Yes, I think the sci-fi story has already been done - Star Wars and the midichlorians or whatever they were called - the entities that connect humans to the Force.
I mentioned total cellular control. How about this idea - what if the Transhumans are living inside every other living thing as massively parallel cellular-level computing societies? Using Drexler's concepts of cellular computers, imagine a cellular computer with the power of a PC in every cell of the human body, acting in parallel. Such a computing mechanism would be orders of magnitude more powerful than any animal brain. Add in the cellular repair robots that nanotech could produce. They get total control of every other organism on the planet, and all their energy needs are supplied to them via the host. The ultimate parasite. Even the death of the host wouldn't kill them, unless the host was utterly vaporized - they'd just leave and reproduce themselves in another host.
It's been suggested in some sci-fi stories that the biomass of the earth is mostly underground (estimated to be several times the biomass on the surface including the oceans) and that genetic evolution itself could function as an "intelligent" computing mechanism on a longer time scale than human mentation. This might support your notion of a social organism being the source of this. The only caveat I'd have is that it would seem to require a much longer time to do that than it would for a protohuman primate to gain intelligence on our scale.
As far the environmental impact of an earlier civilization, fully developed nanotech could have erased all of that as well. That's been promoted by Drexler and others as the solution to our environmental problems. If you were a Transhuman and wanted to observe the evolution of a new protohuman species (us), you'd want to remove all traces of your previous civilization so as not to bias the development of the new species (sort of like Star Trek's Prime Directive). Or not - maybe you'd leave some clues.
The reason I call it a PR stunt is because asking for open-ended "grand visions" doesn't seem likely to turn up anything new that hasn't been considered before - at least by any number of science fiction writers.
Which means I think the money would be better spent reviewing what HAS been considered by other people and then picking whatever seems most likely to be productive of real breakthroughs in technological capability.
Nanotech obviously fits that category.
I doubt ANYBODY has ANY decent comprehensive concept of "how to expand humans throughout the solar system". That's pure "pie in the sky" unlikely to lead to any specific productive research projects.
I could easily submit a proposal to pursue the development of a decent simulation of human conceptual processing. The benefits of that, even if it failed to produce a true AI, would obviously be enormous in the area of software design and command and control software - which is obviously valuable to NASA.
I question whether that would be worth my time since I would expect the decision makers to be flooded with less useful "visions" a la the above, and the more useful projects to be lost in the noise.
We KNOW the Gates Foundation is a stock-laundering and corporate control scam, just like most of the rich "philanthropies" that exist. He stores billions there, hands out one or two percent of it (which actually comes from the investments that he uses to influence other companies he has an interest in.)
Bono I can understand - he's been using his rock fame to push charitable causes for years. My favorite band, the Corrs, just got MBEs (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for their musical contributions and charity work, some of which was done in conjunction with Bono and U2. Being Irish and thus a bit at odds with England, it was a surprise to them, since it puts them in a class with the Beatles, the Bee Gees and Bob Marley, among others. They've also sold a million albums in Ireland specifically, which only U2 has done before. Andrea and Bono are particularly close friends (I suspect Bono has the hots for her, despite being married for twenty years.)
And then while posing for pictures with the medals, Caroline had to go and drop hers on the sidewalk, an embarassing but Irish moment. Also, when asked about the benefits of receiving the medals, Andrea could only say it would "go with the new military look" and Jim said now they could get married in St. Paul's Cathedral - whereupon Sharon reminded him that he'd have to change his religion first (they're Catholic and the church is Anglican.)
But they got the awards for doing charity concerts for Children in Need, the Special Olympics, the hospital at which their mother died, and Nelson Mandela's AIDS foundation (the Corrs appeared at the 46664 event in South Africa, and Sharon appeared at the Arctic one - Mandela is a fan.) While all this is obviously valuable as PR for a band, they've put their efforts behind less visible causes such as opposing nuclear power plants in Ireland, providing music instruction for Irish schools, and building houses for townships in South Africa (Sharon's husband, a Belfast lawyer, actually works as a laborer for several weeks each year in South Africa as part of the Niall Mellon Township Challenge which sends hundreds of Irish contractors and laborers to South Africa to build houses.)
