Friday, July 23, 2010

Why you can't backup people


In the latest episode of Futurama Bender discovers that he has a serious design flaw, he was built without a backup device, making him mortal like a "meatbag" instead of immortal like most robots. He naturally does not take the news well, what he doesn't realize is that even if he did have a backup device he would still be able to "die" because all the backup would be is a copy, it wouldn't be him any more than those robot duplicates of Fry and Leela from the first episode of the season. Of course, no one would be able to tell the copy from the original, he would have the same kleptomania as the old Bender, but there would be no continuity between the original and the copy, that is what's important.

These robots have the right idea:

From Freefall by Mark Stanley