Brain Uploading: Difference between revisions

** In one of the ''Stand Alone Complex'' episodes this golden rule gets oddly broken, when a disappointed indie movie director makes a perfect movie inside his [[Brain In a Jar|disembodied cyberbrain]], which caused people who connected themselves to it to lose themselves in the movie and become comatose in reality. Just how this could be possible when a brain should only be able to host one Ghost, and it's impossible for a Ghost to leave its original "data-storage" without highly specialized equipment as described above, is never explained. It's more likely that they're not entering that brain, rather just viewing particular data and encountering something not unlike the Individual Eleven meme.

** The second feature film, ''Innocence'', features a multitude of ghost-dubbed dolls manipulated for the purpose of freeing the enslaved children used to dub them. It raises the question of whether, being imparted with some aspect of human consciousness, the dubbed dolls cannot be considered alive, and thus victims themselves in the film's violent plot.

* In one ''[[Detective Conan]]'' [[Non-Serial Movie]] ''Phantom of Baker Street'', the [[Child Prodigy]] coded an artificial intelligence that is practically himself, {{spoiler|and then killed himself. This artificial intelligence then haunted an [[Deep-Immersion Gaming]] event and...}} Nobody in the movie [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|even tried to distinguish between said artificial intelligence and its creator, and neither did fans.]]

* A variation on this is Yuzuki from ''[[Chobits]]'', who was created to be a [[Replacement Goldfish]] for Kokubunji's dead sister. He can't upload her mind directly, so he just programs as much information about his sister as he can, and for much of the series she attempts to emulate her. Then, after an accident wipes out all that data, Kokobunji declines to replace it, saying she should just [[Be Yourself|be herself]].

** [[Big Bad|Crux Dogatie]] does something similar in the original ''Crossbone Gundam'' story: {{spoiler|knowing he's at the end of his life, he creates multiple biological computers and uploads his consciousness into one. Then he copies it into the rest. The result is ten Crux Dogaties running around in machine bodies, all working toward the same goal.}}

** ''Steel Seven'' has Shadow of Callisto transferring his consciousness into a bio-computer after his defeat on Earth, using his telepathic brother's mind as a medium. This bio-computer is then loaded into the Digitus so that he can fight alongside his still-living twin in the final battle.

* This happened to Cliff Steele (Robotman) in [[Grant Morrison]]'s [[Doom Patrol]] after the Candlemaker crushed his brain. Fortunately, he was hooked up to the Chief's computer at the time, and his intelligence was downloaded on a disk. Once he figured out what happened, he was able to return to his body, though he was pretty freaked out by the entire process.

* The Battlestar Galactica comic 'The Final Five'has this as the origin of the Thirteenth Tribe. Originally, they were members of the other 12 tribes but after uploading their consciousnesses into new cybernetic bodies were treated as a new group. This includes the idea that the Thirteenth Tribe have committed some kind of 'sin', apparently borne out by the intervention of supernatural/sufficiently advanced beings.

* [[Epileptic Trees|Possibly]] Jarvis in the ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man]]'' movie.

* ''[[Film/The Sixth Day|The Sixth Day]]'' features a way of making copies of a person mind that can be uploaded into clone bodies. Unfortunately as uploading is often done after death you get memories of dying.

* In ''Destination: Void" by Frank Herbert, the entire purpose of the apparently impossible, deliberately crippled interstellar colonization mission is determined by the crew to be to force them to create (because they are doomed to die if they don't), beyond the reach of the disaster that would likely ensue, an artificial intelligence beyond the capacity of a human brain. This is done by first building a physical analog of a human brain, but with several times the complexity, then once it has displayed the necessary capabilities, uploading the mind of one of the creators into it, and parts of the personalities of the others. {{spoiler|This results in the creation of a god, like in all Frank Herbert books.}}

* This is the entire plot of ''Circuit of Heaven'' by Dennis Danvers. 99% or so of humanity has uploaded their consciousness into "The Bin", a giant computer storage that lets them all live virtual lives. Those who chose to remain behind live in a [[Crapsack World]] where everything's been abandoned. They are allowed to temporarily visit their relatives within The Bin, doing a temporary brain uploading.

