Galactic TravelogueEnnetech by Erasmus and Kinkajou Authors

 

 

 

Kinkajou Interviews Famous People For Their Unique Points Of View.

Sci Fi: Brain Linking to the Internet

KinkajouMed

Kinkajou

 

 

 

Linking information directly to the brain,

is a dream of internet of the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Kinkajou interviews IEC (Imperial Earth Central) agent SigmaPsiCormac
(Neil Asher:  Gridlinked)

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   I find you Cormac in an alternate reality behind the veil of Sigma Psi. Your world has truly triumphed in the mechanical and physical sciences. The combination of mechanisms and humanity are ubiquitous. You yourself I see in the front lines of conflict between civilisation and anarchists. Tell me somewhat of the tools of conflict in your world.

Cormac Brain Liked Internet Agent SigmaPsiCormac:  In this reality, human beings are often augmented. In the Polity, there’s not much that humans could do themselves that is disallowed, including cosmetic alteration, genetic based adaptations, cyber implants ,information access augmentations, including communications hardware, AI processing and information storage and a range of software protocols.

In fact, about the only thing we do frown upon is if the people who carry out these modifications do so without sufficient qualification. Some of these monsters even enjoy experimenting and using the human body as a testing ground or even a playground. Strangely few complain, so there is often little that can be done about these people.

In laboratories I have raided I have seen cerebral augmentations, booster joint motors, nerve links and even synaptic plugs. It becomes obvious that many of these items are intended for those wanting to go further than mere physical boosting. There are people who actively want to lose their humanity and go completely cyborg.

Routinely, I find police colleagues that I work with have heavy G adaptations, visible by the heavy muscle supporting their heads, the reduced height and the shape of their hands. Sometimes it even makes me nervous when standing next to them to realise that they possess the capability of snapping me in two pieces should I allow them to get hold of me.

Even common garden variety thugs often support boosted musculature, reinforced skeletons and even modifications of their body shape rendering their neck less of a weak point, looking more like a dome on a fortification rather than a human skull perched on a neck.

But some modifications are much more subtle. For example, in one point of my career I had been grid linked for 30 years. Psychological studies have suggested that 20 years is the safe limit for grid linking. Prolonged exposure to grid linked information reduces your ability to comprehend the spectrum of human emotions and makes someone like me less effective as a front-line agent.

In effect you appear to become dehumanised and incapable of emotion, interacting with difficulty with the people around you. You begin to communicate by reflex with machines not people.

I remember once in attempting to catch a flight, I found myself booked into the wrong business class by my managing AI. Within seconds I had accessed the booking system and had checked my place on the passenger manifest to find my name in the wrong place. By avoiding interacting with booking clerks and other people, I was losing my ability to communicate with people, at the expense of being able to communicate with machines.

Warrior Kinkajou...Galactic Travelogue

 

Using grid linking to access information databases is more addictive than using drugs for pleasure. I could with action protocols that are almost without language, access information and statistics on any topic. I could process the information in a corner of my visual cortex, and fast forward illustrations to match statistics data at the same time. You almost ceased to need to interact with people, once you realise how rapidly, effectively and completely you can access information by grid link.

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   Doesn’t that make your job of law enforcement much more difficult?

Cormac Brain Liked Internet Agent SigmaPsiCormac:  Definitely! One of the most basic rules of policing is the need to physically overawe the people with whom you have been forced into conflict. I have heard said to me in training, “if they make a fist, you pull a club; if they pull a knife, you pull a gun; if they send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of these to the morgue.

You cannot do your job effectively if you ignore the people on whom you are trying to enforce the law. To intellectually overpower and outclass your policing targets, you need to interact with them.

I see you have been interested in the concept of mechanised infantry. We have a situation here where most of our citizens are to some extent mechanised. In the IEC, we have several ways of dealing with these situations. Our cutting edge agents and enforcement officers are more holistically mechanised with integrated systems capable of very advanced performance.

