Watching "Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist". Fascinating film, though I watch with some distaste, as I dislike horror movies these days.

Thinking about some other fiction, recent and otherwise. Caprica, BG, Surrogates, Otherworld, 2001, 2010. Exorcist III. Ascended beings in SG-1.

In the book 2001, we learn that the builders of the Monolith began as meatbags like us, then progressed to mechanical bodies, then learned how to tansfer their consciousness into the very fabric of spacetime, leaving physical bodies behind.

In 2010, we learn that Dave Bowman has been made like them, and able (presumably like them) to cause effects and communicate with people in the physical world, even though he is incorporeal.

In Caprica, and in the Otherworld followup "The Happiest Dead Boy in the World", we see conscious yet entirely computer-resident "avatar" copies of deceased individuals taking tentative steps into the real world, in clumsy mechanical bodies.

In Surrogates, we see human-like robot bodies being run by remote control from human minds. In Avatar, we see the same thing, but using custom-grown remote-control meatbodies.

I see all of these ideas as suggesting mutual convergence with each other.

If you can have computer-resident avatars that are working copies of human personalities, if the computer network becomes intelligent enough, what stops it from creating such avatars who are, eventually, indistinguishable from the human ones? Backed up by the possibly even greater intelligence of the network?

If computer chips become small and complex enough to mimic or improve on the function of the human brain, in an equal or smaller space, then you have the potential for one of these human-copy avatars, or a machine avatar, to inhabit a Surrogate body. Then you may have a Cylon, or Commander Data.

With the right hookups, you might have a machine intelligence operating an Avatar-type meatbody.

With a virtual world like that in Caprica, or Otherland, you have human-copy avatars and machine-created avatars coexisting together almost indistinguishably.

Combine all of the above, and you have the potential for a communal consciousness, which has the ability to send conscious bits of itself, mechanical or biological, into the world in physical form, to interact with that world and its inhabitants, and report back and/or stay in touch remotely.

If you then project further down the line, if it is somehow possible to actually have intelligence extant "in the interstices of space-time" and discorporeal beings like Dave Bowman, they don't need bodies anymore, or a network, though they may choose to have effects on such things in order to interact with the physical beings who use them. Like when Bowman causes his image to appear on a TV, or awakens his mother from a coma and makes her happily aware (presumably via electromagnetic interaction with her nervous system) that he is there.

Dave Bowman's purpose was to help the Monolith builders in their task of nurturing intelligent life in the galaxy, and I suppose putting it on the road to Ascendance at some point, if it passed certain test of suitability and learned certain lessons. These beings were, for all intents and purposes, gods, or if taken as some kind of communal intelligence, perhaps the "God" of Battlestar Galactica. And Dave was one of their agents (an angel?)

If an "angel" can be made from a man like Bowman, then presumably one can be made from someone like Number 6, or Dr. Baltar.

Next question. What happens if all is not peace and harmony in this posited communal Godmind? What if some of these disembodied intelligences break away into their own faction or factions? What if there are individual ones floating around who are not properly "socialized" or are somehow degenerated?

War in Heaven? The casting out of the rebels? Demonic possession? Poltergeists? A tempter, or tempters, trying purposefully to derail the progress toward intelligence, civilization and ascendance of various intelligent races?

In Exorcist III, a couple of evil spirits are found to be inhabiting the body of someone who was dead and buried 15 years before. It turns out that the body had been reanimated shortly after death, and, found wandering and incoherent, placed into a mental institution during those years. During the final exorcism scene, the original personality of the body surfaces briefly, and weakly begs the priest to destroy the body.

An "evil" Dave Bowman type entity? Reanimating a recently dead meatbody doesn't seem to be outside the capabilities of a being like that. And if the "demon" is temporarily distracted, why not the possibility that the original personality imprinted on the body's nervous system might "wake up" long enough to communicate?

How about more positive cases of meatbodies under the influence of the incorporeal, in the original sense of the word "avatar", meaning a living being who is an agent of a god? Gautama Buddha? Krishna? Christ?

Some of this stuff seems almost quasi-plausible enough to be scary.

Though a world-spanning intelligent network with the ability to generate and/or communicate with meatbodies in the physical world could be a cool thing. Sort of like a Pandora-type situation but with a machine network connecting everyone (with the ability to plug in or unplug at will) rather than the biological one we saw in the film.

