What's YOUR residual self-image?

[JoeRoccoCassara]

In the cult-classic sci-fi film known as Matrix, the idea of Residual Self-image is explained as what a person believes himself to be physically and socially in a virtual dream world designed by machines to keep the human mind occupied as they live their lives actually sedimentary, their heartbeats producing the fusion power necessary to keep the artificial sentience that has conquered mankind sustained indefinitely.

 

So let's say that it is the year 2100, the dawn of the 22nd century, and people have the option of living lives in a predetermined virtual dream world, as real as our own, that has been set by the makers and your own residual self-image has been consciously created by you. What would it have been, what is your perfect residual self-image as it stands now?

 

thumbnailhttp://img52.imageshack.us/img52/7633/residualselfimage.png[/img]

[CraigD]

I think the Wachowski brothers (or, I should say now, brother and sister) meant a jacked-in person’s residual image self-image to be something of a faithful representation of his or her actual body, minus externally induced features such as scars., so what you’re describing might be better termed a wished-for self-image, or more catchily, an avatar, but your question’s nonetheless an interesting one.

 

Based on thousands of hours of realistic, non-randomly generated character FRPG play, I seem to favor avatars that physically and physiognomically (facial features) closely resemble the actual me, often taller (195 vs 182 cm) and heavier (120 vs 100 kg) if my true gender of male. When not prohibitively disadvantageous (eg: not a historic period campaign), I like having a female avatar – trotting out the ‘ole anima for some exercise, so to speak. :thumbs_up

 

Were I able to have a form unconstrained by the limitations of the FRPGs of my experience, I’d love trying truly bizarre avatars – neomorphic forms like those described in Greg Bear’s Eon series, a distributed form like the flock of seagulls Manfred is embodied in in Charles Stross’s Accelerando, a favorite of mine.

 

Note that I’m assuming that in this matrix-esque virtual reality world, one would be able to change avatars at will. If I had to chose a single avatar, I’d chose one close to the actual me, as I know from real reality I’m comfortable with that one.

[JoeRoccoCassara]

I think the Wachowski brothers (or, I should say now, brother and sister) meant a jacked-in person’s residual image self-image to be something of a faithful representation of his or her actual body, minus externally induced features such as scars., so what you’re describing might be better termed a wished-for self-image, or more catchily, an avatar, but your question’s nonetheless an interesting one.

 

Based on thousands of hours of realistic, non-randomly generated character FRPG play, I seem to favor avatars that physically and physiognomically (facial features) closely resemble the actual me, often taller (195 vs 182 cm) and heavier (120 vs 100 kg) if my true gender of male. When not prohibitively disadvantageous (eg: not a historic period campaign), I like having a female avatar – trotting out the ‘ole anima for some exercise, so to speak. :shrug:

 

Were I able to have a form unconstrained by the limitations of the FRPGs of my experience, I’d love trying truly bizarre avatars – neomorphic forms like those described in Greg Bear’s Eon series, a distributed form like the flock of seagulls Manfred is embodied in in Charles Stross’s Accelerando, a favorite of mine.

 

Note that I’m assuming that in this matrix-esque virtual reality world, one would be able to change avatars at will. If I had to chose a single avatar, I’d chose one close to the actual me, as I know from real reality I’m comfortable with that one.

 

My avatar is not so far from reality because I'm dissatisfied with myself, it's because I need to make an avatar resembling what I like about myself as far improved upon as I can imagine.

 

My avatar wasn't perfectly suited to what I see, the world I'd live in. This is my improved avatar.

 

This system of a virtual world would offer a less expensive way to live life, instead of paying for a house, lively possessions such as cars and television, you have them installed in the virtual world, and with artificial foods that you can feel and taste reduces all of the food you'll ever consume to a single, cheap, omni-nutritional compound.

 

Your life would be cheaper and predetermined, you will live your fantasy.

 

Perhaps when AI surpasses the human intelligence we can live in such a utopia, trading the energy produced by our heart beats for the perfect world in which we are our own perfect avatars.

[CraigD]

Not to disagree that future humans may chose to live in virtual reality utopias rather than in physical reality, but the idea is antithical to the plot of The Matrix. From Matrix, The Script at IMSDb.:

AGENT SMITH

Did you know that the first Matrix

was designed to be a perfect human

world? Where none suffered, where

everyone would be happy. It was a

disaster. No one would accept the

program. Entire crops were lost.

 

Agent Brown jams the needle into Morpheus' shoulder, and

plunges down.

 

AGENT SMITH

Some believed we lacked the

programming language to describe

your perfect world. But I believe

that, as a species, human beings

define their reality through

suffering and misery.