Training assists them to respond rapidly, appropriately and effectively. Very few criminals or rebels really bother to train themselves up to a peak of performance. Some of our human soldiers called Sparkind can outclass even fully mechanised opponents such as cyborgs or even machines such as the Golem series of robots. The Golem series of robots are themselves awesome mechanical infantry powered by AI processors and fully built to function in combat even with substantial damage.

They are capable of inhuman acceleration, inhuman speed, inhuman strength, inhuman sensory input and processing, inhuman information storage and encryption and can act as an inhuman weapons platform. Their appearance however is exceptionally human, and it can be quite unnerving to realise that the entity with which you are communicating is completely robotic. I think the Golem series is just too damn good.

In short, “mechanised” infantry is in fact the basis of police and army units. As you can see from the above examples there are mechanised machines and mechanised humans, used in policing tasks.

Cortana AI SigmaPsiCortana AI

It would not be possible without incredible miniaturisation. For example, the core of a planetary coordinator AI could be lost in an ashtray, they are so small. This means that the human brain can be replaced by something as small as a match head. Robots are capable of greater speed than a human because of their capacity to use energy dense fuels, far outclassing the energy density of food used by humans as fuel.

The typical power capacity of an average human being is of the order of 60 to 100 Watts. Even in your era Kinkajou, I see that even an electric hand drill has a power rating of up to 600 Watts.

Machines are able to use far more energy, far faster than a human body. The combination of mechanisation of the human body allows the human body to outperform its design specifications, (design being DNA coded of course). Our knowledge of miniaturisation allows the design of far more powerful robots than humans. Of course, greater performance requires greater power input.

Again, our skill with miniaturisation means that we have been able to design energy dense power sources for our machines. Energy dense power sources mean energy dense weapons as well.

In comparing the two: men and machines/ computers, I suppose you would have to allow that a machine performing at 2 kilowatt power rating effectively uses the energy of 20 people at least. So in terms of simple power efficiency, the investment in energy may be cheaper in terms of real people. Biological mechanisms are incredibly power efficient.

I believe our technology has reached the frontiers of miniaturisation. We have tools able to work at the atomic level and in hyper dimensions where the dimensions of space do not exist. This allows us to bypass many of the restrictions inherent in working in the three-dimensional universe.

This is inherent in our usage of the runcible to transmit people by passing the restrictions of space. Our knowledge of five dimensional singularity mechanics, Skaidon warp and Skaidon technology is the basis of our success, a success in a technology that many unaugmented minds cannot even comprehend.

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   You have mentioned grid linking. Could you tell us somewhat of this technology?

Cormac Brain Liked Internet Agent SigmaPsiCormac:  The technology is somewhat akin to the Internet of your reality. Grid linking is however not universally used. It is predominantly available to IEC agents due to its cost and their need for fast accurate information.

Many of our citizens still access consoles. The GUI interface of the Internet era has grown somewhat even in this basic entry level technology of my era. Information is still accessed through menus, but there is substantial use of graphical shortcuts in accessing this information. For example, the hierarchical language-based menu of your world era reality, is almost non-existent here.

Human beings work better with complex information and command access through a single layered interface rather than hierarchical menu systems.

By contrast, computers and AI work far better with hierarchical menus.

My civilisation has solved this problem by generating translations or optimisations for information and command access to the user. Much of this technology arose as a solution for the need to code health information quickly into a database format, originating in what could be described as our pre-history stage of development. I believe you are experiencing something of the same types of issues in your reality at this time.

Many of our citizens also access information through augments. These are akin to having an Internet link built directly into your Brain:  Rather than having to attend a physical place to access information, you can access the information directly from within your own head.

Grid linking takes such access one step further through the use of AI like software and even AI’s themselves to process and condense the information for input to the individual’s Brain:  Multiple paths can be used to access or feed / extract information to multiple parts of the brain to allow processing of different information streams. The brain can be trained to assimilate disparate audio, video and sensory information. Having an AI interface available can optimise this information transfer through the brain of an individual.