* This is common in ''[[Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom]]'' by [[Cory Doctorow]]; anyone with enough Whuffie can backup themselves at will, a restore is made using a clone body. Since the process is so easy and basically free, it's common for people to swap their body for a clone-and-restore for things like the common cold.

* In the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]:

** A later book had the dying Jedi boyfriend of a character willingly going through this with that same technology, though without the reprogramming, and being put into a [[Ridiculously Human Robot|Ridiculously Human Droid]]. The result was basically a human-looking droid who answered to the same name and had the right memories and personality, but couldn't touch the Force and didn't feel any angst when captured and given a restraining bolt. General consensus was that doing this had been a mistake. There was also a Jedi character who'd uploaded herself into a spaceship somehow; the end of the book had droidboy getting destroyed and his girlfriend committing suicide while leaving her body intact so that spaceship girl could inhabit it. Droidboy and his girlfriend are mentioned by no other authors.

* ''[[The Culture]]'' has brain uploading as a matter of course; human mindstates get scanned and transmitted out of danger.

== Live-Action TV ==

* The entire concept of ''[[Dollhouse]]'' is based on this trope.

** In the episode "The Schizoid Man", Dr. Ira Graves uploads his brain into Data, essentially possessing him; at the end he {{spoiler|moves into the ''Enterprise'''s computer, where his knowledge exists but he has no conscious awareness}}. [[And I Must Scream|We hope]].

** There's also something of a debate (albeit one with -arguably- a life on the line) in the episode "Measure of a Man" wherein Commander Maddox proposes an experiment that basically involves taking Data apart to see what makes him tick. His only reassurance that Data himself will be preserved by this is the fact that he is able to download all of Data's memories and experiences into a computer and reupload them when his body is reassembled (that's assuming he CAN actually reassemble him.) Data argues that only the events and recollections themselves will be preserved and the "essence" of the events and situations will be lost, therefore so will he; because ''[[Star Trek]]'' wants to have its materialism and eat its dualism too, it's never made entirely clear whether this is because [[Our Souls Are Different|Data's soul wouldn't survive the transfer]], or just because Maddox isn't competent to do it properly. Still, theoretically uploading might be possible. They never got to take him apart to find out for sure.

* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'':

** In the new-series two-parter "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", the computer at the heart of the titular library is an uploaded version of a young girl who had a terminal illness. She's also capable of storing and running the personalities of anyone else who tries to teleport while in the library, as well as anyone who dies in the library while wearing neural relay.

* In a ''[[John Doe]]'' episode, a scientist experimenting in this field is killed. It turns out it was his colleague who turned out to be a religious fanatic and claimed humans aren't meant to live forever. The twist happens at the end, when it is revealed that the scientist encoded his mind onto ''bar codes'' of several ordinary-looking items.

* This is basically how the Asgard survive, which is convenient since the main ones keep dying all the time. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, the cloning process is impossible to maintain indefinitely so they all opt for mass suicide instead of slow death.}}

* ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'' implies this to be part of the process behind the Clinical Immortality secret project. And that's just the beginning: the [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence]] Victory is done by first uploading all the knowledge created by Mankind into Planet's [[Genius Loci|global mind]], then by uploading all your people's minds in the same global mind.

* ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'':

** Cave Johnson really ''did'' back himself up, as revealed in his casting call, as well as the ARG leading up to ''[[Portal 2]]'''s announcement.

*** In the PeTI DLC, it turns out that in an [[Alternate Universe]] Cave {{spoiler|succeeded in uploading himself. He quickly goes insane from boredom, and decides he needs to kill everyone so he can ascend to Olympus like Hercules}}. When Cave Prime hears this, he decides to cancel research into Brain Uploading, strongly suggesting "Earth 1" is not the same universe the main story takes place in.

* ''[[Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere]]'' had this with "sublimation", the act of uploading your mind inside a computer. Among other things, Ouroboros is a secret faction hell-bent on sublimating all the people in the world, and Fiona is unable to forgive her sister Cinthia after she tells Fiona she wants to sublimate her mind. (Don't panic if you don't know that: all that stuff is exclusive from the Japanese original; the American release had [[Macekre|this engaging storyline replaced]] with a generic [[AI Is a Crapshoot]] plot).

