Scifi technology

[Ogion]

In other forums there is sometimes some similar topic like this, and it is always fun to watch what answers come.

So: What scifi technology (or 'magic'/'supernatural' skill) would you like to have? For yourself or for the sake of humankind? Just because that wish is just 'cool' to have, or some more reasons?

I'll take the lead: I really like humankind to have access to some faster-than-light-travel-technology. Because i think in not too much time Earth will become really small and with too few ressources. In the moment humankind doesn't seem to be able to come to a sustainable living on and with Earth. So i think more than one planet would really be necessary to survive for the 'long term'.
Just for myself i would like to have longevity. I mean, just 80 years seem so little for all the things to learn. Perhaps in a few thousand years it would get boring, but then there is nonetheless a possibility of suicide, but i would want to have the choice of how long i live.

So, any interesting ideas?

Ogion

 

[Jordan~]

Advanced nanotechnology. Make me an immortal body, please!

 

[Vrecknidj]

I'd like to be able to regenerate (and to end up in perfect health when I'm done regenerating). That would cover just about everything.

All the other stuff, from teleportation to invisibility would be great, but I'd rather not get sick or injured.

Dave

 

[Dissident]

Other than immortality, Id love to be able to travel in time. Id go to the past to see some stuff with my own eyes first and then use the rest of my time going to different times in the future. Seeing the world 500, 1000, 2000 years in the future would be the best thing that could happen to me, I cant imagine what mankind will be doing then (or what makind will be then).

 

[Jordan~]

If time travel backwards was possible I would totally go for that one. You could maybe even exploit it to make yourself immortal (if it went in both directions, you could go into the future and get immortal first, then go back and start messing with the timeline).

More interesting for me than going into the future (though this would be about the second best thing) would be going very far back in time, to when humans were settlign the world. Compare modern ideas of the Proto-Indo-European language to how it was in reality, spend years going around observing various groups of people, taking note of their advances, the evolution of their culture, etc.

 

[Oziriz]

I'd probably take immortality as well, or better yet some great power I can use to give myself other powers, say only one at a time, so it doesn't get TOO extreme. For example, I could give myself immortality but I couldn't be invisible or fly at the same time, and if I was flying or invisible I could die should something bad happen...

Related to all this time travel and faster than light stuff, there is a way to travel into the future, all you need to do is go extremely fast. :P For example, if you traveled at almost the speed of light you could travel a thousand years into the future in a very very short moment... And if we're to believe Einstein's special theory of relativity, you can't go faster than the speed of light because the mass would become infinite or something like that, but it's also theorized that if you did go faster than the speed of light you'd end up going backwards in time. I haven't read so much about this whole time dilation thing but I know it's been tested and proven that you can travel forward in time with this. Would be interesting, only there wouldn't be any way to go back, and since all your friends and family would be dead, and maybe even the rest of mankind, that could be a bad idea.

EDIT:
Here's an article on Wikipedia about it, I'll check it out myself right now...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

 

[Jordan~]

If you were to travel faster than the speed of light, wouldn't you collapse in on yourself?

 

[loveofreason]

So, any interesting ideas?

Ogion

Teleportation!

 

[Jordan~]

Teleportation is also impossible! Or at least, potentially possible but would result in the loss of personhood - what came out the other end would be a carbon copy, like a perfect clone, but not the actual person.

Using any currently known or suggested technique, to my knowledge, that is.

Re: Time travel:

Best method is wormholes imo. If they exist and traversable ones can be created, you could send one mouth of your wormhole through a very ancient natural wormhole inside an autonomous vessel, get it to fly toward a target destination e.g. Earth, then get it to wait until you want to go through. Of course, this raises questions about timeline confusion etc., and raises the question of what exactly it means to "wait" if you've been sent into the past. Does the period of this waiting also pass in "the present"?

 

[Jesin]

Teleportation is also impossible! Or at least, potentially possible but would result in the loss of personhood - what came out the other end would be a carbon copy, like a perfect clone, but not the actual person.

As long as the brain gets copied exactly too, what's the difference?

 

[Jordan~]

Yay, argument about what makes a person a person.