Due to the speed of information transfer, information security has become critical to us. I will talk about the example of the headquarters of the Earth central security which rest on the shores of Lake Geneva. This 2 km dimensioned cube contains no windows and doors within its structure. 50,000 people work their daily.

The only ingress is by runcible. They come in naked and they leave naked. When they pass through the runcible they are scrutinised molecule by molecule each way. Each time they leave they leave behind part of their mind, downloaded into another mind that knows it all. This information is replaced when they arrived at work.

This means that when they leave work they had no idea what information they have gathered, what decisions they have made and what orders they have given. In essence, as far as we can make it, perfect security for the mechanisms of government. In essence also, the ultimate in being an objective and separated ruling elite, almost divorced from the decisions they make and the people they rule.

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   I would like to thank you Cormac for your frank discussion about information and mechanisation within your world. I’m afraid that I often managed to scramble my own brains without mechanical aid.  I am surprised to hear that it is possible to so engage with the world of cyber information, that one can almost appear inhuman or uninvolved in the common milieu. And I can well imagine, that as a super-agent dealing with members of the public that this lack of involvement could well betray you.

I have sensed much in your world in your reliance on AI, a concept which is considered with fear in my own era and reality. In your world, your AI’s are an indispensable part of your technological civilisation and are indeed woven into the fabric of many aspects of the civilisation.

Indeed, even your taxis operate with AI like intelligence. In my reality and era, we have become concerned that AI’s may rebel and choose a path independent of humanity. In your reality and era, your AIs are given citizenship in your civilisation. I suppose it is no surprise to hear rumours of a Golem broken to psychotic and used by anti-government rebels for select hits. I would very much like to know how they created and got hold of such a monster. Perhaps this could teach my people how to avoid technology creating such monsters as well.

Cormac Brain Liked Internet Agent SigmaPsiCormac:  I can see your point Kinkajou:   I must admit that when my own life is at risk, I never like to rely on the judgement of others. Even AIs.

 

BookReadersTrue.html

Asher, Neal

Cormac

Gridlinked

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Cormac

Gridlinked

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Asher, Neal

Cormac

Gridlinked

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Asher, Neal

Cormac

Gridlinked

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Asher, Neal

Cormac

Gridlinked

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Cormac

Gridlinked

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Asher, Neal

Cormac

Gridlinked

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Asher, Neal

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KinkajouMed Kinkajou interviews SigmaPsiHober Mallow: Trader and Mayor of Terminus (Isaac Asimov: Foundation).

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   Thank you for agreeing to talk to me through the medium of Sigma Psi communications.

Hober Mallow Mayor Trader SigmaPsiHober Mallow:   If Hari Seldon had access to these technologies, he would have been able to give our people much more guidance through the centuries on the foundation of Terminus.

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   Tell us something of your world.

Hober Mallow Mayor Trader SigmaPsiHober Mallow:  As you realise I am a trader. Throughout my life I have coped with many situations where trade between nations has suffered because of the restrictions placed upon traders by the respective governments. Surely everyone can see that free trade/Unlimited trade would be of benefit to both parties. There are things that you have, those we want and things that we have that you want. It asks only for an exchange to buy increased prosperity.

I’m a master trader. Money is my religion. All the mysticism and hocus-pocus of the missionaries annoyed me. I’m glad that the people with whom I have traded, refuse to countenance it. It makes them more “my type of man”. Often my training partners have told me that the Foundation should have sent men of my calibre before.

The catch to all this trade activity. It is simply that the trading partners will be burdened with an immense quantity of riches. One of my partners once asked me why he should want to take the risk of trading with me. He told me that the true wealth is the love of one’s people.

He stated that he already had this. I replied to him “you can have both, for it is possible to gather the gold with one hand and love with the other”. I then explained to him that we could help him by setting up dummy corporations through which he could funnel his trade with us.

