@eimyr the issues I see are that while this might work for the digital paper shuffle or some forms of HPC, there's still going to be a need for computers cast in silicon.

I am not running a vital interlocking program on wetware any time soon!

(or in other words -- reliability is your big bugbear here)

Yes.

Silicone (or quantum) computers would be used to integrate the network.

However, with the majority of population donating, the corps would be very likely to incentivize reliable, predictable donating patterns

e.g. eight consecutive hours a day, 9-5

or perhaps the most needy people would enter into "standby"

agreements, where they are required to donate on short notice

@Shalvenay the problematic bit is: I want top throw digital immortality into the process

@eimyr I'm not talking about availability here, but reliability of results. wetware is...notoriously glitchy compared to silicon.

how do you know?

this is precisely what I'm saying: the wetware is intrinsically different to silicone

@eimyr yeah. you'll probably see the wetware be basically a commodity HPC pool of sorts

therefore the assumption is that at some point certain processes (e.g. true AIs) might be more suited to the unpredictable and infinitely mutable as well as stochastic wetware than silicone, purely by the virtue of impossibly complex programming it might involve

with the data-shuffling duties handled by silicon still

e.g. while some problems might be NP by nature to binary silicone systems, they might be P for wetware, when set as generic goal "compute something" with the wetware growing into the problem

or that wetware instead of being programmed like software, might be grown to for the task

@eimyr yeah. at that tech level though, I'd also think lab-grown neural networks could be a possibility, if not around the corner at least.

If you have seen The Cathedral by Tomasz Baginski, you might have an idea - wet programs designed as incomplete, with only boundary values defined

only in that short a computative crystal structure was used

also, this'd be off-limits to military contracting at least under the current US Constitution...a Third Amendment challenge would be likely otherwise.

Why do you assume the US still exists or is relevant?

@eimyr I'm using the US 3rd Amendment to make a point that this would need to be considered very carefully from a constitutional law perspective.

I'm pretty sure the military would be a step ahead - read have already lab-grown wetware, without relying on populace, while the corp sector tries to catch up

Oh hi, @AlexMitan long time no see

@eimyr I'd think that's a development that the military could very well commercialize, especially if there were contractors involved ;)

Assuming the military resembles the modern militaries at all

These would just be setpieces of a larger world, where post/transhumanism is not as well-discussed as opportunities for immortality

either by conscience download, ageless, self-regenerating body or otherwise