Well, the consciousness and the brain don't seem to be the same thing. While the consciousness is bound the the brain, and dies when the brain dies, that does not mean that copying the brain also produces the same consciousness. For one thing, even if the brain is copied exactly, it's not the same brain, just a similar one. And although the brain is replaced entirely during a lifetime, it doesn't happen all at once: the cells are still connected, and all cell are connected to the original brain cell via connections to other cells.

If you are cloned exactly - the resulting person being 100% the same as you - and you are then shot in the head, do you die? That person, although they are physically identical to you, is not you. They might appear to be you to others, who won't be able to tell the difference, but it is not the same entity as you. If you don't die when you get shot, that must mean that you're two people before you die. You're a consciousness inhabiting two bodies. How exactly does that work? What would you sense? How would you control two bodies?

Thus, I conclude that personhood - the existence of a personal entity, a consciousness - is conferred by the connectivity of living brain cells, rather than by the condition of that brain. After all, although the physical structure of our brain changes dramatically during our lives, we never cease to be the same consciousness.

Therefore, if in teleportation a person is destroyed and a copy created, the original person dies and a new one is produced.

 

[Dissident]

How about if the body is deconstructed, sent at high speed to its destination atom by atom and then reconstructed? Would your conciousness "die" that way? They would be the same atoms, molecules and cells, etc. Weird things to ponder

 

[Jordan~]

I think that would kill you in the more traditional sense of the word.

 

[Dissident]

Hey, its sci-fi technology, supose they can reconstruct it perfectly and the body functions just fine after the transportation.

 

[Jesin]

If you are cloned exactly - the resulting person being 100% the same as you - and you are then shot in the head, do you die? That person, although they are physically identical to you, is not you. They might appear to be you to others, who won't be able to tell the difference,

How is either one not you? There isn't a difference to tell.

but it is not the same entity as you. If you don't die when you get shot, that must mean that you're two people before you die.

It does not mean you are two people, it means two people are you. It means there are two people with the same personality and the same memories of the time before the cloning took place.

You're a consciousness inhabiting two bodies. How exactly does that work?

You use the word "consciousness" like many people use the word "soul". It doesn't make sense to speak of a consciousness "inhabiting" a body. Consciousness is a process, not an object.

What would you sense? How would you control two bodies?

You make it sound as if there would be some sort of psychic connection. "You" wouldn't have to deal with two sets of sensory inputs or control two bodies; there would be a "you" for each body.

Thus, I conclude that personhood - the existence of a personal entity, a consciousness - is conferred by the connectivity of living brain cells, rather than by the condition of that brain.

What do you mean by "condition"? I thought the connections between cells were a pretty important part of the condition of a brain.

After all, although the physical structure of our brain changes dramatically during our lives, we never cease to be the same consciousness.

But we change constantly, too. Or are you arguing that, as a consciousness, you are the same as you were when you were 8 years old?

Therefore, if in teleportation a person is destroyed and a copy created, the original person dies and a new one is produced.

Distinction without a difference. How do you decide which is the original? Is it just whichever one is sitting in the same place he was in when there was only one of them? Try looking at it from their points of view.

-----

I most likely won't be able to post any more until the 15th or 16th. I'm going on a trip to Costa Rica.

 

[Jordan~]

How is either one not you? There isn't a difference to tell.

From the outside. You would still know, from the inside.

It does not mean you are two people, it means two people are you. It means there are two people with the same personality and the same memories of the time before the cloning took place.

Once again, only from the outside. The similarities are "superficial" for want of a better word, two consciousnesses exist, therefore two different people.

You use the word "consciousness" like many people use the word "soul". It doesn't make sense to speak of a consciousness "inhabiting" a body. Consciousness is a process, not an object.

We are aware of our own consciousness, however. Is this not what makes us a person? If you clone a body perfectly and shoot the original, does that person not die? There's an identical one left behind, but he is not the same person.

Suppose you build two identical houses, exactly the same in every aspect. Then you burn one of them down. Have you lost a house?

You make it sound as if there would be some sort of psychic connection. "You" wouldn't have to deal with two sets of sensory inputs or control two bodies; there would be a "you" for each body.

No, there would be one you, and one copy of you. Two squares with the same dimensions are not the same square.

What do you mean by "condition"? I thought the connections between cells were a pretty important part of the condition of a brain.

Perhaps "condition" is the wrong word. I mean the actual matter of the brain, rather than the relationship between that matter, when I say "condition".