* The Doctor, a [[Playful Hacker]] of ''[[City of Heroes]]'' is revealed to be one of these, and created an easily produced process to upload personalities. Oddly enough for the genre, it didn't destroy her original mind or body; [[Mega Corp|Crey]] took care of that some time after she had already gone on the net. She's treated as a [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|human]], although she does recognize that she's not one any longer. ''[[City of Heroes]]'' also features this trope's inversion : Paragon Protectors are revealed to run on home-built personalities downloaded into clone bodies, using the same underlying technology and copied on a massive scale. [[Cloning Blues|They're fairly expendable]], in a world where normal clones or uploaded personalities are treated fairly well, but [[Mega Corp|Crey]] does tend to harvest the original copies for those personalities from the rotting corpses of dead heroes and rip out whatever higher brain functionality is left before slapping the Paragon Protector together.

** {{spoiler|Dave does this after his [[Mad Scientist]] awakening.}}

** Also in the mini comic ''[http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic_plus/series.php?view=archive=47564 Edie in Orbit]'', which has only seen the light of day as a ''[[Narbonic]]'' Sunday special feature, Edie's robot buddy is a human mind scanned into a floating robot head.

** Tarvek uploads his sister's mind into a [[Ridiculously Human Robot|Ridiculously Human Clank]] almost by accident: he builds it to serve as her prosthesis after she's injured, and it doesn't notice when she dies. Later, the same clank ends up housing the mind of [[Big Bad|The Other]].

** This [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20100407 was] lady Lucrezia's ''speciality''.

* A Major [[McGuffin]] of the Hob arc in ''[[Dresden Codak]]''.

* In ''[[Unity]]'', the main character's neural patterns had been uploaded into a powerful computer. {{spoiler|This simulation eventually (and accidentally) takes over the ship - for the better.}}

* In ''[[Homestuck]]'', this is how Dirk created his auto-responder. It was apparently meant to [[Mundane Utility|respond to instant messages when Dirk himself wasn't at the computer]], though it's developed beyond that. It's treated as a character in its own right, superficially similar to Dirk but with its own quirks and eccentricities.

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' has this done a few millions of years ago, after Bradicor implementation of [[The Ageless|biological immortality]] combined with their brain architecture led to [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2007-09-02 some messy problems]. Most chose the uploading as a solution. Their next war was implied to be something like ''[[Ubik]]'', but with access to weapons capable of destroying their mainframes. Thus when the smoke cleared, the only Bradicors left were those few who chose to retain their bodies and tweak their new brains into [[The Fog of Ages|semi-senility]] instead. Oh, and {{spoiler|one brainwashed [[Super Soldier]] in [[Sealed Evil in a Can|storage]]}}, but since he went [[Ax Crazy]] upon awakening, they subdued and transformed him in their likeness too.

== Western Animation ==

* The title characters of ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'' had their minds uploaded by Doctor Venture because they're death-prone and he keeps a stock of clones ready to replace them. That... sounds really bad on paper

** Oh, it sounds really bad on the show, too, and that's not lost on those around Rusty.

* The [[wikipedia:Blue Brain Project|Blue Brain Project]]. They've claimed to have simulated a rat's neocortical column and [[Commitment Anxiety|expect]] to be able to simulate the entire human brain by sometime in 2020 ([[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|depending on which expert you ask]]).

* In all likelihood, while computer processing power will reach the point where it can emulate a human brain, this trope will probably be banned from ever occuring, due to the laundry list of moral, ethical, sociological, etc., problems with it, much like how human cloning is currently banned.

** Of course, going by the strictly biological/physical approach, one would be able to create a copy simply by creating a computer simulation that takes into account every single cell and chemical reaction in the body itself, falling into the commonly accepted concept of a truly accurate simulation requiring a system at least as complex as the system being simulated. Of course, this does not get into the philosophical questions of what truly defines consciousness.

* It is now theoretically possible to upload someone's memories to a computer at this point in time. You would need, however, advanced programming and algorithms to tell the computer how to read said memories; it is likely that it would work like an emulation program, e.g. [[DOS Box]]. However, the only current way to ''get'' said memory data is to scan the brain with a special machine that builds a 3D computer image of whatever is scanned. Unfortunately, it can only scan objects that are as thin as paper. This and other complications means that the brain must be flash-frozen while still alive, cut out of your head, and sliced into paper-thin pieces.