posted 06-15-99 10:29 AM ET         

Ah, counterpoint. The dark side of the Planetary existence. I loved it

A different perspective than the "rumble in the fungus with a mindworm by your side"

More, more. (the longevity vaccine; the nanofactory...)

Googlie

posted 06-15-99 01:56 PM ET            

You know, it's predicted that the current generation (let's say, under 25) will probably be the last that ever dies completely. I was talking to someone from the BT Technology Labs (yep, that's where all our local call fees go) who sincerely believes that within 30 years we'll have a device which will be able to 'download' a lifetime's worth of experiences, thoughts and memories. Apparently it's called the Soul Catcher. Make of that what you will, but that's not the only thing we'll have. Think about it - the transfer will go both ways. With a little bit of luck, we could have artificial telepathy. Interesting, no?

Imagine truly living life from someone else's shoes, being able to share their emotions and emphathise with them to the fullest extent. What would that do to society? (and for the answers to the above questions, read Peter F Hamilton's 'A Second Chance at Eden', which not only deals with artificial telepathy but the almost inevitable backlash from all the luddite and conservative members of the population, the least not being the established religious institutions.)

posted 06-15-99 07:51 PM ET            

Well, if we become able to download experiences, will we actually be downloaded, or only our memories? Can a human really be "downloaded"? Do we have a soul? Can that soul possibly be downloaded? Is it even located in our brain? Maybe we'll only create a copy of ourselves, like a clone, then we won't actually be able to enjoy it ourselves...

I think telepathy would be horrible. You would have no secrets, everyone could read your inner thoughts or meddle with your head. Who knows how seriously you could be ****ed up? What about computer viruses? Just imagine what a computer virus could do to a downloaded person or a person connected to this artificial telepathy thing.

I don't think all of that stuff sounds like a really good idea. Cybernetic implants and genetic enhancement, maybe... But downloading a person... I don't know...

posted 06-16-99 01:37 AM ET         

If I understand, you're afraid everyone would end up as part of a collective (ST borg). I guess its really how such a technology is used/implemented.

Odds are that only the extremely wealthy / and well to do sick would be able to innitially afford it (able to connect up to Wall Street with do transactions at a thought, get prospectus from businesses). Also such technology would benifit those with alhiezmeres and other mental afflictions & memory problems). The rest of us would eventually get the "enhancements" to aid us in day-to-day work and virtual reality will probably have new meaning.

posted 06-16-99 05:13 AM ET            

I haven't really read any Arthur C. Clarke. I know I should I just haven't got round to it. I'm not surprised someone touched on this subject before though. It seems like a natural concern to me. If lifespans really do increase to hundreds of years how will we cope? Humans evolved into beings who'd experience all they needed and reproduce and die in 30-40 years. After that there is some merit in staying alive to pass information to the next generations but what then? Population explosion would also be a real problem. You'd have to limit the number of children we were allowed or take on a rapid interstellar expansion to take the increased population.

The way I see any artificial telepathy working it would be something the user could switch on or off. There would be all the gadgets you associate with a modern phone system, including the equivalent of the caller ID so you can choose whether to take the 'call' or not. Plus you can always turn the thing off. So basically I think it'd work much as Andrew Goldstein suggests. There will always be people willing to misuse the technology but the majority would find it a useful tool.

I had a very superficial attempt to describe what life with telepathy might be like at the end of this story:

http://www.mystic4.freeserve.co.uk/Story/Story.htm

It's the first collabaration of mine with a friend and it starts a bit badly (my sections anyway) but I think it gets a lot better towards the end. There are a few characters who just vanish and a couple of minor plot contradictions but it's long enough to keep you occupied if you are bored.

posted 06-16-99 05:48 AM ET            

Well, obviously the population explosion is a problem. I remember reading the Guardian that one of the arguments against using GM food was that the real problem of famine in various countries was the maldistribution of resources - i.e., if the USA stopped eating for a day (or something) they could feed 25 million people.

True enough, but the world's population increases by 25 million every *month* so the even distribution of food will not help when the population is still going up. I feel that GM foods and population control is the only option.

And the real danger will occur when (as depicted by KSR in Red Mars et al) some kind of longevity drug is released onto the market.

One of the things I really liked from Green Mars was the idea that each person should have the right to have 3/4 of a child - so that when you get married, you can automatically have one child, and choose either to buy, or sell, a half of a child. Nice idea, unfortunately I wouldn't like to see market forces control this sort of thing.

