At 05:07 PM 20/10/00 -0400, Robin wrote:
>My model assumes fixed technology.
Aargh. Why not put in a flat earth while you're at it? :)
But I suppose Robin's premise is that by the time you have a spherical wave
of near-light-velocity seeds rampaging outward, effectively all knowable
physics and technology tweaks have been discovered by its sponsor culture
(since that has to happen sooner or later).
I'm not convinced that it has to happen quite so quickly, though, or that
the side-consequences of Knowing Everything Knowable [at the foundational
level] might not subvert such a colonization program.
(For example, I'm still waiting for some clever physicist to announce how
one might fiddle with non-local connectivity, say, and bypass the tedium of
*travelling* to places, of boringly and expensively *passing through the
points in between*.)
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:18 MDT