Engineering Earth [was Re: reverse uploads]

Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Sun, 29 Aug 1999 16:02:17 -0700 (PDT)

On Sun, 29 Aug 1999, Brian Atkins wrote:

> "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote:
> >
> > I think it would be nicer to live on some nice, moderately
> > small vista close to your friends, while supervising the assembly
> > of nanotech reefs that could serve a shelters for small fish to
> > promote the repopulation of the oceans?
> >
>
> Wouldn't it better to just have your nanosystems construct
> perfect replicas of living fish? You could repopulate as
> many fish as you like. If you can master that then you can
> have transporters similiar to Star Trek.

Eghaads, no! The whole point of more reefs is to enjoy the beauty of survival-of-the-fittest game. Provide little homes for the baby fishes and let them grow up. If they are clever enough they escape from the bigger fishes they get to make more baby fishes. (I'll admit that we have distorted things somewhat by creating more "artificial" environments, but its a fairly passive distortion.)

I believe one of the books about the Physics of Star Trek (or something similar) points out that classic "transporters" are difficult or impossible due to the information and energy requirements. You definately have a *real* problem without a receiver at the destination. Replicators are feasible. Deconstruction with replication is possible. Approximate copying based on intensive internal surveying seems possible as well. But moving me atom-by-atom to another place over a carrier wave? Not! No Magic Physics.

This does raise an interesting point however in a nanotech world we will have three very interesting possibilities

  1. Let the Earth return to a "natural" state.
  2. Garden parts or much of it.
  3. Engineer parts or much of it.

Another poll perhaps?
Robert