08-15-2017, 06:02 PM
What does life mean?
1. Respiration
2. Self-repair
3. Replication
We have devices whose 'respiration' is electricity, and all that those devices need to do to get independence upon the off-switch or someone keeping the plug in is to get solar power that they can seek. If we already have solar-powered watches, we are not far from having solar-powered personal computers. (Technically a Kindle, Nook, tablet, or iPhone is a computer).
Self-repair? Computer operating systems have the potential for self-correction when viruses, worms, and Trojans infect the computer.
Replication or reproduction? Maybe we will have devices that can take sunlight and silica and transform those into silicon chips and oxygen. In some space environments the oxygen will be highly useful to us for obvious reasons.
Reproduction will be tricky, but it is not so far out of reach. Of course we could easily be out-competed. Silicon is almost one hundred times as common as carbon on Earth, and I can imagine what happens when silicon-based Frankenstein monsters outcompete carbon-based life on Earth.
1. Respiration
2. Self-repair
3. Replication
We have devices whose 'respiration' is electricity, and all that those devices need to do to get independence upon the off-switch or someone keeping the plug in is to get solar power that they can seek. If we already have solar-powered watches, we are not far from having solar-powered personal computers. (Technically a Kindle, Nook, tablet, or iPhone is a computer).
Self-repair? Computer operating systems have the potential for self-correction when viruses, worms, and Trojans infect the computer.
Replication or reproduction? Maybe we will have devices that can take sunlight and silica and transform those into silicon chips and oxygen. In some space environments the oxygen will be highly useful to us for obvious reasons.
Reproduction will be tricky, but it is not so far out of reach. Of course we could easily be out-competed. Silicon is almost one hundred times as common as carbon on Earth, and I can imagine what happens when silicon-based Frankenstein monsters outcompete carbon-based life on Earth.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