But we change constantly, too. Or are you arguing that, as a consciousness, you are the same as you were when you were 8 years old?

You are the same person, but you have changed - your awareness of your own existence is unbroken from the moment it came to be to the moment you die.

Distinction without a difference. How do you decide which is the original? Is it just whichever one is sitting in the same place he was in when there was only one of them? Try looking at it from their points of view.

Because each of them is self-aware, they are different people. The original person (i.e. you) was aware of his existence before being destroyed by the teleportation process. The new person created on the other end is aware of their existence, also, and has all the same memories, etc.; but that original self-awareness has been terminated and replaced with a new, identical one. To use the (oversimplified) analogy to drawing squares, if I draw a square, rub it out, and draw an identical square elsewhere on the page, is it the same square?

To a observer from the outside, there will be no differences. The people being transported, however, will die and be replaced with identical copies, indistinguishable from the original other than to the now-dead original himself.

 

[Dissident]

You are clearly right Jordan, maybe the first description was a little confusing, thats all. I dont think that any teleportation device that permanently kills you will be very successfull, I'd rather walk, thanks.

But what about "temporary" death? In the deconstruction/reconstruction possibility I mentioned, you would be dead for some time but then resurrected. Would the conciousness "chain" be broken?

This is what Wikipedia says about clinical death:

Most tissues and organs of the body can survive clinical death for considerable periods. Blood circulation can be stopped in the entire body below the heart for at least 30 minutes, with injury to the spinal cord being a limiting factor. Detached limbs may be successfully reattached after 6 hours of no blood circulation at warm temperatures. Bone, tendon, and skin can survive as long as 8 to 12 hours.
The brain, however, accumulates ischemic injury faster than any other organ. Without special treatment after circulation is restarted, full recovery of the brain after more than 3 minutes of clinical death at normal body temperature is rare.Usually brain damage or later brain death results after longer intervals of clinical death even if the heart is restarted and blood circulation is successfully restored. Brain injury is therefore the limiting factor for recovery from clinical death.
Although loss of function is almost immediate, there is no specific duration of clinical death at which the non-functioning brain clearly dies. The most vulnerable cells in the brain, CA1 neurons of the hippocampus, are fatally injured by as little as 10 minutes without oxygen. However, the injured cells don't actually die until hours after resuscitation. This delayed death can be prevented in vitro by a simple drug treatment even after 20 minutes without oxygen.

 

[Jordan~]

It's interesting, I'm really not sure. We can never really know, can we? It could be like waking up from a nap, or it could be like being rebooted. Even if you lived through it, you'd have no idea - if you did end up dead, the new you wouldn't know they were new.

 

[murkrow]

I'm not really too into super powers...

Regeneration is a cool one but I think it would make everything I did feel worthless, no chance of death... bleh.

Immortality is for cowards.

When I picture a world of super heroes I'm part of a small group of normal people who hunt down and kill them. We kill the alien ones first.

 

[Dissident]

An alive coward can become brave in the future, a dead brave... is dead.

 

[murkrow]

If you're so sure life has no meaning, why do you value it so highly?

 

[Dissident]

When did I say that it has no meaning?

 

[murkrow]

"I believe there is no trascendence, no "higher" purpose, but that doesnt take away all possible meaning to life. Quite the contrary, it allows me to freely define my purpose and my life's meaning myself." - you

I guess after revising your statement you seem to think that living is the meaning of life, and that matches the immortality desire.

But really wanting immortality is the same as wanting heaven. You want an eternal platform to live out your fancies on. The way experiences are gauged in relativity to other experiences would make such a life incredibly dull, so there's no rational sensationalist approach to the desire for it. The only possible reason to want immortality is the fear of death, and the only way anyone can overcome the fear of death is to accept it. An immortal is a coward for so long as he is immortal, or possibly a regretful man who covets the capability of suicide.

 

[Dissident]

But really wanting immortality is the same as wanting heaven.

Not necesarily .

The way experiences are gauged in relativity to other experiences would make such a life incredibly dull, so there's no rational sensationalist approach to the desire for it.

Not necesarily.

The only possible reason to want immortality is the fear of death, and the only way anyone can overcome the fear of death is to accept it.

I guess you could overcome the fear of someone punching you in the face by accepting it, but that doesnt mean you should accept it, you are gona be punched, you wish you werent gonna be punched, it sucks, period.

