At 21:03 2/21/96, Mike Duvos wrote:

Now this has some interesting implications. One of the problems with teleportation devices in Science Fiction stories is that they allow for the creation of duplicates. They reduce an object to a pattern by measuring it, and then recreate it at a distance by assembling atoms of the same types according to the appropriate directions. There is no theoretical reason why, once the pattern has been saved, this process could not be repeated multiple times. This has implications for things like souls and self-awareness that many people would rather not think about.

Its been used in an SF Story/Series <g>. It is the Venus Equilateral Series by George O. Smith. Midway into the Series, they invent a method of doing Teleportation via destruction of the original item, sending the info to the receiver, and recreating the object. In the process of a Court Case involving if the transmission of the signal between the two Teleportation Devices was a transmission of Energy (which was the province of the other party in the case) or a transmission of Data (which was VE's job), they had to invent a Duplicator (in the process allowing the non-destructive readout of the transmission signal). It gets vary hairy for a story or two until Civilization gets adjusted to the Duplicator (they have to invent something that can not be scanned and thus duplicated to act as "Paper" for Money and Contracts/etc since the bottom fell out of the Economy due to no need for most Factories and the lack of uncounterfeitible currency).