There is a lot to be said for cloning and much to be said against the current conservative methods. If you could send a human being instantly in a different place (like in beaming), you could say you have cloned it by eradicating it’s existence in the original place and recreating it somewhere else.
Let’s start with the less controversial topic of transporting non live matter. Most stuff is made up of a few basic substances widely available. There is already projects for creating stuff by printing them in 3 dimensions as needed. Here we are kind of beaming the idea of the stuff to a machine that makes it there and then. All that is missing is a much improved scanner. I see scanning and the political will to do it. Is see scanning by peeling.. If it was done very fast (like in a human instant) no pain would be felt.
From creating on demand to transporting is just a small step of destroying the object in the place of sending before you recreate it in the place of receiving.
For live body applications we first have to learn much more about the brain and the thought and what makes you you. But the principle could be the same.
And think of the possible applications. It would eradicate all other forms of long distance travel by plane, train, car or ferry. Even repeated space travel.
Think of all the alternative uses, in addition to cheap and easy transport. We could get writhe of all the prisons (and other physical storage requirements). Your sentence would be a state of stasis, and it could be performed by storing the data about you in cyberspace.
You could also then easily travel at the speed of light, since all that would actually travel is the information about you in the form of light.
There is a quantum leap required to go from the one to the other, but it can only be achieved by THINKing Outside The Box.
