Concluding our look into the backstory of Tales of the Quantum Corps, the
following post provides more details about life in 2100 AD. Specific topics covered include Science and Technology,
Philosophy and Ethics, and Education.
SCIENCE
AND TECHNOLOGY
The development of science and technology in 2100AD
is explosive, with changes coming at exponentially increasing rates.
Most of the developments are focused on the fields
of nanotechnology, biotech and genomics, and quantum scale systems, such as
quantum computing. The large-scale
movement of people and organizations into the inner Solar System also drives
much of the change in S&T.
Nano developments concern the growth in knowledge
and capabilities of ANAD-style assemblers and assembler swarms. Assembler technology changes and grows fast,
owing to the now self-directed evolution of ANAD swarms and the activation of
their embedded Prime Keys. All
ANAD-style nanosystems that are direct evolutionary descendents of the original
ANAD design apparently have this Prime Key embedded in their processor
architecture. It is deeply embedded and
its complexity and distributed location have so far stymied any attempts to
write over it, patch around it or delete it.
It seems that when sections of ANAD’s processor where the Prime Key is
thought to reside are isolated, ANAD itself loses much of its functionality,
the very attributes that make ANAD systems so compelling and useful. You don’t want to throw the baby out with the
bathwater.
There are currently attempts underway to design and
build molecular-scale assembler control systems and architectures from scratch,
but the original efforts of Doc Frost and his use of viral genomes from Entebbe
conferred capabilities on ANAD that haven’t not been repeatable so far using any
other method or system. This is a major
research effort underway now.
Also important are the rapid advances in fabricator
(fab) technology and the use of ANAD swarms to create new products and
structures and companions (angels)
for all who can afford them.
Quantum scale systems are another area of major
research and development effort in 2100AD.
The fallout from Red Hammer’s quantum
coupler communication devices (taken from the Old One’s archives) has led
to a whole field of quantum communication systems and computers, and greatly
advanced developments in this field.
UNIFORCE and others are experimenting furiously with ways of controlling
quantum state systems, and expanding and developing new uses for both quantum
coupler systems and quantum computers.
Some scientists and engineers want to accompany any new probes to Europa
and interrogate the Keeper system thought to be there to find out more from the
Old Ones archives. There is a push to
mount several exploratory expeditions.
Quantum couplers and what we have been able to learn from reverse
engineering them have had major effects on computing, communications and basic
physics. There is even an effort
underway to re-create the quantum state
resonators that nearly destroyed Earth in the Hellas Enigma case.
Biotech and genomics are another great area of rapid
advances. The ability to quickly
sequence and decode virtually any genome in minutes, of any organism, has given
Mankind a new tool of unprecedented power.
With the world’s library of genome sequences available to anybody with a
WorldNet connection, designer lifeforms and designer bioprosthetics (like more
fingers on your hand or a neural jack in the back of your skull) are easy. So easy in fact that rogue DNA drifts around
the world’s ecosystem and is available to anybody for a price. Incorporating twist into your own genome for added capabilities, enhanced sensory
perception, expanded mental capacity or just to get high, is now a big
business, although strictly illegal in most countries. Tight controls on what can be done to your
own body or to others using twist
hasn’t slowed its growth at all, only made it more alluring and desirable, as
well as expensive. The black market in
illegal genetic sequences is thriving.
This was the original economic foundation of the Red Hammer cartel.
Part of the growth in genomic science comes from
great advances in neuro technology and cognitive science. New understanding of brain structure and
organization comes every day, through advances in neural mapping and scanning
systems, enabled in part by nanobotic techniques to enter, explore and map
neural pathways. With this understanding
and the use of such nanobotic systems to alter or enhance cognitive capacities
and brain functions, startling new developments are occurring around the world
every day. More and more people are
taking nanobotic pills and capsules to gain such enhancements or just to get
high and live in fantasy worlds generated by nanobotic stimulation of certain
memory pathways, a sort of Second Life inside your own mind. Addiction is a growing problem.
