On Wed, 12 Jan 2000, Jeff Davis wrote:
... Commenting on the Fermi Paradox ...
I'd agree with most of what you said. You have to factor in that the
astronomy capabilities of advanced civilizations do let you very
rapidly determine go (meaning really "dead") or no-go (posessing
potential for or having life) status for observable objects. Computational
capacities probably let you project this into the future (at least
the delivery time for any probes). So you likely know ahead of time
whether you would be sending a "development" probe, or an "observation
& potential contact" probe. This process extends out to the limits
of dust limiting your observations and/or computational projections
relative to probe delivery times. The constraint is the uncertainty
thrown in by pre-tech civilizations going that are *nearer* to the
destination going through the Spike before your probes can arrive.
That probably limits your predictability and therefore your colonization
horizon.
>
> I have not had the pleasure of reading Robert Freitas's "Xenology", but
> would most certainly like to. Robert (Bradbury), is it available online?
>
We have just about finished the hypertext conversion process. I'd guess
it would be semi-polished by Feb 2K. One of the things we were trying
to do is figure out how to publish it. When it was written (~1979)
it was way ahead of its time. It still holds most of its value though
needs some updating in places. Unfortunately, neither I nor Robert have
the time to go through it and rewrite it. So the question is how do
you publish a dusty manuscript and use it for the Author's benefit?
There are several e-book publishing ideas coming out from MSoft & Adobe
but we aren't sure whether these will be the right approach. We are
thinking perhaps electronic pay-for-access. Or perhaps we just
do something where if you contribute to the Nanomedicine support fund
at the Foresight Inst. you get free access. (My main interest here
is in seeing the Robert gets supported enough to spend the next 5+
years finishing Nanomedicine volumes II & III.)
Any suggestions or pointers are appreciated.
Robert
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