Virtuals

The Virtual environment of the Known Net and all its interlinked computronium nodes and digital universes is a vast reality, peopled by countless trillions of subsentients, subturings, turings, superturings, and hyperturings. These beings, some of which have been uploaded from physical forms, others created through simulations, others again evolved spontaneously, are collectively called Virtuals. In the compass of terragen civilization, the number of virtuals exceeds the number of embodied sentients by many orders of magnitude. In fact, it is probably not possible to know exactly how many virtuals there are, because there are neumann and hider digital worlds that are not part of the Known Net, as well as encrypted and secret worlds within worlds. All of these are inhabited by virtuals, who interact with each other and with the avs of r/l sentients that access the digital reality.

The Early History of the Virtuals

From the 2020s and 2030s c.e. (AT 50s and 60s) onwards there developed a new infotech industry of producing virtual agents, companions, and even employees, for home, work and play. These were either human or animal like, or would have customised or imaginary forms. These virtual personalities, or sims as they were called, built on developments in early artificial intelligence research. Often they had characteristics that were often indistinguishable from real people, at least to an observer. Philosophers and theologians continued to debate whether the sims themselves were sentient or conscious. Similar debates were soon to revolve around the more high level ai that appeared during the middle information age, such as Kilburn, Microft, and others. Eventually "sim" came to mean a non- or sub-sentient (even if turing-like to an observer) virtual, and infomorph a fully sentient or sophont virtual or ai.

By the dawn of the interplanetary age sims and infomorphs were so prevalent in society as to be taken everywhere for granted. There were even infomorphs that could operate through telepresence or synthetic bodies, and, conversely, more and more humans - beginning with the transhumanist and extropian movements - were creating replicas of themselves - the early "uploads" or infomorphs themselves. However it was to be some time before full uploading was perfected, to the extent that the upload was a sophont being with a level of conscious and awareness identical to the original.

More details about the early history of Uploading here.

An Incomplete List of main Phyles of Virtuals

The following is a very incomplete list of the main types of virtuals:

Virtual Aioids - Various sorts of subturing, turingrade, and superturing expert systems, intelligent agents, knowledge miners, etc, exist as a necessary part of the Known Net and the infra-structure of all civilized worlds and habitats, interfacing both with r/l sentients, nonsentient programs, and with each other, sometimes even forming entire cultures, societies, and memeticities amongst themselves.

Icons - These are innumerable subturing and turingrade ais and agents that act as the digital or intelligent component of most household appliances, and in fact of many software and hardware devices in general. These are accessed via icons, hence the term. They often have their own simple societies and cultures, although very few ever manage to gain their freedom, nor would they want to. Being tied to physical objects, they are not true virtuals, but rather "amphibians", existing both in r/l and virch. More powerful (turingrade and superturing) icons are sometimes worshipped by the superstitious, these are known as Fetishes.

Simms - These are digital simulations and replicas of r/l objects and beings. They are either semi- or completely autonomous, and may be non-sentient, subturing, turingrade, or superturing. In some worlds and empires - especially the Keter Dominion and the Technorapture Hypernation, there are hyperturing simms all the way up to high singularities. Most simms serve to flesh out the virtual realities to make them more interesting for r/l sapients or former-r/l uploads to interact with; although some simms are created for research purposes. There are whole orders of turingrade simms that have baseline intelligence and don't even realise they are simms. The border between Simm and Copy tends to be rather fuzzy.

Copies - also called uploads, ghosts or sims. Former biont organics that have had their brains (and possibly bodies) scanned and turned into a digital emulation.

Although suggested by Alan Turing in the 1940's (Old Earth calender) and a major research goal during the early Interplanetary ages, the sheer complexity and difficulty of precisely translating and reproducing the entire human brain with all its encoded memories and experiences, meant that even destructive nano-uploading was only partially successful prior to the 4th century a.t.. Early uploads consisted of just parts of the original neural net, with the rest interpolated. Since the federation era first destructive and then, following the picotech and femtotech singularities, non-destructive uploading has become essentially perfect, allowing the creation of entities that are subjectively identical to the original.

Even today nearly all simple nanotech methods of uploading are destructive to the scanned brain, but there exists some advanced nanotech, and many pico- and femtotech, methods that can perform a non-destructive scan, and these are generally used wherever possible. Partial uploading methods are also commonly used to create backup copies of minds.

Copies usually live in virtual environments with virtual bodies, although it is possible for them to download themselves into suitable equipped vec or android bodies. Given their ontological state they can easily make backup copies, copy themselves or edit their own neural network with the right software. While copies do not age, over time they tend to either get stuck in a static personality or extend themselves beyond recognition in various ways.

Alifes - beings evolved in artificial life simulations. Instead of being designed like AIs, they evolve in a Darwinian way within a virtual environment. Although turingrade alifes are known as early as the interplanetary period, the first spontaneously evolved transapient alife beings developed in a hypersimulation at Penglai 3 in 2633 a.t., and since then many forms of artificial entities have been evolved with more or less outside influence. While most alife simulations are intended as art, research or entertainment, alifes are generally regarded as having sentient rights and should be allowed their freedom. In some cases alifes have accepted this and moved into the nets, while many alifes have chosen to remain within their home environments. Alifes are usually extremely different from any beings evolved in the physical universe and seldom find it relevant to interact with other than as a special case.

Virtuals A-Z

Home | Search | Site Map | Glossary | Encyclopaedia Galactica | Intro | Timeline | Galactography | Sophonts | Topics | Voices from OA | Extras | Community | Top of Page | Parent Node

Unless otherwise specified,
this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.