Nanites
I'm turning a lot over in my head right now, but at the forefront are my precious bugs. I seek to prove a concept. B/c that is 99% of the battle on earth. Proving the concept. There was undoubtedly a time in human history when the concept of flight, any flight, was laughable. For all the insight that simple a society would have had, they would look at you and say "Man has no wings, he therefore cannot fly." But look at us now. And think about the time involved. 2000 years since the last thing that shook anything up enough the base a calendar on. in 1902, mankind flys for the first time. Seventy years later, Neil Armstrong walks on the moon. A concept was proven, and near miracualous progress is made, in a relativly small amount of time. And why did it take so long? Fear. Fear of failure. Granted, if you fail, you a) blow up, b) fall a long, long way before blowing up, or c) drift in emptiness before you die. Or open the door. whichever comes first.
But then progress halted. Why? There's no money in space exploration. We don't have the technology or resources to get to any of the planets within spiting distance (or view, for that matter), or more importantly, no way to make them feel like home. Remember, you can't just make Mars just like Earth. #1, it's too far from the sun and #B, it's significantly smaller. So it would be too cold, and coulndn't hold the same voulme of gas. And if you don't think the intergalatic distance will make a difference, thing long and hard about the reason we have seasons. Here's two hints: Earth's axis of rotation is at an angle in comparison to it's orbit, and said orbit is eleptical. Even supposing I could get to Mars, set up a livable atmosphere, and discover a large quanity of gems, titanium, etc., getting it all back would be so horribly expensive it wouldn't even be worth it. And last I checked, there's no body to unload this stuff to on Mars. So we need to take baby steps.
Virgin had a good idea. "Hey world, if any of you can create a craft that can get people completely into space and back and do it twice in as many weeks, we'll give you some sum of money that seems large to an indivdual, but is in actuallity insignificat to a multi-billion dollar international corporation like us." And someone won the X prize, and Virgin has the technology for next to nothing. So to get to somewhere else on earth, we can us gravity to fly us there. Just watch out for satalites. And the ashes of the guy who thought up Star Trek.
But here's where it get's interesting. Once a week? That's HORRIBLE! And EXPENSIVE! Because there has to be a reason it takes so long to recover, and that's probably expensive. So you need to make it, a)faster and b) cheaper before you can market it, or use it, or whatever. Oh, and deal with the guy who bought space. Like the guy who sold it to him owned space. I'm sorry, if I land on Mars, and claim it for me, and some guy goes, "Hey! I bought Mars on eBay! It's mine!" I'm gonna say, "Watcha gonna do about it, earth-boy?" which of course will be the end of it. Regardless, there is another concept Virgin space exploration or whatever the hell they're gonna call that particular offshoot called has to deal with: You crash a plane on earth, and we're gonna find it. Because we have a relativly small area to look in, you tend to notice crashed planes, and they really have no where to go but down in that senario. If this ships are only intened to breach the atmosphere, ride the orbit and go back down, they'll be pretty short range. Which means if someone done screws up, they will have SCREWED UP. So, Virgin either needs to develop an entirely seperate recovery vehicle and hope it never has a chance to use it, or make the ships capable of turning around, and heading back to earth. Cause you can't call NASA to come get your proverbial cat out of the tree.
*Bush answers the phone*: Why yes? President Bush speaking. Uh, the younger one.
Virgin Rep: *pause* Yes, I'm Cindy with Virgin lauches people into space for a living...
Bush: Well hello Cindy? How are you?
Cindy: I'm fine, Mr. President, but...
Bush: Me? Well, I'm fine, except Dick and the Joint Cheifs keep hiding my nuke everything remote. I wanna see South Korea burn, don't you?
Cindy: *pause* are you sure you don't mean NORTH Korea, sir?
Bush: *Pause* T...There's a North Korea?
Cindy: Yes, well, we seem to have lost a space ship. It's headed for the sun. Uh... It's filled with loyal American troops out to kill tyrany
Bush: Loyal troops? Those are the best kind of loyal! Hang on one minute please.
*calls NASA* Bush: Hello NASA?
NASA nerd: ......Suuuuure. Can I, I dunno, help you with something?
Bush: Why yes! President Bush speaking. The younger one.
NASA nerd: Okay...
Bush: I need you to send a space chortle after a chip fulla loyal soldiers off to fight a tyranasaurous!
NASA nerd: ......WHAT?
Bush: I know, I'm outrageous too!
NASA nerd: No, I meant "what" as in what the hell did you just say you lunatic, not "what" as in an expression of disbelif.
Bush: Oh. You a commie, boy?
NASA nerd: *sigh* Yes, Mr. President, I'm a commie. I'm as red as they come.
Bush: That's fine boy. Good to have something to belive in. As long as its not bringing terror to the good people of this country. Don't believe in that.
NASA nerd: Gotcha.
Bush: Fine, fine. So when will the shuttle be ready?
