Remember the "Trill" from the "star trek" saga.
The design of a human body which can integrate or over time assimalate numerous
personalities via fusion of the physical remnants of individuals... their
brains..is one manner to reduce population while still allowing for procreation.
Maybe 500 years from now all 10 billion or so (whatever the base number is when
such a thing becomes possible) of the original stock might find themselves
housed in 100 million bodies. A merger of the borgian and the individual
concepts. Meanwhile new births would have the luxury of a single personality per
body. Each suceeding lifespan there would have to be a merger with another
person. In a world of married couples perhaps husbands and wives might plan for
cohabitation in one body. As time goes on however, the concentration of
personalities would happen. There would always be the possible situation where
an individual wants to terminate their existance and how this might be
accomplished? Uploading as has been discussed need not be into a machine but
instead into a biological host. I think that once the understanding of
biological systems allows self-directed evolution this might be one natural way
to proceed.....
MJ
John Marlow wrote:
> You know, I'll probably get all kinds of flak for this, but...
>
> I'm new here, but I like the place. It's full of intelligent and far-
> sighted people. HOWEVER--there's a lot of this sort of thing here.
> Now I don't mean to say we shouldn't look to the extended future; we
> should, and in order to do that we have to assume there is one. But
> man--"when we colonize the asteroid belt?"
>
> The chances that we're ever gonna make it off this rock in any
> meaningful way are a billion to one, to be kind. The chances that we
> make it to the end of this century are what? 10:1? 100:1 against?
> Worse?
>
> Star drives and colonization are cool and desirable--but, dude, we've
> got a lot of prep to do right here, right now, if we're ever gonna
> get there.
>
> jm
>
> On 30 Jan 2001, at 23:37, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>
> > At 4:36 AM +0100 1/31/01, denis bider wrote:
> > >I think we all dream of - or maybe at least feel highly of - a world like
> > >Asimov described in Aurora: a whole planet divided into a relatively small
> > >number of large properties, each of them governed by virtually
> > >self-sustained hominids and their robots.
> >
> > I don't think I've ever dreamed of this or desired this as a goal.
> >
> > However, I do predict that this will happen when we colonize the
> > asteroid belt. The very large number of very small worlds make this
> > type of distribution likely to occur. I see the asteroid belt, and
> > the rings of the gas giants, as becoming a close community of small
> > states in close proximity. The only odd thing would be that these
> > states would drift in their physical location to each other.
> > --
> > Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com>
> >
>
> John Marlow
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