I personally am not a charitable person at all. But I can respect Bono and the Corrs for acting on their principles, mostly because I believe they actually have them.
This is why people who think like you shouldn't be allowed to be managers of any company.
The point of the company is to get and retain customers. RETAINING customers is a lot easier and cheaper than getting NEW customers. Anybody with a brain knows this. If you can cut some customers some slack in their payment, you might retain them.
This is why even SBC on their bills specifies a due date - and a late date which is several days later.
Any competently run company (if you can find one) would allow a customer who has been one for several years some slack because everybody other than Bill Gates runs into cash flow problems once in a while. The only relevant question is: are you ever going to get paid?
It's like Johnny Carson's Tonight Show "Art Fern Teatime Movies" skit years ago (if you're old enough to remember them): "No job? We don't care! No credit? We don't care! Bankrupt? We don't care! Don't think you'll pay us? [BAM! Slams pointer on desk] THEN WE CARE!"
Yeah, I remember those, too. Keep in mind though that even Ed Ruppelt, the guy in charge at one point, wrote a book admitting there was like 20% of the stuff they could never explain. And what they investigated was almost a small percentage of the total that was going on anyhoo.
I really think that John Keel was right when he said the Air Force never really knew what was going on. They only investigated this stuff because they were told to as it was part of their job to keep the US skies secure. Once they found out the stuff was real and they couldn't do bupkis about it, they basically started ignoring it.
The CIA was more involved than the Air Force, but presumably even they couldn't do anything about it - except possible "borrow it" for their own domestic spying coverups. I think the CIA started faking "abductions" and spreading UFO rumors and the like as an experiment in social manipulation - it's just the sort of thing they'd be into, to learn stuff they could apply in destabilizing other countries societies. I suspect the crop circles might be something like that.
Meanwhile, as Keel documented, the stuff just goes on its merry way, as it has for most of human history. (I used to hang out with Keel in the early seventies. I even visited Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and talked to some of the people in the "Mothman" story which eventually ended up being a movie.)
My personal theory is that the phenomena is really the results of a nonhuman (or protohuman) species on this planet gaining intelligence before we did, discovering technology, graduating to nanotech, and leaping ahead in technology by scores of thousands of years before humans did. Nanotech would erase all signs of the existence of this civilization long before humans would be able to discern it (other than the legends humans have about such civilizations existing, such as Hindu legends).
This theory is based on two simple known facts:
1) We know that there were several varieties of protohumans co-existing before us. It's simple to speculate that we weren't the only ones who got smart - nor the first. The difference could have been just a few thousand years - given how fast we have developed over the last two thousand, that would be more than sufficient.
2) We know that nanotech has the potential to radically alter human nature and technology and speed up technological development by thousands of years within a very short span of actual years.
This theory explains why the phenomena is here: it originated here. It didn't have to come from elsewhere in the universe, thus avoiding the FTL problem.
It also explains why the phenomena is interested in humans: we're the successors. The phenomena can't know its own prehistory, but it can learn about it by observing ours (to the degree it actually cares, which I suspect is minimal.)
It also explains why the phenomena is so odd - it's Transhuman. As Vernor Vinge says, if you come away with a conversation with a Transhuman thinking you know the score, you have been sold a bill of goods.
Nanotech would enable all of the reported phenomena to be pulled off - nothing an "abductee" says would be reliable because it could all be induced via direct manipulation of the brain on a cellular level. A Transhuman could be standing next to you and your perception of him would be edited out of your brain in real time. No human scientist could ever be aware of this because HIS perception would be edited out. Total control on a level of "The Matrix."
Most of the time, such control wouldn't be needed - only and probably relatively rarely when a Transhuman needed to do something in the presence of humans. Considering that a Transhuman needs nothing but energy, matter, nanotech mass, computing power and knowledgebases to function, it would be rare that any Transhuman would need to do anything relative to humans.
