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10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
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k4man
09/25/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
still no Ship Who Sang?
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Charlie Jane Anders
09/25/09

@k4man: Oh ack... You know, I really did mean to include that!
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Klebert L. Hall
09/25/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
"while the actual people (and robot, in Bender's case)"

I would suggest that Bender is clearly a person, just not a human person.
-Kle.
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phoenix
09/24/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
Wow. This list hit the mark in so many ridiculous ways I can't even start. Well played. :D

Much love for including ZERO-enabled mobile suits on the list too; I had all but forgotten about them. And much much love for including GiTS on the list; I think you were right yesterday - more intuitive inclusion on this list than yesterday's. And Gally! Well done. ::salutes::
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CodenameV
09/24/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
Neon Genesis Evangelion only gets honorable mention?! well let me tell you,,,,,,uh, wait.....wait no, Evas aren't remote-controlled at all if you're "piloting"them that would have to be under yesterday's "things to download your soul into"....my mistake.

But why doesn't Io9 have a dedicated anime column? You like Gundam, you like Ghost in the Shelll....
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CodenameV
09/24/09

@CodenameV: yet you take time away from reporting on anime stuff to report on a bad Witches of Eastwick remake, et al....anime is great, but just as the Oscars dont' consider scifi to be "mature", scifi doesn't like anime.
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LiC
09/24/09

@CodenameV: Evangelion sucks. The mecha/aliens plot is used quite a bit - maybe Evangelion was the first, I don't know, but there is a lot of sci-fi anime out there.

Evangelion sucks. (I just had to repeat it)
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MrTim
09/24/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
No love for tabletop role-playing games in either of these lists?

Shadowrun has riggers (a term that, I believe, was originally used with this meaning in Walter John Williams' Hard Wired) who plug into drones and vehicles either directly or remotely, giving them enhanced reaction time and finer control over the vehicle.

There are at least two transhumanist RPGs I know of that allow for player characters to copy their personalities into digital form: the out-of-print but not out-of-stock Transhuman Space from Steve Jackson Games and the Creative Commons Licensed (and therefore free in PDF; just Google "Eclipse Phase RPG free download" and poke around a little) Eclipse Phase from Catalyst Games.
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Evdor
09/24/09

@MrTim: It also has Deckers, who log directly into the internet, most well known for putting the brakes on any Shadowrun RPG EVER.

Also, io9 needs some tabletop RPG love, of the sci fi variety.
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Bismod
09/24/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into

In EarthBound Ness and his friends must have their souls placed in robot bodies in order to travel through time because time travel destroys organic matter. Though technically this seems like complete transference rather than remote control, they get their bodies back afterward so I thought it fit better in this post.

Oh, and by the way, play EarthBound.
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techgoddess: now with more tech than goddess promoted this comment Edited by Bismod at 09/24/09 4:38 PM Bismod was starred Bismod was unstarred

AutonymousPrime
09/24/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
In the "Ghost in the Shell 2.0: Man Machine Interface" comic, Motoko Aramaki encounters multiple versions of her self (or shells) which have split off and are operating individually, causing a bit of a philosophical headache for her original (or is it?) self.
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Chip Overclock promoted this comment AutonymousPrime was starred AutonymousPrime was unstarred

Chip Overclock
09/24/09

@AutonymousPrime: I thought that was the principle issue in the original movie: Major Kusanagi is riding on the canal boat through a flooded Tokyo, looks up, and sees a woman eating in a second story restaurant that looks exactly like her. Until then, she had assumed that her ghost (consciousness) had been copied from her original body into the cyborg body. But now she's faced with the possibility that she's just an AI much like the artifact she and Section 9 are hunting.
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Edited by Chip Overclock at 09/24/09 8:08 PM Chip Overclock was starred Chip Overclock was unstarred

dumanue
09/24/09

@Chip Overclock: it was, or so I got from that sequence as well...that's one of the strongest points in the movie to me...the musing on what makes a soul a soul...
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Chip Overclock promoted this comment dumanue was starred dumanue was unstarred

Chip Overclock
09/25/09

@dumanue: That's my take on it too (and one of the things that makes it such a great movie: raising these kinds of existential questions... something Roger Ebert alludes to in his review BTW).
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Jrsy Devil's Advocate®
09/24/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
Forget those microbots in Futurama. I'd rather have the worms. They're like organic versions of nanotechnology making you, stronger, faster, smarter....