An immortal is a coward for so long as he is immortal, or possibly a regretful man who covets the capability of suicide.

Not necesarily.

We can go on in the other thread and leave this to fantasy super powered happy people if you want.

 

[Jordan~]

"No meaning" and "no intrinsic meaning" are very different things. We don't need to be given a meaning because we can create our own. Indeed, people who claim that there is a grand meaning of life have created this meaning themselves.

About wanting immortality, I will admit that the concept of death terrifies me. But you seem to be assuming that this is the cause of wanting immortality, rather than its effect. If you would like to live forever, obviously the idea of dying is anathematic to you. For one thing, it ends your existence. If you want to live forever because you have a desire to do things which aren't currently possible, then death is a bad thing. A dead man can't learn or observe either. The chances of all the universe's mysteries being solved during my lifetime? Very, very slim.

To say that an immortal would get bored seems absurd, to put it mildly. Even if the desire to learn about our universe, fascination with mankind's doings, curiosity to know how it all turns out does not keep him going, we have an infinite capacity to imagine and create. The number of worlds we can explore - in increasing depth and detail as we advance - would last anyone an eternity. The amount of knowledge that exists to be learned, the number of poems that can be written or read, music composed and listened, would all give anyone enough things to do for eternity, assuming it was even possible to live that long in a likely finite universe.

The transhumanist is not the cowering old man who fears death, he is the visionary. Do not blame others for your own failure to understand that vision. Or should I say, perception?

 

[Dissident]

(If I wasnt so lazy I would have said the exact same things)

Bravo!!

 

[murkrow]

All men die. All boxers get punched in the face. Anyone who refuses to be punched in the face does not know what boxing is.

Without a deadline a man languishes.

All experience is given value because it's one of the few experiences you will have.


Even what you're describing here, of a man living forever and being able to witness the great unraveling of the world's mysteries (which have as good a chance of being unraveled in a million years as they do now, as they did 5,000 years ago), to experience the musical and literary accomplishments of mankind, this is a life of spectatorship. Watching men who will die and therefore produce.

There are no choices to the immortal, nothing to be weighed against other things. It's not so much that everything can be pursued without worry or rush, it's that nothing can be pursued with worry or rush.

The way I see an immortal being thinking is not in a way that he works to meticulously perfect all of his creations. Perfection accepts completion, and the immortal does not appreciate completion. An immortal who begins to play music will play the same piece for eternity, never revising his first notes.

Also, do not ever tell me what I lack the perception necessary to understand something. Do not bestow upon your arguments infallibility by virtue of privileged knowledge. I am disappointed to see such tactics from a staunch opponent of the religious perspective.

 

[Dissident]

How can you be so sure that immortality necesarily causes the development of such traits?
I could say that an immortal person would work even harder and with more conviction than a mortal, some people say "why should i care about the environment? Ill be dead by the time when the consecuences could affect anything" "Why would I try to change the world? Its something that i wont be able to do in my lifetime" etc.
If you put a miserable person in any position you will get miserable results, but its not necesarily the situation that causes the result but the person. What if Ghandi was still alive and was immortal? Would he become a lazy drunk or something just because of it? If Einstein was still alive and became immortal, would he stop his work?

 

[murkrow]

Umm, yeah. He'd have no drive to work.

Also both those men were religious so they were interested in immortality.

 

[Jordan~]

The world's mysteries have as good a chance of being unravelled in a million years as they did 5000 years ago? 5000 years ago we could travel in reed boats if we were lucky. A thousand years later, ships are in use. Another thousand years, and great navies exist. Another thousand years, and further advances have been made, shipping is common and affordable. Another thousand years and we can cross oceans, and a thousand after that we can send people into space. Does that progress curve not saying anything to you? 4500 years from reed boats to caravels, and only five hundred from there to space flight, and you say we're no closer to discovering the universe's secrets?

