't agree to TOS?

You can wander in purgatory forever as a row in the database, or you can go to Hell, where you will be forced to hack on the codebase for Life - in Brainfuck. Fortunately you may be able to scrape together your wages after a while to purchase your way to a Tier 1 Life. Some find it worth the trouble, just to enjoy the real sky.

Re: Welcome To Life

#19

Post by arethuza »

lordlicorice wrote: post #17
arethuza wrote: post #14

If you find this interesting then I can recommend Greg Egan's novel Permutation City: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City

The "rate limited" option in the video reminds me of slow clubs from that book. For people who haven't read it, in the novel there are virtual parties called slow clubs where poor consciousnesses go to meet. Everyone agrees to limit themselves to the processing speed of the slowest (poorest) person there, so that people who can only afford the occasional spare clock cycle can have meaningful human contact.

One idea that I found quite haunting from Permutation City is that idea that you could set up a higher level controller for your running Copy mind that would periodically chose a new obsessive interest and then provide you with a rich environment to support your obsession.

As someone who is prone to rather obsessive interests (as I suspect many are on HN) I'm increasingly conscious of that fact that I can't directly control what I find interesting.

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