On Sun, 17 Sep 2000 02:40:53 +1000 "Emlyn" <emlyn@one.net.au> writes:
> You could always go on the assumption that there is life out there
> already.
I focused on the following line in Damien's post:
(here a miracle of insight into nature's working ocurs)
As an admirer of living systems, I've been thinking more along the lines
of re-creating life than looking for life out there already. Whether
recreating life would qualify as a method of transport is questionable,
and I think the answer depends in part on the purpose behind your travel
plans.
If sight-seeing is your goal, then there seems to be no need to
physcially transport yourself. Even if you wish to establish a permanent
presence in a distant place, there would to be no need to transport
yourself as human, or whatever form you happen to have at the beginning
of your journey. (This brings up some interesting psychological
questions--see end part of this post)
In fact, I think you'd want to include in your re-assembly instructions
the command to assemble the new entity in such a way as to take best
advantage of the new environment. (this would require some sort of
biological-type code capable of changing itslef in response to feedback
as the assembly is taking place--super-rapid evolution)
If your goal is to exist in a distant place as some form of living
consciousness not necessarily the same as your original form, there may
be some inspiration at the UT Austin website for the Center for Nonlinear
Dynamics at http://chaos.ph.utexas.edu/ , in particular their pages on
Biologically Inspired Physics, neural networks, and pattern formation (I
find the pattern formation stuff espeically interesting)--includes pics
from *Nature* article on self-replicating chemical spots.
My interest in these topics (in addition to simple curiosity) is driven
by the desire to understand ecological systems. Practical applications
would include terra-forming planets other than Earth; but of more
immediate concern to me is the idea of re-terraforming ravaged portions
of Earth's lands and waters, and creating productive ecological systems
on desert-quality land. This is a far cry from designing a transport
system, but it seems as though some of the same concepts might be useful
for both purposes.
Psychological questions: Assuming that the the re-assembly instructions
include preserving the memories of the original entity, what would it be
like to regain consciousness within a body completely different from the
original one? What might a person's reaction be to "waking up" and
finding that his mind is now housed in a body that has the form of a
rigid crystalline structure? I suppose you'd want to build in some
mechanism that the traveler could use to kill himself if he decided his
new way of life was unbearable. Or perhaps the assembly instructions
would include the ability to alter the mind to the extent that it would
be pleased to find itself in its new circumstances. You'd probably want
to broadcast a number of code strings since you'd expect at least some of
them to run into trouble of one sort or another. But in that case, you
might end up with several new versions of "you" in different places.
They'd immediately begin to diverge upon regaining consciousness. Pehaps
at some point they'd meet again--maybe two or more would find themselves
on different sides of a battle. Interesting metaphor for the disordered
mind.
Barbara
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