Who says that an immortal needs to live in reality? A transcended human in the distant future could spend hundreds of years at a time living in simulations if they got bored, and only come out to check what was happening in reality, all this assuming that they do get bored in the first place. Are you familiar with the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski? He said in his one published article that mankind needed hardship to be happy, that if we become to dependent on technology the best case scenario is living out our lives perpetually bored. This man lacks vision. The answer isn't to depend on technology, but to cease depending on nature; to become technology ourselves. In this case, it's the transhumans who solve mankind's future problems, who are the intelligent machines that rule the future. The transhumans exist at the top of their fields, using their own enhanced minds to work through the problems of future science. There is still work to be done by the immortal, work that would take hundreds of mortals to complete otherwise. Imagine if Newton, Descartes, Einstein, or any other great genius of your choice had lived forever. What might they have achieved by now? What might we know? Would they all be crushingly depressed - well, other than the philosophers?

You say this is how you see the immortal being. Are you sure this is not how you see yourself? Is this how you expect any immortal to behave, or how you would expect yourself to behave if you were immortal?

Which brings me neatly on to my (your?) next point. It's not a tactic, nor am I claiming I possess priviliged knowledge. Different perspective, yes, but not knowledge. Are you capable of thinking about it from an INTP point of view? Can you understand the allure of infinite knowledge, of all the questions we can currently only speculate about being finally answered? Of the millions of new opportunities to speculate? Do you understand the joy of watching events unfold, making predictions, analysing the situation, sitting back and observing the world go by in fascination? Curiosity might not be enough to keep you going forever, but it's enough for most of us.

 

[Jordan~]

I start a new post for this because it's a slight sidetrack, but I can understand your perspective on death from recognition. I'm currently analysing a song which deals with death, or indeed dénouement of any sort, as something to be accepted and indeed almost celebrated, as the thing which gives life, or whatever the experience is, value. The opening to the song features birds, flying free, only for it to be revealed that the reason they fly is to be shot down by the pharaoh - if they weren't to die, they would never have enjoyed their lives. The recurring metaphor throughout the song is the comparison of a life to the passage of a meteorite through the atmosphere. It begins to burn up, flickers through the sky in a brilliant flash of light, then ceases to be - much in the same way as a human is born, lives and dies; the joy of living burning us out. A poignant quotation would be:

"We could stand for a century,
staring,
with our heads cocked,
in the broad daylight at this thing:

Joy,
landlocked in bodies that don't keep—
dumbstruck with the sweetness of being,
till we don't be.
Told: Take this.
Eat this."

Though it's a beautiful way of looking at death, I see it as a relic of a past when no alternative existed, when death truly was the inevitable result of living. Perhaps in my lifetime this will cease to be the case, and we can extend that flash of light from a few seconds to the lifetime of a star.

The song is Emily by Joanna Newsom if you're curious enough, the lyrics and the music are beautiful.

 

[murkrow]

Science shmience.

Philosophy has barely progressed (if at all) since it's inception.

Moving through space, moving through water, moving twelve steps towards the river to take a shit, it's all moving.

That is not how I see myself at all. I think only of completion, I am death obsessed, I worship resolution.

Perhaps you are right that I lack the personality to romanticize the idea of an eternal watcher. To me it is a bland experiece to simply "watch the earth go by", I would much rather dig my nails into it and direct it's speed myself.

I will have to think about this more, and I'm considering taking a nap, but it's possible that I may be declaring a personal war on transhumanism. If the advent of this technology will bring about a ruling class of watchers then it is my responsibility as one of the forever downtrodden extroverts to fight the rise of your technocracy.

 

[Dissident]

I just wanted to make clear that Einstein was NOT religious:

In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."Einstein also stated: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth."

Saying that this guy did not make any progress in science nor improved our comprehension of the universe is having no respect at all.

 

[murkrow]

I didn't say he was a christian.

Okay I don't want to argue about what Einstein thought, but I am 100% sure he would agree with me on the matter of divinity, except he'd have a better title for it.

 

[Jordan~]

No species lasts forever, homo sapiens will have to adapt if we're to survive as well. Now that adaptation is in our hands.

 

[Dissident]

The opening to the song features birds, flying free, only for it to be revealed that the reason they fly is to be shot down by the pharaoh - if they weren't to die, they would never have enjoyed their lives.

I dont think that makes any sense.

 

[Dissident]

I didn't say he was a christian.

Okay I don't want to argue about what Einstein thought, but I am 100% sure he would agree with me on the matter of divinity, except he'd have a better title for it.

I never said you did, you said he was religious, he was not, that is all.

