Business & Travel

Travelers on a long journey will probably be able to go at the speed of light. That is, the information in their brains will be read out, transmitted by a very high-bandwidth communications device to the destination, where they are installed into a new body or artificial reality. If the read-out and read-in process takes many hours, it will not be a practical means of travel on Earth, but it would be a vast improvement over rockets for traveling the solar system. Trips to other stars would still take years -- but still, it beats flying.

A number of specialized businesses would arise if mind uploading is developed. Body manufacturing, sales, and rental would be a large industry (larger than the automotive industry today). Backup services will probably be popular; such a business would back up your most valuable data, your brain, in some disaster-proof set of vaults. Brain modifications, as permitted, will make a lucrative new business, as will artificial-reality programming.

business.html . . . . . . . . 10/08/94 . . . . . . . Joe Strout