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From: rcc@imsvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Matter Transmission
Message-ID: <217@imsvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Aug-84 14:01:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: imsvax.217
Posted: Fri Aug  3 14:01:51 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 6-Aug-84 00:46:22 EDT
References: <3710@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD
Lines: 36

>I think that few SF authors who happen to use matter transmission as
>an ingredient or background in their work recognize all the implications
>of the technology. I speak here of electro-mechanical methods, not of
>psi powers like teleportation. I contend that, if you have matter
>transmission, you also have matter duplication. People offer arguments
>against that, speculating that it might be impossible to store the
>information necessary to reconstruct complex things like living
>organisms or the like, but it seems doubtful that such restrictions 
>would last long if they existed at all. 

Even if you can't store the information needed to duplicate an item,
if you can transmit the information, there's no reason why you couldn't
transmit n copies of the information instead of just 1.  This would
require that an actual sample of the item being duplicated be on hand
every time the item is duplicated (as opposed to having the molecular
pattern recorded on some sort of long-lasting memory device), but this
would still lead to a different society than one with only matter
transmission.

Getting on the topic of SF writers who recognized the matter transmission/
duplication linkage, George O. Smith has a few stories about this in
VENUS EQUILATERAL (a set of short stories).  In the final story, "Identity"
(I think, my memory's a little hazy), set 300 years after the invention of
the matter duplicator, societal attitudes have changed so that to prize
"uniqueness".  Thus, the most prized things are things that have not or
can not be duplicated, and also (a major part of the story, by the way),
being an identical twin is a not a fun thing.

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