Being 100% sure about what a dead person would think about something is 100% bad idea, you have to realize what you do know and what you do not.

 

[Jordan~]

It's only a metaphor. The pharaoh is representative of the all-powerful forces that govern the universe. He gives and takes joy as he pleases by releasing the birds and then shooting them. All the birds can do, powerless animals in the hands of a mighty ruler, is enjoy it while they can and accept their fate. That's not the overall message of the song, though, it changes throughout. There's 12 minutes of it, after all.

 

[murkrow]

He was religious. That letter proves it!

Argh, I don't want to get into the same debate we've had before on this right now...

 

[Jordan~]

He was religious in the sense of religion being:

"A system of beliefs, including belief in the existence of at least one of the following: a human soul or spirit, a deity or higher being, or self after the death of one’s body."

but not:

"A number of customs and rituals associated with such beliefs."

or:

"Any system or institution which one engages with in order to foster a sense of meaning or relevance in relation to something greater than oneself."

If he was agnostic, even the first is sketchy.

 

[Dissident]

How is an agnostic a religious person? He was a rational man of science, he was not an atheist either, if he saw any proof he would have believed, but he didnt, so he didnt.

 

[Jordan~]

He was open to the possibility. It's possible he believed in "a soul or spirit, a deity or higher being, or self after the death of one’s body" - and who's to say if he did or not? We can speculate, but the man's dead. As well to argue about Caesar's favourite colour.

 

[murkrow]

If someone believes in "a soul or spirit, a deity or higher being, or self after the death of one’s body" they are certainly religious.

I'm sorry (for lack of energy to find a better word) if I have insulted one of your heroes by calling him religious, but you have yet to provide any proof against his belief in these things, from what you've provided me I see only things pointing to his belief in the presence of a discovered purpose.

Jordan is right that we shouldn't argue over a dead man.

 

[Dissident]

I understand you wanting to leave the offtopic subject but I just want to know this myself.
He is not my hero, I dont even know that much about him. If he ever said that he believed in "a soul or spirit, a deity or higher being, or self after the death of one’s body" then please quote it. As far as I know he was clearly an agnostic., since he did not practice any religion he cannot be called religious in the traditional sense, as he explained:

"If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

 

[Ogion]

Interesting discussion, i kicked off (I'll leave your argument about Einstein and don't comment on it, i don't think i have something to say there).

The opening to the song features birds, flying free, only for it to be revealed that the reason they fly is to be shot down by the pharaoh - if they weren't to die, they would never have enjoyed their lives.

I agree with Dissident here. For me this is not a correct statement. Why should i not be able to enjoy my life, when i am not going to die in the forseeable future?

That is not how I see myself at all. I think only of completion, I am death obsessed, I worship resolution.

Perhaps you are right that I lack the personality to romanticize the idea of an eternal watcher. To me it is a bland experiece to simply "watch the earth go by", I would much rather dig my nails into it and direct it's speed myself.

I will have to think about this more, and I'm considering taking a nap, but it's possible that I may be declaring a personal war on transhumanism. If the advent of this technology will bring about a ruling class of watchers then it is my responsibility as one of the forever downtrodden extroverts to fight the rise of your technocracy.

Actually, i can't understand you here. I mean, it is clear that you don't share our 'dream' of eternal (or let's rather say a *very* long life) life, but i don't see why a world with some 'longevital watchers/learners' would for one lead to a ruling class of these and for second why it would 'downtrod' the 'extroverts'?
You mean, you would want to 'restore the natural order of things' by killing (?) the person who by eternal watching disturb this order? If that really were the 'order of things' i would happily rebel against it, so you might be right after all

@Jordan in post #30 and #25
I can fully sign that.

He'd have no drive to work.

Would you explain to me, why someone would loose all drive if there is no end to his life in sight? Let me say to you: I can speak only for myself here, but for the moment my only real ambition, drive as you may say, is to learn. To learn the mysteries of life, to understand things, to see the world, the universe, to read as much as is written, to write (for) myself, to see where society goes, to 'live' sciencefiction, to experience the wonders of more modern technology, to live in a time of spaceflight, to hopefully make contact with other living beings or conscious life forms (Really, how wonderfull would it be to have a conversation with a real artificial intelligence, or an alien intelligent life form?)... I could go on, but i think the meaning of my argument is clear.

Ogion