Just keep away from my pelvic splanchnic ganglion...
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Cash907Censored
09/24/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
I could see you leaving Alita off of yesterday's list, even though her newest body is running on a neuro-chip instead of a flesh brain, but this category was made for the cybernetically enhanced martian menace. From her original Berserker body, to her her sound barrier-breaking Rollerball body, to her latest Imaginos Version 2.0 body that is powered by a freaking black hole, Alita knows how to accessorize her grey matter no matter what the season.
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Charlie Jane Anders
09/24/09

@Cash907Censored: Huh.... I really had meant to include her... I am obviously on the bad crack. I will stick her in there now.
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Charlie Jane Anders
09/24/09

@Charlie Jane Anders: Oh, I see what happened... I had the page open to "gunnm" in my browser and mistakenly thought it was the "Gundam" page, so I closed it.
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Cash907Censored
09/24/09

@Charlie Jane Anders:
CJ, you crack me up lady.
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Anekanta - killed by a cacodemon
09/24/09

@Charlie Jane Anders: I'd heard rumours (probably long ago on io9) that James Cameron would be directing a Battle Angel Alita movie, but is this a for sure thing?
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Cash907Censored
09/24/09

@Anekanta:
It's his next project after Avatar. Word is, he's already started pre-production on the digital properties he'll need once filming starts.
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Pickens
09/24/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
The ZERO system is an interpretation of an older Gundam concept called the "Psycoframe."

From wikipedia:
"Appearing in Char's Counterattack, the psycoframe is a technology that builds the psycommu system into nano-receptors within the structural framework of a mobile suit. This allows an extremely high concentration of psycommu perception, and a Newtype pilot would be able to control the mobile suit as if it were his/her own body (somewhat similar to how the suits in G Gundam are controlled). Traditional psycommu systems require sizeable sub-systems, and are typically mounted on larger platforms such as a mobile armor or an uncommonly large mobile suit. With the development of the psycoframe, it became possible to implement a psycommu system into a smaller mobile suit."
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NerD: R.O.A.C.H. promoted this comment Pickens was starred Pickens was unstarred

NerD: Blattella
09/24/09

@Pickens: Give me a Tallgeese any day.
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phoenix
09/24/09

@NerD: R.O.A.C.H.: Tallgeese was BADASS. You have good taste in mechs. ;)
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AxelHaedjinn
09/24/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
You do realize that Major Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell has a completely synthetic body? Sure she can also use her hacking skills to control robots and others, but her consciousness was downloaded to a "cyberbrain" when she was just a child.
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crashedpc - Haifisch
09/24/09

@AxelHaedjinn: Yes, but the technology isn't limited to her only.
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tetracycloide
09/24/09

@AxelHaedjinn: 'cyberbrain' are just organic brains augmented with mechanical parts. so her original body is not fully synthetic since her brain is still original, no 'download' ever took place.
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Chip Overclock
09/24/09

@tetracycloide: I think that's one of the existential issues brought up in the original film: Major Kusanagi is on the canal boat and looks up to see a woman in a restaurant who looks just like her. So is the Major an organic brain in a cyborg body, or merely an AI, much like the one they are hunting, in completely synthetic body copied after the woman she saw? I think this is what she's pondering when she and Bateau are on the boat.
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ataturk returns
09/25/09

@Chip Overclock: The Major isn't an AI. AI means artificial intelligence. The Major's ghost, aka her mind and soul is in tact and that is what controls the synthetic bodies.
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Chip Overclock
09/25/09

