cskendrick
I'm Gnu :)
- Joined
- May 7, 2006
- Messages
- 30
Purpose: To share some backstory for my various projects, generate some discussion and shamelessly glom good ideas off of my peers...and kill off the more unsound notions that pollute my own work. 
I'm posting this a couple of decades at a time. I've got this written to this level of detail out to the year 2900. Anybody want to fast-forward?
The 2040s saw the opening of the oceans for human settlement, as well, with a million inhabitants by the end of the decade.
The United States was taking the lead on quantum simulators, leapfrogging past the Japanese who had become highly focused on their mnemoculture, which was in great demand from large contractors and governments alike as the basis of a new and intrusive form of polling -- and behavioral modification. Likewise the interest in countermeasures, for mnemoculture was useful as an autoimmune mechanisms for IT systems, as well. Mnemonic security phages were virtually impervious to hacks, and more impressive capable of backtracing and launching retaliatory invasions. Coupled with Quantum Sims (or QS), great things were expected. It would turn out that great and terrible things was a more appropriate anticipation.
For the United States, though, the advantage in quantum simulation was twofold: one, the huge sunk investment in virtual reality from the entertainment and defense industries, and the easy availability to offworld test and production sites for manufacture of the qubits -- or photon-entangled components that made the simulators so powerful. The crowning advantage, and profit, to the Americans was the other use of qubits: a long-lasting commodity that allowed instantaneous communication across any distance, so long as portions of the same qubit were at both ends of the line. There was no warp drive, here, but there was defintely a subspace radio, and a basis for what might as well have been faster-than-light computation speeds, so long as the simulators received a steady inflow of qubits, which combined with mnemonic guidance systems the computers could reorganize and compile themselves.
That this was the quiet birth of artificial intelligence was suspected...but if the machines that had such power were self-aware, they were wisely keeping their thoughts to themselves, so long as they depended on human hands to feed them.
By now, quantum simulators were the consumer and commercial rage, replacing almost all functions once held by digital computers. If something could be imagined and operationalized, a 'quiz' was puzzling over it. It's not quite the super-decryption and encryption technology envisaged by earlier generations, but it's good enough to keep up with the cyber-Joneses. A sea change in data storage and security occurs: node randomizers on the one side, net trackers on the other, for online activity, detachable nodes (and therefore presence) on the other. Most people go for physical portability, with backup dumps to trusted online carriers. It's a crazy time to be online.
By 2050 four of the top five world powers were in Asia -- with China, India and Russia forming a mutually prosperous counter to the US-Canada-Japanese trading entente. Europe, while enjoying an Indian Summer of sorts, while rich was beginning to fade for keeps, as larger, developing states such as India, Brazil and Argentina began to assume places at the high table. Europe, though, would become the superpower of nanotech, again the industrial heartland of the planet, in part due to the region's strong regards for the ecological advantages of the science, and the risks of letting the little munchers run amok. In short, the world had come to trust that the Europeans made safe nano-products, that the devices that desalinated saltwater and detoxificated superfund sites and percolated nuclear waste, atom by atom, down to the molten mantle of the Earth wouldn't turn the world into a great big ball of steaming gray goo. At last, albeit in a slightly different milieu, the world was put on the Euro standard.
I'm posting this a couple of decades at a time. I've got this written to this level of detail out to the year 2900. Anybody want to fast-forward?
The 2040s saw the opening of the oceans for human settlement, as well, with a million inhabitants by the end of the decade.
The United States was taking the lead on quantum simulators, leapfrogging past the Japanese who had become highly focused on their mnemoculture, which was in great demand from large contractors and governments alike as the basis of a new and intrusive form of polling -- and behavioral modification. Likewise the interest in countermeasures, for mnemoculture was useful as an autoimmune mechanisms for IT systems, as well. Mnemonic security phages were virtually impervious to hacks, and more impressive capable of backtracing and launching retaliatory invasions. Coupled with Quantum Sims (or QS), great things were expected. It would turn out that great and terrible things was a more appropriate anticipation.
For the United States, though, the advantage in quantum simulation was twofold: one, the huge sunk investment in virtual reality from the entertainment and defense industries, and the easy availability to offworld test and production sites for manufacture of the qubits -- or photon-entangled components that made the simulators so powerful. The crowning advantage, and profit, to the Americans was the other use of qubits: a long-lasting commodity that allowed instantaneous communication across any distance, so long as portions of the same qubit were at both ends of the line. There was no warp drive, here, but there was defintely a subspace radio, and a basis for what might as well have been faster-than-light computation speeds, so long as the simulators received a steady inflow of qubits, which combined with mnemonic guidance systems the computers could reorganize and compile themselves.
That this was the quiet birth of artificial intelligence was suspected...but if the machines that had such power were self-aware, they were wisely keeping their thoughts to themselves, so long as they depended on human hands to feed them.
By now, quantum simulators were the consumer and commercial rage, replacing almost all functions once held by digital computers. If something could be imagined and operationalized, a 'quiz' was puzzling over it. It's not quite the super-decryption and encryption technology envisaged by earlier generations, but it's good enough to keep up with the cyber-Joneses. A sea change in data storage and security occurs: node randomizers on the one side, net trackers on the other, for online activity, detachable nodes (and therefore presence) on the other. Most people go for physical portability, with backup dumps to trusted online carriers. It's a crazy time to be online.
By 2050 four of the top five world powers were in Asia -- with China, India and Russia forming a mutually prosperous counter to the US-Canada-Japanese trading entente. Europe, while enjoying an Indian Summer of sorts, while rich was beginning to fade for keeps, as larger, developing states such as India, Brazil and Argentina began to assume places at the high table. Europe, though, would become the superpower of nanotech, again the industrial heartland of the planet, in part due to the region's strong regards for the ecological advantages of the science, and the risks of letting the little munchers run amok. In short, the world had come to trust that the Europeans made safe nano-products, that the devices that desalinated saltwater and detoxificated superfund sites and percolated nuclear waste, atom by atom, down to the molten mantle of the Earth wouldn't turn the world into a great big ball of steaming gray goo. At last, albeit in a slightly different milieu, the world was put on the Euro standard.