Like thousands, nay millions or others, I adore The Matrix, but must note that it’s a very soft SF to fantasy movie, not to be taken seriously in details like its

“We are, as an energy source,

easily renewable and completely

recyclable, the dead liquified and

fed intravenously to the living.”

plot rationale.

 

As a power generating machine, a human body is bulky, difficult to maintain and fuel, and in short less useful than the food with which it must be supplied. They can’t run forever like a perpetual motion machine, fed their own remains, as the movie suggests, but must get energy from an external source, at present, mostly indirectly, through sunlight photosynthesized by plants into foodstuffs. In The Matrix, where an artificial cloud has blocked the sun, we’d be in far deeper trouble than its fictional culture of computer-based artificial intelligences, who could get the electricity they need efficiently from ordinary technological sources such as nuclear power plants. As we modern humans, even in the least developed countries, consume more electric and fuel-delivered power than our bodies produce in all forms by about a factor of 2 to 1 (source: World energy resources and consumption - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), even if the machines had a 100% efficient means of harnessing our bodies' output, they’d do better to just take our electricity and fuels and get rid of us.

 

I remember, when I first watched The Matrix, thinking at the moment Morpheus held up the battery in the above quoted scene, that its writers had come so close, yet missed the crucial plot point that could have made it a good, semi-hard cyberpunk SF story. IMHO, What semi-malevolent machine conquerors of humankind in such a situation would most likely want from us – if they wanted anything – is not the mechanical output of our bodies, but the information processing ability of our minds.

 

Our brains are quirky, poorly at present understood, but fantastically powerful and energy-efficient information processing and control systems. In my reimagining of The Matrix, humans would not be kept in VR thralldom to be used as electric generators, connected to computers to keep them unrebellious, but wired into the computers as critical processing units performing the quirky, intuitive/creative operations we are so good at, and at present and likely into the future, digital computer so poor at. We’d be not inmates of the Matrix, but the infrastructure of which it was built.

[JoeRoccoCassara]

Not to disagree that future humans may chose to live in virtual reality utopias rather than in physical reality, but the idea is antithical to the plot of The Matrix. From Matrix, The Script at IMSDb.:

AGENT SMITH

Did you know that the first Matrix

was designed to be a perfect human

world? Where none suffered, where

everyone would be happy. It was a

disaster. No one would accept the

program. Entire crops were lost.

 

Agent Brown jams the needle into Morpheus' shoulder, and

plunges down.

 

AGENT SMITH

Some believed we lacked the

programming language to describe

your perfect world. But I believe

that, as a species, human beings

define their reality through

suffering and misery.

Like thousands, nay millions or others, I adore The Matrix, but must note that it’s a very soft SF to fantasy movie, not to be taken seriously in details like its

“We are, as an energy source,

easily renewable and completely

recyclable, the dead liquified and

fed intravenously to the living.”

plot rationale.

 

As a power generating machine, a human body is bulky, difficult to maintain and fuel, and in short less useful than the food with which it must be supplied. They can’t run forever like a perpetual motion machine, fed their own remains, as the movie suggests, but must get energy from an external source, at present, mostly indirectly, through sunlight photosynthesized by plants into foodstuffs. In The Matrix, where an artificial cloud has blocked the sun, we’d be in far deeper trouble than its fictional culture of computer-based artificial intelligences, who could get the electricity they need efficiently from ordinary technological sources such as nuclear power plants. As we modern humans, even in the least developed countries, consume more electric and fuel-delivered power than our bodies produce in all forms by about a factor of 2 to 1 (source: World energy resources and consumption - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), even if the machines had a 100% efficient means of harnessing our bodies' output, they’d do better to just take our electricity and fuels and get rid of us.

 

I remember, when I first watched The Matrix, thinking at the moment Morpheus held up the battery in the above quoted scene, that its writers had come so close, yet missed the crucial plot point that could have made it a good, semi-hard cyberpunk SF story. IMHO, What semi-malevolent machine conquerors of humankind in such a situation would most likely want from us – if they wanted anything – is not the mechanical output of our bodies, but the information processing ability of our minds.

 

Our brains are quirky, poorly at present understood, but fantastically powerful and energy-efficient information processing and control systems. In my reimagining of The Matrix, humans would not be kept in VR thralldom to be used as electric generators, connected to computers to keep them unrebellious, but wired into the computers as critical processing units performing the quirky, intuitive/creative operations we are so good at, and at present and likely into the future, digital computer so poor at. We’d be not inmates of the Matrix, but the infrastructure of which it was built.

 

Yes, very interesting.

 

What's more is that we would be completely integrated with technology, to the point where everything that could ever be done for us, is done for us. Our minds the only thing we use, artificial sentience doing the physical work for us, and some of the thinking too. Ever since man picked up that thigh bone and used it to bludgeon his prey, we have be working toward what you describe, technology is one of our ultimate strengths.

