I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that, I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.Chairman Mecha Sonic
Personal Diaries
As distances vanish and the people can flow freely from place to place, society will cross a psychological specific heat boundary and enter a new state. No longer a solid or liquid, we will become as a vapor and expand to fill all available space. And like a gas, we shall not be easily contained.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"Dynamics of the Mind"
Begin with a function of arbitrary complexity. Feed it values, "sense data". Then, take your result, square it, and feed it back into your original function, thus adding a new set of sense data. Continue to feed your results back into the original function ad infinitum. What do you have? The fundamental principle of sentient consciousness.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"For I Have Tasted the Fruit"
Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier has brought new ways and new places to die. Why should the future be different?Chairman Mecha Sonic
"Dynamics of the Mind"
Objects once measured in meters have become so small that they cannot be seen by the naked eye, with revolutionary applications across the board. Gentlemen, forget what your courtesans have told you: size does matter!Chairman Mecha Sonic
Address to the Faculty
Once a man has altered the relationship between himself and his environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"Dynamics of the Mind"
Optical computers, genetic catalogs, nanorepair modules -- forget all of that. It's when you see a megaton of steel suspended over your head by a thread the thickness of a human hair that you -really- find God in technology.Chairman Mecha Sonic
Personal Diaries
Remember, genes are NOT blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert "the genes for an elephant's trunk" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There -are- no genes for trunks. What you CAN do with genes is chemistry, since DNA is nothing but a string of codes for chemicals. For instance, we can, in theory, splice the native plants' talent for nitrogen fixation into a Cetran plant.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"Looking God in the Eye"
Scientific theories are judged by the coherence they lend to our natural experience and the simplicity with which they do so. The grand principle of the heavens balances on the razor's edge of truth.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"For I Have Tasted the Fruit"
Some would ask how a perfect God could create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have overlooked a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?Chairman Mecha Sonic
"Dynamics of the Mind"
Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"For I Have Tasted the Fruit"
The genetic code does not and cannot specify the nature and position of every capillary in the body or every neuron in the brain. What it -can- do is describe the underlying fractal pattern which creates them.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"Looking God in the Eye"
The popular stereotype of the researcher is that of a skeptic and a pessimist. Nothing could be further from the truth! Scientists must be optimists at heart in order to block out the incessant chorus of those who say, "It cannot be done."Chairman Mecha Sonic
Personal Diaries
The substructure of the universe regresses infinitely towards smaller and smaller components. Behind atoms, we find electrons, and behind electrons, quarks. Each layer reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries for us to unravel.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"For I Have Tasted the Fruit"
There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn, nonetheless, for the latter.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"For I Have Tasted the Fruit"
To map the very stuff of life; to look into the genetic mirror and watch a million generations march past. That is both our curse and our proudest achievement, for it is in reaching to our beginnings that we begin to learn who we truly are.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"Looking God in the Eye"
We have reached an informational threshold which can only be crossed by harnessing the speed of light directly. The quickest computations require the fastest possible particles moving along the shortest possible paths. Since the capability now exists to take our information directly from photons travelling molecular distances, the final act of the information revolution will soon be upon us.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"For I Have Tasted the Fruit"
We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why, then, cannot we cut one code short here and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?Chairman Mecha Sonic
"Looking God in the Eye"
Why do you insist that the genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter, -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"Dynamics of the Mind"
What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony, is no more than information before the senses, data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: you have received the information, now act on it. Take control of the input and you shall become master of the output.Chairman Mecha Sonic
"Dynamics of the Mind"
|