Our trade items were seemingly endless. We had a complete line of household gadgets. We had collapsible stoves that would roast the toughest meats to the desired tenderness in two minutes.

We had knives that would not require sharpening. We have the equivalent of a complete laundry that can be packed in a small closet and will work entirely automatically. Similarly dishwashers, floor scrubbers, furniture polishers, dust precipitators, lighting fixtures. In fact anything you like.

Wizards who fly through space Wizards who fly through space

Trade is the lifeblood of Empire. Trantor, capital of the First Human Empire was among the most highly developed and industrially advanced worlds of the galaxy at that time. It could scarcely help being the densest and richest clot of humanity the race had ever known.

The land surface was a single city with a population in excess of 40 billion. Trantor exists to over a mile down into the surface of the planet. It even works itself out a few miles into the sub ocean soil at the shorelines. Daily fleets of ships in the tens of thousands brought produce from 20 agricultural worlds to the dinner tables of Trantor.

Its dependence upon the other worlds for food and indeed for all the necessities of life, made Trantor increasingly vulnerable to conquest by siege. In the last millennium of the Empire, monotonously numerous revolts made Emperor after Emperor conscious of this. Imperial policy became little more than the protection of Trantor’s delicate jugular vein.

This perhaps is the most obvious example of the rewards of trade and the consequences accruing to trade partners.

Traders in my day worked constantly in advance of the political hegemony of the Foundation.

They reached out tenuous finger holds through the tremendous distances of the periphery. Months or years might pass between landings on Terminus. Through it all they forged an empire more enduring than the pseudo-religious despotism of the four kingdoms.

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   I have heard that the traders have sometimes been involved in some quite questionable practices.

Hober Mallow Mayor Trader SigmaPsiHober Mallow:   Well yes. I’ve done my share of dirty deeds in the name of trade. I was faced with a hesitating trade partner. I set up a transmuter for him, allowing the conversion of metal into gold. When I set up this transmuter for him, I incorporated a recorder into device.

Later, I told him that I had a perfect record of himself, the sanctum sanctorum, operating the transmuter for all the ergs it had. And then we could see him crowing over his first piece of gold as if it was an egg he just laid. I told him I had a display planted in the City Square, set to go off at midday. There would be multitude of fanatical citizens watching. At this revelation, he was ready to make any deal I wanted.

He bought every gadget I had and every gadget my companion trader ships had as well: all at double price and with bonuses. He would have to use the gadgets because it’s the only way he would have to recoup his losses and make money. I thought that when he started making money it would salve his pride.

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   You’ve certainly got an uncomfortable sales technique. No wonder you were kicked out of the seminary. You’ve no sense of morals.

Hober Mallow Mayor Trader SigmaPsiHober Mallow:   Well you know what Salvor Hardin said about a sense of morals. “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   So how have you benefited by your career?

Hober Mallow Mayor Trader SigmaPsiHober Mallow:   With psycho historical inevitability and economics, the traders grew rich and with riches came power. Inevitably our control of the Foundation grew. We are able to remove the religious claptrap’s that had overshadowed our early trading endeavours with the neighbouring provinces.

Space Scenery Space Scenary at the edge of the Galaxy

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   Back to the issue of Trantor. What you think of the dependence of Trantor on trade?

 

Hober Mallow Mayor Trader SigmaPsiHober Mallow:   Many things in history just happened, (they grow from psycho historical forces). Planning is often remiss in many of these endeavours. The planet of Trantor formed through coalescence of immigration, growing commercial power and the appearance of Empire. By the time it had evolved, it had become too difficult to incorporate new technology such as vertical farming in its construction. I think the reality is had things been planned, this world would have been much less dependent upon imported produce.

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   Yes I would agree. In my own world, we need to begin contemplating a world with a population of well over 40 billion as had Trantor in its heyday.