[lawcat]

I don't want to derail your convo, so keep talking. I just want to point out that in the movie Vanilla Sky, virtual self image is sold by the company. Tom Cruise ends up living in a dream, in a scarless physical phase as CraigD describes it, until something goes terribly wrong and scars appear. Then he yells: Tech Suppoooort!!! to wake up.

[ronthepon]

We’d be not inmates of the Matrix, but the infrastructure of which it was built.

Ooh! ooh! :phones: Even better; the AI be utilizing the combined mental capability of all the wired in humans, so that it be able to function faster... thus actually requiring us to be alive so that it can do whatever it is that it would wanna do.

 

The matrix be a medium to keep our conscious mind just active enough to have the computer be able to use parts of it without us being able to realize it...

 

Hmmm... there is still a bit to be figured out... Why keep the rest of the body alive? Why not amputate the legs and arms, etc that simply would be consuming excess energy...

 

 

I'm gonna stop here. This thread probably wasn't started for this... :rolleyes:

[Boerseun]

Hmmm... there is still a bit to be figured out... Why keep the rest of the body alive? Why not amputate the legs and arms, etc that simply would be consuming excess energy...

All ya need is the brain and the spinal column for connectors - Robocop style. It does make the participant's decision to join in the fun a rather one-way street, though...

[CraigD]

Why keep the rest of the body alive? Why not amputate the legs and arms, etc that simply would be consuming excess energy...

‘Cause it takes less energy, machinery, and computing resources to support a whole, healthy body than to amputate limbs and provide post op and longer term care.

All ya need is the brain and the spinal column for connectors - Robocop style.

Even harder and more energy/machinery/computing costly than leaving the body to do what it’s so superbly evolved to do – support the brain. Though it’s de rigeur in the cyberpunk genre to pop brains and spinal chords into prosthetic cyborg robot bodies as easily as – or even as an alternative to – changing cloths, it’s pretty implausible in terms of real surgical and physiological science. If it ‘ain’t broke, it’s hard to imagine a much better support system for a human brain than the one it comes with.

 

Back to Gardamorg’s original “what would you like to be in your VR dreamworld” question, taking it as a multiple-choice question answerable with images from the WWW, star Sasuke athlete Makoto Nagano

- a selection my wife approves.

[hilitshifman]

Does it not just mean what kind of aura do you emit?

Hilit Shifman

[Pyrotex]

Here is my actual-image and my residual-image avatars:

[JoeRoccoCassara]

Here is my actual-image and my residual-image avatars:

 

You also have the option of deciding your dress outfit, your car, your house, your tv. Everything you want to possess, and you face is not exclusive to a hair style or a body type.

 

I was looking for more descrptive detail in people's perfect avatar, I mean think about it, you can present yourself as neatly and accurately to your persona as can be imagined, without spending the time and cha-ching, the raw cash, to get you there.

[ronthepon]

Here is my actual-image and my residual-image avatars:

You look an awful lot like that guy from 'Follow the Fleet'...

[JoeRoccoCassara]

After listening to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyM7yJWjB94 lecture on physical strength, and being a big of action movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, my favorite of them being Total Recall, I have pondered having this body as my Avatar.

 

With this Avatar, in the virtual world, since I would be so greatly strong and happy with my physique, I would take up professional boxing and/or wrestling as well.

[ronthepon]

this body as my Avatar.

That's disgusting... I'd rather have normal-large muscles, just with a lot of power.

 

A digital representation of you could have that.

[JoeRoccoCassara]

That's disgusting... I'd rather have normal-large muscles, just with a lot of power.

 

A digital representation of you could have that.

 

If I were to choose to make aestheticism an underlining attribute, than this would be the maximized golden ratio of aestheticism (Sting's sharp look and the Adonis-index physique of the bodybuilder named Kevin Perod). With such an appearance, all golden ratios are accomplished simultaneously. An alpha-male supermodel, if you will, to the point where every trait of the man becomes an attractive one.

 

At least IMO, that would be my appearance in a matrix.

 

But to me, having such a bulk as seen in the "disgusting man" yields its own advantages, for one intimidation in sorts.

 

If I had the morbidly-obese muscle-massed physique in the link, I would choose to live in a futuristic world, in a large city, where there are so many different people that I would not stand out as much.

[Pyrotex]

You look an awful lot like that guy from 'Follow the Fleet'... :clock:

Of course I do!! Thanks!!

 

Yup, that is Randolph Scott. I tried to find a pic of him in one of those fabulous Westerns he starred in, but couldn't. So I used the pic of him from "Follow the Fleet".

No Hollywood star, not even John Wayne, played the strong, quiet, principled cowboy (or sheriff) as well as Randolph Scott. I always thought "High Noon" was the quintessential Western of all times.