As for the appearance of the "vehicles", I suspect they aren't vehicles - they are the actual Transhumans themselves. The "Grey aliens" ar
This "Anonymous Coward" undoubtedly works either for their billing department - or the billing department of some other equally crooked "the-customer-be-damned" organization.
In fact, he's probably a manager at one.
Here's a "free hint", shill - fuck off and take your punk operation with you.
Comprehensive Catalog of 1,500 Project BLUE BOOK UFO Unknowns (Version 1.1)(PDF Warning)
Project Blue Book Archive (URL:http://www.bluebookarchive.org//> The Project Blue Book Archive is a new web-site which will provide free online access to the National Archives Blue Book microfilm collection, and has so far posted about 10% of the Blue Book microfilm. The Blue Book Archive provides a fully searchable interface to high-resolution document scans relating to the US government's investigation of the UFO phenomena. Also available are high-quality CD-ROMs of the microfilms, which can be purchased directly from the website.
You know any female who ISN'T a "prostitute" in that respect (other than Angelina Jolie, who fucks because she likes it and has more than enough of her own money)?
Translation: They make friends with Bush cronies so they can get hired at Halliburton and rake in taxpayer money.
Meanwhile, the Chinese work for one fourth the wages - and they work seven days a week - no time out for football and local bars.
Sorry - the US is out of business and has been so for the last twenty years (disregarding the IT industry - which unfortunately can't make anything work - just spent the entire day trying to get two HP/UX boxes running the same SSH servers and clients to talk to each other - still isn't working...POS HP crap...now I have to become a fucking "Master of SSH" - AGAIN - in order to get something done...)
Send me an email when you geek morons actually manage to make something work in IT.
Oh, wait, my SBC email account tonight says "Maildrop busy"...
Fucking morons. Buy another fucking server, you dolts!
Microsoft trying to compete with China which is a Linux country.
Sorry, the Chinese will beat the Hindus every time. And the Chinese will end up selling to the Japanese, the Koreans (who already hate you, Bill), the Thais, the Indonesians, the you-name-it-Asians.
Publishers are obsolete. In due time, people will get their news directly from bloggers with video cameras right on the scene, bypassing the so-called "reporters" and airhead bleached-blonde newsreaders and swelled-head "anchors."
Fuck 'em all. Can't get rid of Murdoch and the scum at Fox News, not to mention Sulzberger and his administration mouthpieces at the New York Times, soon enough to suit me.
so this technology ought to fit right in. The Pentagon can then claim it was a "rat-brain glitch" resulting in a hundred civilian deaths, not their orders.
We already have a rat-brain running the Pentagon, so that'll go over big.
One of my teachers runs a consulting company. He was telling us last night that he had occasion to go over to Google, and saw all these people walking around with towels as if they'd just come out of a pool.
Turns out they supposedly have Jacuzzis for the staff, and they can even do work sitting in a pool, with PCs next to the pool to keyboard on...
He said he's been to many Silicon Valley relaxed corporate environments, but this was VERY relaxed.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I think the sci-fi story has already been done - Star Wars and the midichlorians or whatever they were called - the entities that connect humans to the Force.
I mentioned total cellular control. How about this idea - what if the Transhumans are living inside every other living thing as massively parallel cellular-level computing societies? Using Drexler's concepts of cellular computers, imagine a cellular computer with the power of a PC in every cell of the human body, acting in parallel. Such a computing mechanism would be orders of magnitude more powerful than any animal brain. Add in the cellular repair robots that nanotech could produce. They get total control of every other organism on the planet, and all their energy needs are supplied to them via the host. The ultimate parasite. Even the death of the host wouldn't kill them, unless the host was utterly vaporized - they'd just leave and reproduce themselves in another host.