NASA nerd: Oh, I dunno... 4 weeks?
Bush: 4 weeks? Why, I'll have invaded some other middle eastern country by then!
NASA nerd: Why stop there, sir? I hear South America is nice this time of year.
Bush: By golly, your right son! I'll do just that! You've done a great service to that county!
NASA nerd: I was joking.....
Bush: Sorry Cindy, can't help you now, I've got to invade the largest country in South America....South Korea!
Sorry, I got carried away. But It's so much fun. Anywho.
The point is, in making a craft cabable of leaving the atmosphere, Virgin very nearly has to creat a full blown space ship to ensure safety. All it'll take is one craft left drifing away from earth to shut that particular endeavor down compeletly. Which will undoubtedly kick man out of space for a long, long time. Until necesity comes knocking. The point being, the concept has been proven, and each step takes us further and further. As it will be with nanites.
But the thing with nanites is, they have so much potential. The basic model would be this: An integral system, that moniters your health, tells you what time it is, and turns you into a phone. We could get all advanced and they could make you stronger, faster, immune to all environmental conditions, but lets stick with the basics. Watch the evolution of the telephone. It started out huge, and voice only. And now look at it. Tiny, but only if you stick enough features in it. I've no doubt that if there was a market for it, they could build a phone into someone right now. But we have this line. This ethical line, and ourselves. But would not adding internet to yourself improve you? Maybe it's not as nature intended, but lets not be hypocritical. If nature had intened us to pour greenhouse gases into the atmoshpere, but didn't want us to use technology to enhance ourselves, we shouldn't be listening to nature. So now we have the internet, yes? this is stored on a database somewhere, but anyone can look at it, yes? So once nanites have learned OUR arcitectiure, after they've learned how we learn, and told us, how should we be any different. Imagine. The ability to istantly access all human knowledge on a particular subject. Only I don't mean words on a screen. I mean memories in your head. Memories of lecures, of experiments, of discovery. All the library of human knowledge, literaly waiting to be used. Crime would disapear, and be limited to crimes of passion. Because we can call up a full sensory image of the victim's experience, and use it to track you down. Ignorance would dissapear. And here's what else. We'd gain an empathy. Suddenly, we're not 6 billion individuals. We're 6 billion memebers of a collective. Still individuals, but now were connected. It allows something to go "VOTE! YOU DON'T GET SIGHT BACK TILL YOU VOTE!"
Nanites would allow us to become the people we were meant to be. Living together for the betterment of our people. And finally, our people would be hummanity, not americans, not christians. just hummanity.
But I have an interesting thought. Perhaps nanites will learn from us. Or we'll learn from them. And the body will get so used to nanites, so used to there production, that it starts to do it on it's own. Or nanites change their construction to become biological. And we change, become something else. We would be reliant on technology, but then not, because it would become as much a part of us as our skin. Just something to think about.
But then progress halted. Why? There's no money in space exploration. We don't have the technology or resources to get to any of the planets within spiting distance (or view, for that matter), or more importantly, no way to make them feel like home. Remember, you can't just make Mars just like Earth. #1, it's too far from the sun and #B, it's significantly smaller. So it would be too cold, and coulndn't hold the same voulme of gas. And if you don't think the intergalatic distance will make a difference, thing long and hard about the reason we have seasons. Here's two hints: Earth's axis of rotation is at an angle in comparison to it's orbit, and said orbit is eleptical. Even supposing I could get to Mars, set up a livable atmosphere, and discover a large quanity of gems, titanium, etc., getting it all back would be so horribly expensive it wouldn't even be worth it. And last I checked, there's no body to unload this stuff to on Mars. So we need to take baby steps.
Virgin had a good idea. "Hey world, if any of you can create a craft that can get people completely into space and back and do it twice in as many weeks, we'll give you some sum of money that seems large to an indivdual, but is in actuallity insignificat to a multi-billion dollar international corporation like us." And someone won the X prize, and Virgin has the technology for next to nothing. So to get to somewhere else on earth, we can us gravity to fly us there. Just watch out for satalites. And the ashes of the guy who thought up Star Trek.
But here's where it get's interesting. Once a week? That's HORRIBLE! And EXPENSIVE! Because there has to be a reason it takes so long to recover, and that's probably expensive. So you need to make it, a)faster and b) cheaper before you can market it, or use it, or whatever. Oh, and deal with the guy who bought space. Like the guy who sold it to him owned space. I'm sorry, if I land on Mars, and claim it for me, and some guy goes, "Hey! I bought Mars on eBay! It's mine!" I'm gonna say, "Watcha gonna do about it, earth-boy?" which of course will be the end of it. Regardless, there is another concept Virgin space exploration or whatever the hell they're gonna call that particular offshoot called has to deal with: You crash a plane on earth, and we're gonna find it. Because we have a relativly small area to look in, you tend to notice crashed planes, and they really have no where to go but down in that senario. If this ships are only intened to breach the atmosphere, ride the orbit and go back down, they'll be pretty short range. Which means if someone done screws up, they will have SCREWED UP. So, Virgin either needs to develop an entirely seperate recovery vehicle and hope it never has a chance to use it, or make the ships capable of turning around, and heading back to earth. Cause you can't call NASA to come get your proverbial cat out of the tree.
