welcome, dear traveler, to a not so distant year, let’s be arbitrary, since I can’t be proven wrong (unless Doc Brown materializes somehow), let’s say 2050 (closer than you may think in a blink), given the commercialization of space what will be the cost of freight ? the freight of… you? firstly there will be your DNA and maybe a bio page or two (perhaps some personal memento or two), shot out into the cosmos like so much a life(less) raft into an ocean vast(er) than we know, imagine your DNA blasted off into the cosmos and found in four million or 40 million years from now, and the technology exists to make a new you, beats the alternative, as they say, but we know people will not stop there, our DNA will be littering the universe I bet (perhaps that is how we got here on Earth in the first place in some form), like all things our appetites grow and the quest for the ever-life will vex all generations forward as it has all those past, a question of the matter becomes a matter of when in terms of mapping out the electrical patterns of our brains, especially with quantum computing flying ahead at such a breakneck pace, so questions about humanity will ultimately rise, will humans be humans without the physical interface?
Non physical consciousness will allow us to venture into all manners of space (and the very depths of our own planet, imagine a vacation into an actual volcano, why not? or a little skinny dip in the mariana trench), population control will not be an issue per se in this maybe brave new world, your apartment will be your location on a memory chip, your choice of neighborhood might depend on how close you are to one of the core CPUs or a power supply nexus, at that point will we have evolved into AI, of ourselves? will hacking become a form of murder? even if you are just turning off a switch or pulling a plug, and who is left in charge, on the outside, the “fleshers”? the “living”, the “pre-comp”s as it were… What will social interaction be like when you have no form, will avatars be your body? and gender? there will not be any, or well, it won’t be needed, and would people choose to “die” early to transfer into the compu-realm, what if your soulmate dies, do you follow? Will there be people who fall in love with someone who has been “alive” for 400 years and decide to “transmute” into the digital? I really wonder how far away we are from such things, I bet we are much closer than we think…
and the whole crux of this thought was cheesy infomercials, because even something lofty will eventually be sold for “X” number of installments @ $19.95 (call now, the first 100 callers get a free slap chop and shamwow millennium edition)… but no one touches the king…
notes… yeah, I think about a mash up of stuff all the time, maybe my day consists of classical poetry, string theory and some quantum mechanics…. man can not live on verse alone.. that’s a pretty good tag line… maybe I could use that on a blog or something… hmmm…
music, going cosmic ambient because that is what fits….
as we are inventing it right now as we go… thanks for the read, pull up a chair and check out all the other jazz I am up to…
Shades of My Garden 