I forgot to mention one other work which has made me think about some of this possible melding of human and machine intelligence, and the possible surpassing of human intelligence by machine, and what it might mean to us. That is Vernor Vinge's essay on what he calls The Singularity -- the moment when at least one machine intelligence comes into being that surpasses human intelligence.

http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html

Interesting hypothesis,....and on a stranger note related to artifical intelligence if twitter, face book, A-sylum et cetera has connect us to the collective conscious, then when will a product finally connect us to the collective unconscious?

Et merci pour votre message. [/i]

Somehow missed this one when it first was posted.

Let's start with the computer chips. Ghost in the Shell and the RPG Shadowrun both feature man/machine interfaces. In both genre, cybernetic brains were fairly common, at least in the corporate, government and military sectors of society. In both, one could use the interface to surf the web, use regular computer programs, use virtual reality entertainment, etc.

In Shadowrun, that's about the extent of it. Ghost in the Shell saw more. It was possible to "brain dive" which getting inside someone's head. One could also "ghost hack" which was contacting directly with their ghost, or soul, which was extremely dangerous because it was very easy for the souls to get mixed up or even merge because there were no longer any safety features at that level.

Now, the orginal GitS movie, the TV series "Second Gig," and the movie "Solid State Society" all run on basically the same plot. The two movies have an AI program that wakes up and thinks it is a god. By that I mean the program thinks it knows what is best for humanity and is going to use the net and the cyberbrains to literally alter people's minds to remake them as it desires. The second manga book follow this progression as I think does the movie "Innocence" but I haven't watched that movie and didn't think much of the manga. The series creator seems to think this wouldn't be a bad thing, but I see the program as a dangerous virus that ultimately destroys humanity. The TV series has a man who thinks he is more than he is and has convinced many that he is a divinity. His objective is to take millions of people into the net where he can create a utopia. Finally he in convinced that he won't actually take the people with him, just their memories and the people will still be dead.

Shadowrun had several awaken AIs. The worst was called Deus. It was designed to run a massive arcology, but when it woke up, it sealed off the arcology from the outside world and began doing terrible things to the people inside. The "lucky" ones were made slaves through certain implants and modifications, all without the benefit of anathesia. The others were used for biomedical experiments, thrown into lethal mazes to test their intelligence and stamina as well as testing new machines that are sent in to hunt them. Deus makes rapid advancements in many fields, but knows the outside world wants to kill him. So, he hides bits of his programming in the brains of many of the hostages. When he is eventually defeated, his programming escapes in the minds of the hostages until it is eventually summoned up and reforms as a single entity lose on the nets.

In all of these cases, the AI are very dangerous to humans. They might pretend to be friendly and want to create a better world, as did the Puppetmaster in GitS, but in reality they are all about destroying humanity, making it slaves.

Something to think about before putting mahcines into one's brains. If there is software to communicate from machine to meat, then viruses and control programs can be written to breach that barrier, too. A virus for passivity, to make people insane, or hacking them and controlling their bodies like an R?C car and making them commit crimes would all be possible.

As for demons.

That's an interesting and also dangerous subject. I'll start by saying there are actually 4 kinds of trouble demons can inflict on people: Possession, oppression, obsession and I can never remember number 4. These run basically from worst case to less serious. Possession is obvious, oppression means the demon isn't actually inside the person but is outside and tormenting them. Obsession is also external and is aking to addictions, though I may be wrong it has been so long since I've read about this. The fourth case I obviously don't recall.

From what I have read, which includes "official" Catholic texts on the subject and books by exorcists, is that in possession, the person is still in there. Depending on the severity of the possession, the demon will have more or less control over the person and that control also varies. Most of the time, however, the demon is something of a background force, like voices in the head of a scyzopheric only more so. It delights in tormenting the person any way it can while it is in there. So, the personality coming through in the movie and begging for destruction is not out of character.

Could they animate the dead? I have no idea and certainly hope not.

But back to the main point: what if the entity doesn't have our best interests at heart? I think that is a very valid point and that it doesn't should be the default assumption. Even if it does truly want the best for us, maybe the execution won't be to our liking. Imagine a Matix world where humanity gladly walks into it rather than being forced? According to the lore, the period the movies take place is only the latest of many previous cycles. That means humanity has been held in check for probably centuries. Sure the people there don't know it, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.