But with the use of new biotechnology such as the glucosification of lignocellulose, we believe it is possible to sustain population of 40 billion with less of a human footprint than exists today.

With these new biochemical processes and biochemical technologies, the raw product derived from farming fields could easily be increased 10 to 20 times. In short if we had 10 times the people and 20 times farming production, we would in effect need half the current farmland.

I think a city planet such as Trantor would only evolve if there were up to 400 billion people living in proximity.

Hober Mallow Mayor Trader SigmaPsiHober Mallow:   An amazing number.

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   I note also that Terminus was initially set up as an Encyclopaedic Foundation. In my era, the growth of the Internet had redefined the concept of a library. A library was not an edifice to which one went to seek knowledge. A library was a portal existing within arm’s reach, enabling access potentially to the wisdom of the planet in an instant.

Hober Mallow Mayor Trader SigmaPsiHober Mallow:   We’ll Hari Seldon told us that the Encyclopaedia Foundation was a fraud to begin with and always had been. In the 50 years that the people had worked on the foundation project, they had found that their options had changed. There is no use in softening phrases – their retreat had been cut off, and they had been manoeuvred to the point that they no longer had freedom of action.

There would be forced along a single path with each crisis having a single solution. It was the path that psycho history had worked out for them. He had stated that sometime in the 50 years just past, is where the historians of the future will place an arbitrary line and say “This marks the fall of the First Galactic Empire”. And they will be right, though scarcely any will recognise the fall for many centuries.

He had told the galaxy at large that his proposal for saving the human race, was to be through the process of saving the knowledge of the race. The sum of human knowledge is beyond any one man, in fact beyond any thousand men. “If we prepare a joint summary of all knowledge, it will never be lost.

Coming generations will build on it and will not need to have to rediscover it for themselves.” He proposed that 30,000 men and their wives and children would devote themselves to the preparation of an Encyclopaedia Galactica. They would not complete it in their lifetime. By the time Trantor falls, it will be complete. Copies will exist in every major library throughout the galaxy.

His purpose was that in working on Terminus, they would have Imperial support without ever arousing the fear that we would endanger Imperial safety.

I note with interest the appearance of the Internet as the library of the future. It would appear that the path to the future has changed once again. As men before me have stated, “the discoverer and inventor are ever the bane of the commercial world.”

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   So how have you progressed technologies on Terminus?

Hober Mallow Mayor Trader SigmaPsiHober Mallow:   In my travels, I met a man called Onum Barr, a patrician of old Siwenna. When I met him he was indeed old, too old to be afraid. He lived alone on the fringe of the arable landscape with whatever books he had saved from the ruins of the city. He had nothing he feared losing, least of all the worn remnant of his life and he faced me (an intruder) without cringing.

I told him that his door was open and I was looking for Siwenna, but that my maps were old. He said my maps would have to be old indeed for star positions to be misplaced. When he apprised me of the realities of the situation, it became obvious that although the stars may not change position much, even in centuries, political boundaries are all too fluid.

He had some cynicism in believing that I was a trader. He felt that looked more like a fighting man, especially with my hand on my gun and a scar across my jawline.

He commented on the glow of a force shield he saw surrounding me. He told me that no danger had ever threatened Siwenna from the rim of the galaxy before I came. He was not so much worried about me, but more about the prospect that were there would be more like me.

He told me that in all the history of atomics, no portable force shield had ever been invented. Force shields did exist. But they were huge lumbering powerhouses that would protect a city entire – but not one single man.

He told me that there had been stories percolating through space throughout his life. When I was young, he stated there was a small ship of strange men who did not know our customs and could not tell where they came from. They talked of magicians at the edge of the galaxy. Magicians who were cloaked in darkness. Magicians who flew unaided through the air and who weapons would not touch.

I forgot that till today. But you clog the darkness and I don’t think my blaster, if I had one, would hurt you. So he readily could see and appreciate new technology and the embryo of a growing power / civilisation.

