AKA The Intergalactic Bodynet
Let's talk about this "digital twin" thing. Twins for the planet, twins for people, twins for everything. And why not? Why shouldn't we all have a backup body, and a backup planet?
But that's not it; the "twin" is for performing future forecasting, simulations, modeling potential outcomes, plugging in variables and testing the results -- You want to try geo-engineering? Why seed silver iodide in the actual sky when you can put it in the virtual-double-sky and see what happens? (Or you could just let China do it like during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and see what happens.)
You want to try intermittent fasting? Why actually do it when you can have your digital twin body double do it and see whether it helps or not? Why ask that girl out when you can have your parallel self ask her parallel self on a date and gauge the outcome? Good time? Worth it? Why waste your time with the real thing when you can run the simulation.
I like to call it the Metabolism of the Anthroposphere; start getting acquainted.
Yet, I can't take credit for the parallel self, so masterfully envisioned by science fiction writer Ted Chiang in his short story "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom", in his 2019 book Exhalation.
Digital content on track to equal half Earth's mass by 2245
Aug 2020, phys.org
As we use resources, such as coal, oil, natural gas, copper, silicon and aluminum, to power massive computer farms and process digital information, our technological progress is redistributing Earth's matter from physical atoms to digital information—the fifth state of matter, alongside liquid, solid, gas and plasma.This scientist, Melvin Vopson, is known for the mass-energy-information equivalence, which says information has mass, and is the basis of the universe."The information catastrophe," AIP Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1063/5.0019941also: The mass-energy-information equivalence principle, M Vopson. AIP Advances 9, 095206 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5123794
Scientists begin building highly accurate digital twin of our planet
Feb 2021, phys.org
It's called Destination Earth:
A digital twin of our planet is to simulate the Earth system in future. It is intended to support policy-makers in taking appropriate measures to better prepare for extreme events.But in addition to the observation data conventionally used for weather and climate simulations, the researchers also want to integrate new data on relevant human activities into the model. The new Earth system model will represent virtually all processes on the Earth's surface as realistically as possible, including the influence of humans on water, food and energy management, and the processes in the physical Earth system."Information system for decision-making"via ETH Zurich: Peter Bauer et al. The digital revolution of Earth-system science, Nature Computational Science (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s43588-021-00023-0http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43588-021-00023-0also: A digital twin of Earth for the green transition. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 80–83 (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-00986-y
Digital twin technology a 'powerful tool' but requires significant investment, say experts
May 2021, phys.org
Here's a good description in case you missed it: a virtual version of real-life objects that can be used to predict how that object will perform, could predict how a patient's disease will develop and how patients are likely to respond to different therapies.
And further context: "We are making more measurements in patients in the hospital and from remote monitoring and we need to develop methods for rapidly and robustly combining this patient information into a digital twin to provide a single representation of the patient."... "Another challenge is how do we get better at predicting how the heart will operate under extreme conditions. We often want to predict when the heart will fail, however, we only have information that is obtained from them under normal operating procedures."
-Lead author Professor Steven Niederer from the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King's College London
In other words, they want to kill the body double just to see how it dies.
Last one: "The promise of data driven coupling of mathematical models with the physical reality they represent, the so-called digital twin, is going to be transformational in how we interact with and control the physical world. "
-Mark Girolami, Programme Director for Data-Centric Engineering at The Alan Turing Institute
via King's College London, The Alan Turing Institute, the University of Cambridge, and the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at UT Austin in Texas: Scaling digital twins from the artisanal to the industrial, Nature Computational Science, DOI: 10.1038/s43588-021-00072-5
Digital twins could lead to more proactive, personalized medicine, researchers say
Mar 2021, phys.org
The writeup from Medical Express sums it up pretty good: "Obviously, we can't experiment on a real clone of ourselves, but we can research different scenarios with a digital twin."
And what if you could use it for...advertising???
via Indiana University: Reinhard Laubenbacher et al. Using digital twins in viral infection, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abf3370
Post Script:
Apr 2021, BBC News
No better fake than yourself.
This is some good shit: Before he died of cancer in 2017 a man from south-east China told his family he wanted a traditional burial, but in some regions these are banned. His family hired someone to find a substitute body that could be cremated in place of their relative's [so that his real body could then go and be buried, albeit still illegally]. But unknown to them, the man they hired committed murder to provide the body. Spotting a man with Down's syndrome picking litter from the street, Huang persuaded him to get into a car and gave the victim alcohol until he passed out. [He put him in a coffin and sold it to the family for about $15K.] The family then proceeded to have that coffin cremated, pretending it contained the body of their own relative. The relative's actual body was then buried in secret in a traditional way.
Got all that? Bodyswapping it's called, and it's not uncommon.
Post Post Script:
Full Steam Ahead (aka the Kufizoid, the Kufi-probe), Network Address 2021
Anthromimetic Cosmogenesis (aka the Virtual Facebook World), Network Address 2021
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