It's been suggested in some sci-fi stories that the biomass of the earth is mostly underground (estimated to be several times the biomass on the surface including the oceans) and that genetic evolution itself could function as an "intelligent" computing mechanism on a longer time scale than human mentation. This might support your notion of a social organism being the source of this. The only caveat I'd have is that it would seem to require a much longer time to do that than it would for a protohuman primate to gain intelligence on our scale.
As far the environmental impact of an earlier civilization, fully developed nanotech could have erased all of that as well. That's been promoted by Drexler and others as the solution to our environmental problems. If you were a Transhuman and wanted to observe the evolution of a new protohuman species (us), you'd want to remove all traces of your previous civilization so as not to bias the development of the new species (sort of like Star Trek's Prime Directive). Or not - maybe you'd leave some clues.
The reason I call it a PR stunt is because asking for open-ended "grand visions" doesn't seem likely to turn up anything new that hasn't been considered before - at least by any number of science fiction writers.
Which means I think the money would be better spent reviewing what HAS been considered by other people and then picking whatever seems most likely to be productive of real breakthroughs in technological capability.
Nanotech obviously fits that category.
I doubt ANYBODY has ANY decent comprehensive concept of "how to expand humans throughout the solar system". That's pure "pie in the sky" unlikely to lead to any specific productive research projects.
I could easily submit a proposal to pursue the development of a decent simulation of human conceptual processing. The benefits of that, even if it failed to produce a true AI, would obviously be enormous in the area of software design and command and control software - which is obviously valuable to NASA.
I question whether that would be worth my time since I would expect the decision makers to be flooded with less useful "visions" a la the above, and the more useful projects to be lost in the noise.
We KNOW the Gates Foundation is a stock-laundering and corporate control scam, just like most of the rich "philanthropies" that exist. He stores billions there, hands out one or two percent of it (which actually comes from the investments that he uses to influence other companies he has an interest in.)
Bono I can understand - he's been using his rock fame to push charitable causes for years. My favorite band, the Corrs, just got MBEs (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for their musical contributions and charity work, some of which was done in conjunction with Bono and U2. Being Irish and thus a bit at odds with England, it was a surprise to them, since it puts them in a class with the Beatles, the Bee Gees and Bob Marley, among others. They've also sold a million albums in Ireland specifically, which only U2 has done before. Andrea and Bono are particularly close friends (I suspect Bono has the hots for her, despite being married for twenty years.)
And then while posing for pictures with the medals, Caroline had to go and drop hers on the sidewalk, an embarassing but Irish moment. Also, when asked about the benefits of receiving the medals, Andrea could only say it would "go with the new military look" and Jim said now they could get married in St. Paul's Cathedral - whereupon Sharon reminded him that he'd have to change his religion first (they're Catholic and the church is Anglican.)
But they got the awards for doing charity concerts for Children in Need, the Special Olympics, the hospital at which their mother died, and Nelson Mandela's AIDS foundation (the Corrs appeared at the 46664 event in South Africa, and Sharon appeared at the Arctic one - Mandela is a fan.) While all this is obviously valuable as PR for a band, they've put their efforts behind less visible causes such as opposing nuclear power plants in Ireland, providing music instruction for Irish schools, and building houses for townships in South Africa (Sharon's husband, a Belfast lawyer, actually works as a laborer for several weeks each year in South Africa as part of the Niall Mellon Township Challenge which sends hundreds of Irish contractors and laborers to South Africa to build houses.)
I personally am not a charitable person at all. But I can respect Bono and the Corrs for acting on their principles, mostly because I believe they actually have them.
Gates is another matter entirely.
I'll take my $400K in small bills, thank you.
This is a PR stunt, I suspect.
"It really is that simple."
This is why people who think like you shouldn't be allowed to be managers of any company.
The point of the company is to get and retain customers. RETAINING customers is a lot easier and cheaper than getting NEW customers. Anybody with a brain knows this. If you can cut some customers some slack in their payment, you might retain them.
This is why even SBC on their bills specifies a due date - and a late date which is several days later.