*Bush answers the phone*: Why yes? President Bush speaking. Uh, the younger one.
Virgin Rep: *pause* Yes, I'm Cindy with Virgin lauches people into space for a living...
Bush: Well hello Cindy? How are you?
Cindy: I'm fine, Mr. President, but...
Bush: Me? Well, I'm fine, except Dick and the Joint Cheifs keep hiding my nuke everything remote. I wanna see South Korea burn, don't you?
Cindy: *pause* are you sure you don't mean NORTH Korea, sir?
Bush: *Pause* T...There's a North Korea?
Cindy: Yes, well, we seem to have lost a space ship. It's headed for the sun. Uh... It's filled with loyal American troops out to kill tyrany
Bush: Loyal troops? Those are the best kind of loyal! Hang on one minute please.
*calls NASA* Bush: Hello NASA?
NASA nerd: ......Suuuuure. Can I, I dunno, help you with something?
Bush: Why yes! President Bush speaking. The younger one.
NASA nerd: Okay...
Bush: I need you to send a space chortle after a chip fulla loyal soldiers off to fight a tyranasaurous!
NASA nerd: ......WHAT?
Bush: I know, I'm outrageous too!
NASA nerd: No, I meant "what" as in what the hell did you just say you lunatic, not "what" as in an expression of disbelif.
Bush: Oh. You a commie, boy?
NASA nerd: *sigh* Yes, Mr. President, I'm a commie. I'm as red as they come.
Bush: That's fine boy. Good to have something to belive in. As long as its not bringing terror to the good people of this country. Don't believe in that.
NASA nerd: Gotcha.
Bush: Fine, fine. So when will the shuttle be ready?
NASA nerd: Oh, I dunno... 4 weeks?
Bush: 4 weeks? Why, I'll have invaded some other middle eastern country by then!
NASA nerd: Why stop there, sir? I hear South America is nice this time of year.
Bush: By golly, your right son! I'll do just that! You've done a great service to that county!
NASA nerd: I was joking.....
Bush: Sorry Cindy, can't help you now, I've got to invade the largest country in South America....South Korea!
Sorry, I got carried away. But It's so much fun. Anywho.
The point is, in making a craft cabable of leaving the atmosphere, Virgin very nearly has to creat a full blown space ship to ensure safety. All it'll take is one craft left drifing away from earth to shut that particular endeavor down compeletly. Which will undoubtedly kick man out of space for a long, long time. Until necesity comes knocking. The point being, the concept has been proven, and each step takes us further and further. As it will be with nanites.
But the thing with nanites is, they have so much potential. The basic model would be this: An integral system, that moniters your health, tells you what time it is, and turns you into a phone. We could get all advanced and they could make you stronger, faster, immune to all environmental conditions, but lets stick with the basics. Watch the evolution of the telephone. It started out huge, and voice only. And now look at it. Tiny, but only if you stick enough features in it. I've no doubt that if there was a market for it, they could build a phone into someone right now. But we have this line. This ethical line, and ourselves. But would not adding internet to yourself improve you? Maybe it's not as nature intended, but lets not be hypocritical. If nature had intened us to pour greenhouse gases into the atmoshpere, but didn't want us to use technology to enhance ourselves, we shouldn't be listening to nature. So now we have the internet, yes? this is stored on a database somewhere, but anyone can look at it, yes? So once nanites have learned OUR arcitectiure, after they've learned how we learn, and told us, how should we be any different. Imagine. The ability to istantly access all human knowledge on a particular subject. Only I don't mean words on a screen. I mean memories in your head. Memories of lecures, of experiments, of discovery. All the library of human knowledge, literaly waiting to be used. Crime would disapear, and be limited to crimes of passion. Because we can call up a full sensory image of the victim's experience, and use it to track you down. Ignorance would dissapear. And here's what else. We'd gain an empathy. Suddenly, we're not 6 billion individuals. We're 6 billion memebers of a collective. Still individuals, but now were connected. It allows something to go "VOTE! YOU DON'T GET SIGHT BACK TILL YOU VOTE!"
Nanites would allow us to become the people we were meant to be. Living together for the betterment of our people. And finally, our people would be hummanity, not americans, not christians. just hummanity.
But I have an interesting thought. Perhaps nanites will learn from us. Or we'll learn from them. And the body will get so used to nanites, so used to there production, that it starts to do it on it's own. Or nanites change their construction to become biological. And we change, become something else. We would be reliant on technology, but then not, because it would become as much a part of us as our skin. Just something to think about.