@ataturk returns: And I'm saying that question is the central one to the movie. She doesn't really know, and can't know.
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Deadlinex
09/25/09

@ataturk returns: The second manga (Man Machine Interface) follows several of her purely digital offspring she had with the self-aware AI Puppet master. What would that be categorized as? In the universe of the GitS manga the distinction between Digital Intelligence and Biological Intelligence is purely academic.
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Chip Overclock promoted this comment Deadlinex was starred Deadlinex was unstarred

Chip Overclock
09/25/09

@Deadlinex: Functionally, yes. But the existential issue here is whether the Major has been lied to all her "life" such that she has never been a biological intelligence and is purely an artifact. IMO there's a difference whether you start out knowing your an AI or find out much later in life.

I think it's an interesting question (something Australian author Greg Egan would probably write about).
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Chip Overclock
09/25/09

@Chip Overclock: Funny, it just occurred to me that I read Phillip K. Dick's story "The Electric Ant" just this morning in THE BEST OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION: 60TH ANNIVERSARY ANTHOLOGY. It deals with this very issue.

(And I still got misty eyed at the end of "Flowers for Algernon" even though this must be the third or fourth time I've read it.)
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Edited by Chip Overclock at 09/25/09 3:38 PM Chip Overclock was starred Chip Overclock was unstarred

qwijybo
09/24/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
Hey Bender are you jacking on in there?
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enderwiggin13 promoted this comment qwijybo was starred qwijybo was unstarred

enderwiggin13
09/24/09

@qwijybo: No! Don't come in!
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Dunny0
09/24/09

In reply to 10 Best Robot Bodies To Jack Your Brain Into
Now, what about robots that jack into humans?
There was, kind of, Agent Smith in the Matrix films.
Oh, and Innerspace had folks in robots inside other folks!
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Edited by Dunny0 at 09/24/09 3:07 PM Dunny0 was starred Dunny0 was unstarred

ThisDudeRufus
09/24/09

@Dunny0: Hey, if we're just talking about robots getting inside of people, I've got a fine collection of japanese cartoons I could nominate...
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dumanue
09/24/09

@ThisDudeRufus: you mean a fine collection of Hentai...
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ThisDudeRufus promoted this comment dumanue was starred dumanue was unstarred

Dunny0
09/24/09

@ThisDudeRufus: Well, I was thinking less just getting inside, and more getting inside and then running them like a meat-puppet...

Somehow, I think your films probably still fit that role, huh?
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ThisDudeRufus
09/24/09

@dumanue: Whaaaaaaat? I, sir, was speaking of GoBots. You two need to clean your minds.
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Edited by ThisDudeRufus at 09/24/09 3:47 PM ThisDudeRufus was starred ThisDudeRufus was unstarred

Dunny0
09/24/09

@ThisDudeRufus: When did the GoBots go inside folks?
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ThisDudeRufus
09/24/09

@Dunny0: Oh, it wasn't like a licensed version of GoBots or something. All the robots had sex with office ladies.

Totally wasn't hentai, though. That would be weird.
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Anekanta - killed by a cacodemon
09/24/09

@ThisDudeRufus: I fucking love io9... I can't stop laughing!
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Grey_Area
04/07/09

In reply to Science Fiction Put Words In Our Mouths
Do "waldoes" count? The term foro remotely controlled mechanical limbs to handle dangerous material comes from a Heinlein story.

And of course there's always the infamous "thagomizer"! I figure Gary Larson almost counts as science fiction.
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Sproing
04/07/09

@Grey_Area: I grok what you're saying.
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aquajaws
04/07/09

In reply to Science Fiction Put Words In Our Mouths
Lets not forget about the non-technical terms, like 'Frak'
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Grey_Area
04/07/09

@aquajaws: Which is only used by a *ahem* select minority.
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Annalee Newitz
04/07/09

@aquajaws: Wait, what? Frak isn't a technical term?
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Sproing
04/07/09

@aquajaws: You beat me to it. Shazbat!
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