re: #233 wheat-dogg

One of the main plot elements of Altered Carbon is that the Meths (Methuselah people) have lost all their empathy for the common people, who don’t have the money to afford storage and re-sleeving (new bodies). The Meths consider themselves above the law and normal social norms. The approach is more nuanced in the book than in the TV series, however.

Really, it’s a metaphor for the current disdain many of the 1% have for everyone else. At least, that’s what I think.

I favor the idea that someone who’s immortal, or at least longer-lived than the rest of us, would be more of a positive influence on society than a negative one, like the McLeods of the Highlander universe. Some of that idea comes out in the AC series, as Takeshi was born 150 years earlier and has seen enough shit to be a decent human being.

My issue with AC revolved more about how the technology of Stacks moves the locus of human consciousness from the brain to what is essentially an instance of computer code. So when a person needle-casts to another world or is re-sleeved into a new body the brain that they inhabited is erased and the information that is their personality and memories is written to a new stack/brain combination inside a new sleeve.

This is operationally similar from the transporter technology in Star Trek, which is essentially a murder machine that destroys people and then meticulously recreates an identical simulacrum of the original. In other words the immortality being offered is a hoax in that there is no continuous instance of consciousness.