One obvious way to deal with a population explosion is simply to move everyone out into space - this would be possible in the future if we worked out how to create a number of asteroid habitats in the O'Neill halo. Certainly, this situation isn't something I'm looking forward to.

posted 06-20-99 10:41 AM ET            

Of course this scenario is a bit far out... Less dramatic, but equally damaging things could certainly happen. I'm not saying we shouldn't accept any new technology, but we shouldn't treat it like a child playing with matches. Things like this, that can cause great damage should be treated carefully and not utilized until it was absolutely certain that everything was under control. This is why I also think we shouldn't manipulate the DNA of animals and plants before we know much more about the effects this might have. We hardly know anything about this at the moment, but still we're already beginning to use it. This is mostly driven by greedy, unethical companies who put profit before safety (come on, we know companies do that...) or scientists who want to play God.

MikeH II: As I said, I think it would be hard for humans to live with telepathy, it would certainly have to be a thing that could be turned on and off. But this would be like making a computer part of your brain, and making it open for communication. That would mean that we would have to accept the risk that our brain could get infected by a computer virus. You may not agree, but I think that is a very real danger with such a project. I believe that we shouldn't be afraid to research something because it might be used for warfare or something, I just think we should be careful. We're not just dealing with virtual reality here, this will affect everyone in a very real way.

Elemental: I doubt that religions would die because of that, because they're not based on a scientific or sensible view, they prey on peoples' need to believe in something. This would probably not kill any religions, and even if it did it would probably just create lots of new ones anyway. I'm pretty sure about this, some scientists actually say that religion is in most peoples' genes.

posted 06-25-99 01:14 PM ET            

Of course, it is never going to be that clear cut. While genes undoubtedly have a factor, it's probably environmental factors that matter more.

posted 06-28-99 05:53 AM ET            

Being old for longer is something we are seeing all the time in the west as the average ages shoot up. The potential money to be made from an aging drug is immense. So the money going into it must be just as large. Has anyone heard anything about those American scientists who were researching low-calorie diets? They discovered that they could prolong the lives of animals by putting them on low calorie diets. Their ability to reproduce dropped drastically but they lived longer, theoretically the animal adapted so that it could fast through a famine then live long enough to reproduce when food got more plentifull. Which is what happened, the animals came off the low-cal diet and lived normally. I remember in the documentary I saw the scientists were all on the low-cal diet themselves. Very interesting I thought.

posted 06-28-99 04:15 PM ET            

People in these countries cannot afford the luxury of only eating low-calorie food. They have little enough food as it is, so they can't bother making sure they only eat low-cal. Another thing is that, having some experience from one such country (Tanzania, East Africa) myself I know that at least there, people believe that they HAVE to have at least three children. One for God, one will probably die before it grows up, and then at least one more to take care of them when they're old and can't work and there's no social security. To make sure they'll be taken good care of they usually add a couple more children as well. This is destroying their "habitat" so it's a kind of a slow suicide, but in a way you have to understand the situation these people are in. They really need someone to take care of them when they grow old.

It won't help starvation either, since there's already enough food produced to feed the entire world, but there's still starvation in many places. What does this tell us about Western culture? We're sick, sick, sick! We consume too much food, and I've even heard stories of food simply being destroyed to keep prices down, instead of giving it to starving people. There is little will to pay even anything close to decent prices for goods from poor countries. Incredibly corrupt government leaders (and lower government officials), even where they are not dictators, just elected for a short period, take vast amounts of money for themselves leaving the country's population just as poor. Lack of education keeps people down, and it's all quite hopeless... And the worst of it is that it's probably us Westerners who started all this by our slavetrade (well, the Arabs did that first), exploitation and our unwillingness to make up for everything we've stolen.

posted 08-28-99 12:09 PM ET            

It's probably true that around 30% of the population in several African countries have AIDS, I have heard similar numbers. Also, I know that people in many African countries are very sexually active, and not necessarily with only one partner. I'm not saying that they just **** everything that moves, after all, American males are the most unfaithful in the world (at least where it's recorded), so they're probably not much better. This is just a much larger problem in Africa than in the US.

They'll probably not be able to get the necessary treatment even if doctors come up with something, because it'll probably be too expensive. Another sad thing is that Africa isn't the region in the world with the worst overpopulation either. It would have been "better" (not that there's much good in this) if it happened in India or China, countries which have a very real overpopulation problem (especially India, since it's still growing fast).

posted 09-03-99 07:46 AM ET            

One of the reasons why HIV spreads faster in Africa than on other continents is that anal sex is a common contraceptive method there, and the risk of catching the virus is higher with anal sex.