Any competently run company (if you can find one) would allow a customer who has been one for several years some slack because everybody other than Bill Gates runs into cash flow problems once in a while. The only relevant question is: are you ever going to get paid?
It's like Johnny Carson's Tonight Show "Art Fern Teatime Movies" skit years ago (if you're old enough to remember them): "No job? We don't care! No credit? We don't care! Bankrupt? We don't care! Don't think you'll pay us? [BAM! Slams pointer on desk] THEN WE CARE!"
Yeah, I remember those, too. Keep in mind though that even Ed Ruppelt, the guy in charge at one point, wrote a book admitting there was like 20% of the stuff they could never explain. And what they investigated was almost a small percentage of the total that was going on anyhoo.
I really think that John Keel was right when he said the Air Force never really knew what was going on. They only investigated this stuff because they were told to as it was part of their job to keep the US skies secure. Once they found out the stuff was real and they couldn't do bupkis about it, they basically started ignoring it.
The CIA was more involved than the Air Force, but presumably even they couldn't do anything about it - except possible "borrow it" for their own domestic spying coverups. I think the CIA started faking "abductions" and spreading UFO rumors and the like as an experiment in social manipulation - it's just the sort of thing they'd be into, to learn stuff they could apply in destabilizing other countries societies. I suspect the crop circles might be something like that.
Meanwhile, as Keel documented, the stuff just goes on its merry way, as it has for most of human history. (I used to hang out with Keel in the early seventies. I even visited Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and talked to some of the people in the "Mothman" story which eventually ended up being a movie.)
My personal theory is that the phenomena is really the results of a nonhuman (or protohuman) species on this planet gaining intelligence before we did, discovering technology, graduating to nanotech, and leaping ahead in technology by scores of thousands of years before humans did. Nanotech would erase all signs of the existence of this civilization long before humans would be able to discern it (other than the legends humans have about such civilizations existing, such as Hindu legends).
This theory is based on two simple known facts:
1) We know that there were several varieties of protohumans co-existing before us. It's simple to speculate that we weren't the only ones who got smart - nor the first. The difference could have been just a few thousand years - given how fast we have developed over the last two thousand, that would be more than sufficient.
2) We know that nanotech has the potential to radically alter human nature and technology and speed up technological development by thousands of years within a very short span of actual years.
This theory explains why the phenomena is here: it originated here. It didn't have to come from elsewhere in the universe, thus avoiding the FTL problem.
It also explains why the phenomena is interested in humans: we're the successors. The phenomena can't know its own prehistory, but it can learn about it by observing ours (to the degree it actually cares, which I suspect is minimal.)
It also explains why the phenomena is so odd - it's Transhuman. As Vernor Vinge says, if you come away with a conversation with a Transhuman thinking you know the score, you have been sold a bill of goods.
Nanotech would enable all of the reported phenomena to be pulled off - nothing an "abductee" says would be reliable because it could all be induced via direct manipulation of the brain on a cellular level. A Transhuman could be standing next to you and your perception of him would be edited out of your brain in real time. No human scientist could ever be aware of this because HIS perception would be edited out. Total control on a level of "The Matrix."
Most of the time, such control wouldn't be needed - only and probably relatively rarely when a Transhuman needed to do something in the presence of humans. Considering that a Transhuman needs nothing but energy, matter, nanotech mass, computing power and knowledgebases to function, it would be rare that any Transhuman would need to do anything relative to humans.
As for the appearance of the "vehicles", I suspect they aren't vehicles - they are the actual Transhumans themselves. The "Grey aliens" ar
You gotta give that movie credit - Gene Simmons was fabulous as the evil Dr. Charles Luthor! And (besides Kirsty Alley) the other babe was hot, too.
This "Anonymous Coward" undoubtedly works either for their billing department - or the billing department of some other equally crooked "the-customer-be-damned" organization.
In fact, he's probably a manager at one.
Here's a "free hint", shill - fuck off and take your punk operation with you.
Wasn't that released years ago?
. htm/
(Well, let's say the parts they wanted to release were released years ago...)