The foundation at Terminus was cursed with poor physical resources. Consequently we were always forced to miniaturise and to conserve metals. This drove our technology into ever smaller pathways and to the development of many miniaturised weapons, gadgets, appliances and power systems. Technology is not a static thing.

The psycho historical force that destroyed the First Empire was the “golden age” syndrome. The tendency to seek knowledge in the oldest of historical tomes, not in the latest technical Journal.

I think your Internet and even your library would go a long way to remedy this. However, the pressure of the psycho historical forces is such that institutions and organisations and governments would all restrict the availability of information and of technologies, in an effort to preserve the status quo, and to avoid new danger and dangerous innovations. Eventually this would build to the point where much technical expertise would be lost and civilisation depended only upon the robustness of old constructs, such as power stations.

The original mayor of Terminus when he travelled to Anacreon wore a force shield. One of the local aristocracy dared to fire upon the mayor: lighting the path to the mayor with a pale continuous beam weapon which impinged upon his force shield.

The energies were shunted harmlessly to neutralisation. Hardin at the time smiled as his force shield scarcely brightened as it absorbed the energies of the atom blast. He had overcome his foes, and the crisis was over.

When Hardin had been confronted by the finding of a first Empire derelict battle cruiser by Anacreon traders, he wasn’t worried. It was believed at the time that the ship must have been drifting in space for at least three centuries. And it was a ship. They could build on those days. Is cubic capacity was half again that of the entire Anacreonian Navy. Its atomic blasts were capable of blowing a planet.

It had a shield that would take a Q beam without working up any radiation. But the warships that the Foundation built soon after could have handled such a ship at a pinch. At that time, Anacreon did not have the technology to even repair parts of such a ship. And without atomic weapons, such ships were just picturesque and impotent ellipsoids.

 

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   I have heard a quip from your first mayor Hardin. He stated that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Many would think that an old man’s doctrine, wouldn’t you agree?

Hober Mallow Mayor Trader SigmaPsiHober Mallow:   Hardin was involved in government when Terminus succeeded in controlling the initial depredations of the adjacent prefectures. After first throwing the Anacreon military base off the planet, many said that was the time to begin all at preparations for war. Hardin would reply on the contrary. That was the time to begin all at preparations for the prevention of war. He played the prefectures off one against the other. He helped them each in turn. He offered them science, trade, education, scientific medicine. He made Terminus of more value to them as a flourishing world than as a military prize. It worked for 30 years.

Refraining from war was probably the critical event that helped build the Second Empire. By building links between the peoples in the region, we built a common unity. War builds resentment and division. So it was that Terminus benefited from the huge population of the adjacent prefectures, becoming kingdoms in their own right independent of the first Empire. Together we all became the Second Empire, with a common goal and a common history. We were used to working with each other to our mutual benefit. Our initial bonds were in religion, but our final bonds were in trade.

It is often hard for many people in conflict situations to see options. But it is always important I believe to look at non-military solutions to problems.

Kinkajou Kinkajou:   Yes, in my era there was once an empire on which the sun never set. It could also be said that the sun never set on insurrection within this Empire. The very concept of empires with a central ruling elite is somewhat of an anathema to the human race, I believe.

Humans have a very different nature. An ability to be social and to cooperate. An ability to work together to achieve common goals. An ability to share training and resources between individuals. This is the power of the human race. The key is to create a formula that facilitates cooperation and punishes confrontation. Something, none have ever set out to do and something none have ever come close to doing.

 

 

EnergyShieldsTrue.html

Asimov, Isaac

Hober Mallow

First Foundation

InternetRevolutionTrue.html

Asimov, Isaac

Hober Mallow

First Foundation

VerticalFarmsTrue.html

Asimov, Isaac

Hober Mallow

First Foundation

WorldTradeTrue.html

Asimov, Isaac

Hober Mallow

First Foundation









Internet Porn- Real or Unreal

Internet Porn- Real or Unreal