In the year 2100AD, science and technology and rapid
advances in both are a part of everyday life.
Startling and astounding developments come all the time. Many scientists look forward to the arrival
of the Old Ones, with a hope of mining their knowledge for even greater
knowledge and advances. This puts them
on one side of the great philosophical divide of opinion, between the
Assimilationists and those who want to resist and fight off the Old Ones.
The world of 2100AD is steadily partitioning itself
into these two camps. Assimilationists
want to merge with our nanobotic creations and swarms and become man-machine
symbionts, to be ready for the Old Ones and possibly to merge with them as
well.
Humanists want to preserve what is unique about
Humanity and exert greater control over our nanobotic companions. They want to resist the allure of the Old
Ones and fight off their coming and whatever changes their arrival will
bring. The only trouble is: nobody
really knows what the coming of the Old Ones will bring. The Old Ones are like a blank slate for many,
and people project their greatest dreams and deepest fears onto this slate.
There are even some who argue against the evidence
and state categorically that the Old Ones are a figment of our collective
imagination, that there are no real Old Ones and nobody is coming to save us or
destroy us.
In 2155AD, the truth will be known.
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
The great philosophical debate of the age is how we
should deal with and live with our nanobotic creations and how we should
respond to the expected imminent coming of the Old Ones.
The Assimilationists
believe that the only hope for Mankind is to merge with his machines, to
develop a hybrid man, symbiotically connected with his nanobotic
creations. In this way, the
Assimilationists believe, evolution can be speeded up enough to deal with all
the problems facing Humanity in 2100AD, not the least of which is the impending
arrival of the Old Ones.
The Humanists
believe pretty much the opposite.
Humanists acknowledge that Man must and will continue to evolve, but
they believe that our machines are little more than tools and that there is
some irreducible part of Man that can’t or shouldn’t be messed with. To merge man with machine is to threaten that
irreducible part and perhaps even bring Man to extinction. Humanists believe that our role in the
Universe is to fulfill our natural destiny, as originally ‘designed’, and not
to tinker with the innards. Humanists
believe that, if the Old Ones are indeed coming, we should resist them by all
available means.
There are many sub-branches and variants of these
two great philosophical systems.
Humanists are a sort of 22nd century back-to-nature
movement. “Return to our roots,
celebrate what is unique about Man and hone our natural abilities, let Man be
all Man can be” are the bywords of this system of thinking. Anything that advances this cause is
ethically good.
By contrast, Assimilationists want a new Man,
enhanced with new abilities and capable of venturing out into the Universe to
seek and explore. Anything that advances
this cause is ethically good.
The impending arrival of the Old Ones serves as a
lightning rod for both camps. Not everyone
believes the Old Ones are really coming; belief in their appearance and the
assumed time of their appearance in our Solar System are derived from analysis
of the Prime Key now active and resident inside all ANAD-style assemblers, as
seen in the Hellas Enigma case. It was Doc Frost who originally proposed this
theory.
For those who do believe in the Old Ones, it has
taken on something of the same fervor as believing in the Second Coming of
Jesus Christ, at the end of time. Many
people believe that the Old Ones really are Jesus Christ, or even God, coming
back to judge Mankind. Some take this
belief as a sort of an impending End of the World. The Old Ones thus become a template onto
which people project their greatest fears, hopes and fantasies. A few, especially inside UNIFORCE and Quantum
Corps, have tried to deal with the facts and what can be reasonably surmised
and not deal in eschatological trivia.