Check here: http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/ProjectBlueBook
Comprehensive Catalog of 1,500 Project BLUE BOOK UFO Unknowns (Version 1.1)(PDF Warning)
Project Blue Book Archive (URL:http://www.bluebookarchive.org//>
The Project Blue Book Archive is a new web-site which will provide free online access to the National Archives Blue Book microfilm collection, and has so far posted about 10% of the Blue Book microfilm. The Blue Book Archive provides a fully searchable interface to high-resolution document scans relating to the US government's investigation of the UFO phenomena. Also available are high-quality CD-ROMs of the microfilms, which can be purchased directly from the website.
"I'm just guessing - I don't have an MBA or anything - but maybe they buy them for even less than that?"
That's probably why you don't have an MBA, eh?
Besides not having the money to afford to go to a good school, I mean.
I'll even settle for Angelina Jolie instead of Count Chocula.
You know any female who ISN'T a "prostitute" in that respect (other than Angelina Jolie, who fucks because she likes it and has more than enough of her own money)?
because they get "leadership dinners".
Translation: They make friends with Bush cronies so they can get hired at Halliburton and rake in taxpayer money.
Meanwhile, the Chinese work for one fourth the wages - and they work seven days a week - no time out for football and local bars.
Sorry - the US is out of business and has been so for the last twenty years (disregarding the IT industry - which unfortunately can't make anything work - just spent the entire day trying to get two HP/UX boxes running the same SSH servers and clients to talk to each other - still isn't working...POS HP crap...now I have to become a fucking "Master of SSH" - AGAIN - in order to get something done...)
Send me an email when you geek morons actually manage to make something work in IT.
Oh, wait, my SBC email account tonight says "Maildrop busy"...
Fucking morons. Buy another fucking server, you dolts!
Don't get linked to by Slashdot!
None of the other nine truths will save your server!
"then they boink themselves...They relate to each other using very simple rules..."
Sounds like human behavior to me.
These things could pass the Turing Test.
Can I do research on how the fruit flies in my room are depressed whenever I seal up the garbage bag and remove it?
Or when I hit them with bug spray?
Or how depressed they make ME feel?
in about a million years.
Later.
"We're excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team - they definitely get social systems"
Yet - they get how to cover your PC with crap. Very social of them.
Oh, wait, maybe that was "socialist"...as in "we own your desktop and your browser"...
"Well, if we destroy Kansas, the world may not hear of it for years."
Microsoft trying to compete with China which is a Linux country.
Sorry, the Chinese will beat the Hindus every time. And the Chinese will end up selling to the Japanese, the Koreans (who already hate you, Bill), the Thais, the Indonesians, the you-name-it-Asians.
You lose, Bill.
Have a nice day.
Publishers are obsolete. In due time, people will get their news directly from bloggers with video cameras right on the scene, bypassing the so-called "reporters" and airhead bleached-blonde newsreaders and swelled-head "anchors."
Fuck 'em all. Can't get rid of Murdoch and the scum at Fox News, not to mention Sulzberger and his administration mouthpieces at the New York Times, soon enough to suit me.
so this technology ought to fit right in. The Pentagon can then claim it was a "rat-brain glitch" resulting in a hundred civilian deaths, not their orders.
We already have a rat-brain running the Pentagon, so that'll go over big.
One of my teachers runs a consulting company. He was telling us last night that he had occasion to go over to Google, and saw all these people walking around with towels as if they'd just come out of a pool.
Turns out they supposedly have Jacuzzis for the staff, and they can even do work sitting in a pool, with PCs next to the pool to keyboard on...
He said he's been to many Silicon Valley relaxed corporate environments, but this was VERY relaxed.
Louie the lizard for Budweiser. Now THOSE were funny!
"My life is a nightmare" - my favorite line from Louie.
Who can forget the ferret singing? Who wouldn't want to?
Think longer term than yesterday, why don't you? Most of the market can't, either, so don't look to them for validation.