More Star Trek Insights
I just watched "The Squire of Gothos" while exercising - you know, the one where the vastly-powered being in the frock coat turns out to be a bad little boy not being gentle with his toys. It is a memorable Star Trek episode, mostly due to William Campbell's characterization of the adolescent alien (which performance makes one less likely to notice that the whole thing smacks more of Lost in Space).
Trelayne's powers are not the result of normal abilities for his race, but are rather granted him by a machine, "instrumentalities", which allow him to change matter to energy at whim. It is abuse of those powers, and his childish inability to control his whims, which constitutes the danger to our crew. As Mr. Spock puts it, "intellect without discipline, and power without constructive purpose". Trelayne's parents show up to set everything right, and apologize to Kirk for the tribulations their wayward child has caused.
The show explores a theme which should give us pause. Power to change the world around one can quickly cause havoc, if that power is wielded imprudently and without consideration, not to mention when power is wielded spitefully in a moment of anger.
There is a scene later on in Charles Stross' book Accelerando where adolescent transhumans are in a fantasy space where all of their immature urges and angsts are played out on created beings. They hunt creatures from story books, and they hunt each other, and nothing they can imagine cannot be, however violent... It is a very sobering prospect.
One of the worst-case scenaria of nanotechnology is the "grey goo" outcome - a self-replicating nanoform which can duplicate itself using common materials is accidentally or deliberately released upon the world, and exponential growth of the nanofrom quickly crowds out all existing life. (A recent simulation indicated that the 'power bloom' from such rapid growth could be readily detected from orbit allowing time to respond, but it is still a chilling prospect.) Nano-engineers are aware of the possibility, and are careful to say that their designs for such self-replicators will require materials not easily available. However, these assurances are balanced by the knowledge that the most economically useful self-replicators will be those which use everyday materials as resources for new materials.
And what if, as some futurists project, nanotech becomes so everyday that anyone may be able to wield it at will, even designing their own forms to construct their own dreams? What if nanotech becomes so cheap and easy that anyone could whip up a self-replicating nano in a home lab? Is it a stretch of the imagination to think that someone might release such a form for the purposes of vengeance, or for extortion, or just to see what would happen?
It is nice to think that no human would so endanger their own environment like that. But we in fact have evidence, each day and today, that humans act in this way. What is a computer virus but a self-replicating form, which aggressively spreads to cause destruction? (Threatening, it might be added, the very host which makes its existence possible.) Aren't there people now who generate denial-of-service replication softwares to shut down websites, who release massively replicating forms on Second Life, just to see if it can be done?
It is sad to think that there are people who feel so insignificant in life that they stoop to initiating a disease just to get a reaction from the body politic. Or actually imitating a disease - flaming, that social disease I find so distasteful, cannot be separated from the flamer. One of the body's responses to disease is inflammation, and there seem to be people out there who are satisfied if such a response is all they can generate in others.
One way bodies fight disease is simply to be healthy - that is, by maintaining a balanced environment not hospitable to disease forms. Another way bodies respond to the attack of disease is antibodies - dedicated cells which surround disease forms, and attach to them, and crush from them the ability to do harm.
We have disease vectors aplenty - "intellects without discipline, powerful without constructive purpose". But we have no indulgent parents to show up just before the credits and put everything aright. It is up to us to maintain an environment not conducive to the growth of diseases. And it is time for the antibodies to come out and play.
Trelayne's powers are not the result of normal abilities for his race, but are rather granted him by a machine, "instrumentalities", which allow him to change matter to energy at whim. It is abuse of those powers, and his childish inability to control his whims, which constitutes the danger to our crew. As Mr. Spock puts it, "intellect without discipline, and power without constructive purpose". Trelayne's parents show up to set everything right, and apologize to Kirk for the tribulations their wayward child has caused.
The show explores a theme which should give us pause. Power to change the world around one can quickly cause havoc, if that power is wielded imprudently and without consideration, not to mention when power is wielded spitefully in a moment of anger.
There is a scene later on in Charles Stross' book Accelerando where adolescent transhumans are in a fantasy space where all of their immature urges and angsts are played out on created beings. They hunt creatures from story books, and they hunt each other, and nothing they can imagine cannot be, however violent... It is a very sobering prospect.
One of the worst-case scenaria of nanotechnology is the "grey goo" outcome - a self-replicating nanoform which can duplicate itself using common materials is accidentally or deliberately released upon the world, and exponential growth of the nanofrom quickly crowds out all existing life. (A recent simulation indicated that the 'power bloom' from such rapid growth could be readily detected from orbit allowing time to respond, but it is still a chilling prospect.) Nano-engineers are aware of the possibility, and are careful to say that their designs for such self-replicators will require materials not easily available. However, these assurances are balanced by the knowledge that the most economically useful self-replicators will be those which use everyday materials as resources for new materials.
And what if, as some futurists project, nanotech becomes so everyday that anyone may be able to wield it at will, even designing their own forms to construct their own dreams? What if nanotech becomes so cheap and easy that anyone could whip up a self-replicating nano in a home lab? Is it a stretch of the imagination to think that someone might release such a form for the purposes of vengeance, or for extortion, or just to see what would happen?
It is nice to think that no human would so endanger their own environment like that. But we in fact have evidence, each day and today, that humans act in this way. What is a computer virus but a self-replicating form, which aggressively spreads to cause destruction? (Threatening, it might be added, the very host which makes its existence possible.) Aren't there people now who generate denial-of-service replication softwares to shut down websites, who release massively replicating forms on Second Life, just to see if it can be done?
It is sad to think that there are people who feel so insignificant in life that they stoop to initiating a disease just to get a reaction from the body politic. Or actually imitating a disease - flaming, that social disease I find so distasteful, cannot be separated from the flamer. One of the body's responses to disease is inflammation, and there seem to be people out there who are satisfied if such a response is all they can generate in others.
One way bodies fight disease is simply to be healthy - that is, by maintaining a balanced environment not hospitable to disease forms. Another way bodies respond to the attack of disease is antibodies - dedicated cells which surround disease forms, and attach to them, and crush from them the ability to do harm.
We have disease vectors aplenty - "intellects without discipline, powerful without constructive purpose". But we have no indulgent parents to show up just before the credits and put everything aright. It is up to us to maintain an environment not conducive to the growth of diseases. And it is time for the antibodies to come out and play.
posted by InsightStraight @ 9:38 PM
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