These analysts can show evidence, from ANAD
processor architecture studies, bioarcheology studies and cosmological
investigations, that the Old Ones are or seem to be a sort of gigantic swarm of
advanced nanobotic entities cruising through space, their homeworld having been
destroyed in a supernova or some other kind of cataclysm, who seeded the primordial
Earth with living cells and tried to direct evolution on Earth along a certain
path. It seems that mutations and the
handiwork of Man have altered the Old Ones’ evolutionary intent, which was to
fashion a world more suitable for their type of life. Thus the Old Ones are coming back to correct
the ‘mistake’ and in advance of their return, activated sentinels around the
Solar System called Keepers to jumpstart this corrective process. Part of the corrective action was allowing
the cartel Red Hammer limited access to their technical archives so as to try
and speed up the corrective action.
In general, Assimilationists think we should allow
this process to go forward, and accept the Old Ones as brothers in exploring
the cosmos. There are obvious risks in
this approach.
Humanists think we should resist symbiotic
relationships with our nanobotic creations, resist the Old Ones, fight them off
if we have to, and follow our own natural destiny into the future. The term ‘natural destiny’ means let evolution
take its natural course. Don’t try to
direct it. The Assimilationists want to
direct our evolution toward man-machine symbiosis.
Thus one of the most fundamental disagreements
between the two camps is what to do, if anything, about human evolution. Control
of our evolutionary destiny is the real prize that both sides are
contending over.
EDUCATION
Systems and techniques of educating and training
people have advanced greatly by the beginning of the 22nd
century. Many of these developments
depend on two things: the WorldNet (and
its off-planet derivative Solnet) and
nanobotic assembler technology,
especially the growing and controversial use of embedded nanobotic swarms to
stimulate or enhance memory formation in the brains of learners.
In 2200AD, enhanced memory stimulation via nanobotic
means is controversial and not fully reliable, but that hasn’t stopped a vast
and growing market from developing. The
hard part is programming the bots to lay down and or boost glutamate trails in
a brain such that a new ‘memory’ of some information or skill is laid down as a
track. This requires a precise
navigational course through the brain’s neural network (hippocampus and
neocortex) and very precise control of how much glutamate to release and or
boost, from the brain’s natural supply (stored in vesicles at the synapses).
The growth of this nanobotic memory market has been
explosive. Providers advertise the
ability to buy a package and learn a specific skill or learn specific
information, such as how to speak French.
In reality, such packages don’t offer any such thing but merely offer a
memory boost to actual learning efforts.
In other words, you can learn French much faster if you swallow the bot
capsules and then go about the learning process the normal way. Synaptic courses and connections that are
naturally created or boosted in the normal learning process are enhanced even further
by the bots in the course of learning.
Thus, nanobotic memory packages are really memory boosters and
enhancers, not memory creators. But many
buyers don’t make that distinction.
There are other biochemical boosters and enhancers
of memory and learning that come from the pharmaceutical industry.
The other major impact on education comes from the
growing use of the WorldNet in learning development and delivery. Most primary and secondary education is now
delivered over the Net, electronically, by both automated teachers (wizards or
merlins) and real human teachers. Some
of this is received at home and some delivered at smaller, satellite resource
centers in neighborhoods. K-12 education
is mostly delivered using the WorldNet and resource center proctors and study
aides. Testing and maintaining
achievement levels are all done automatically.
Many colleges and universities now have no real
campus and are essentially virtual institutions, existing only on the Net. Higher education and some lower education is
increasingly globalized, much to the discomfort of local authorities who have
seen their influence steadily wane and be usurped by the UN. The primary UN agency for curriculum
development, maintainance of standards, testing and so forth is UNEO, UN
Education Organization, an outgrowth and spinoff of the old UNESCO. UNEO sets global curriculum and teaching
standards and tries to help, encourage, cajole and threaten local and national
school systems to maintain these standards.
There is a lot of resistance.
However, slowly but surely, education at all levels is becoming a UN
responsibility and, to be globally competitive, school systems have to sign on
and be a part of it.
UNEO also has a branch called Learning Accelerator
(also known as the Learnbots program)
that supervises and manages the nanobotic enhancement efforts of many countries
and sets global standards for performance, safety, etc.
