From: "Andy Robertson" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Mr Million v Oreb
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 22:40:01 +0100

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nigel Price" 
>
> intentions!) arises from the fact that Oreb's bird brain is already
stuffed
> full to capacity with night chough subroutines (datatypes? function
calls?),
> leaving relatively little room to spare for downloaded cyber-deities.


The trouble is, of course, that a human personality needs a human brain to
hold it.   A smaller brain will not do.    Only a fraction of a human
prsonality could be embedded in a chough .

Today we guess that the fastest supercomputers carry out about the same
number of switching events per second as a human brain does.  But they are
BIG and consume a LOT of power.

One can only assume that the cybernetics of Wolfe's future is far advanced
over ours, because a handful of  "cards" seem to be able to hold something
like a human personality


> Perhaps loading Scylla into Oreb is like installing two operating systems
> and a double boot option onto your PC. There was plenty of space when you
> were running just one OS, but it gets a bit crowded when you've got two.


Candidly, organic data processing is not digital and it is probably
impossible to "download" a human or animal mind into a computer, full stop.
The whole buisness of the Holy Hues being visual downloading of personality
is very, very, dodgy.   But it is a familiar SF trope and Wolfe uses it
well.


    hartshorn


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