WiredMinds.org

[awbvious]

Greetings.

We are from the future. We come to you through this young man who has agreed to be our conduit. Why such an unreliable narrator? Surely we would pick someone like the president, not some science fiction writer.

Well, for one, he's not yet a science fiction writer, but after this, he will become one. We will give him more hints about the future, and he will listen to us, write about them, and be proclaimed a prognosticator. But not in his time. In his lifetime he is just a quirky science fiction writer.

At least, so he becomes. He has all the qualities we need. An addled mind to receive our communiques. The Oracle at Delphi was just a fumes-addict until someone came to the Greeks to jump start some humanity. You see, we can tell when someone fucks with space-time.

We can tell because it leaves little ripples.

Anyway, someone at MIT is about to make a huge breakthrough in entanglement and, thereby, teleportation. It's now at the point where we need to step in and start a national debate about the ethics this presents. (Notice how someone at MIT will accomplish this very feat in a few months, then listen to me.)

The great thing about coming to an addled mind is that a) it is more receptive to the way we communicate--which we can't tell you since it hasn't been discovered yet and b) it is more discredited. The more discredited the better, when predictions start coming true, it will take less to convince people that another source is involved.

Anyway, let me tell you how all this started.

We're you guys, only advanced a couple thousand years. We've gone through all the stuff you're only now going through: how to protect the planet before you waste all its resources, how to integrate computers into your lives, how much bio-modification should we do to our bodies. Well, I'll tell you the answer to each, it applies to what we're going to do.

Protecting the planet is a global effort, hence it needs a global coalition. Would be nice if the coalition was free of all politics, but we know it won't be. Luckily, you are entering an age of transparency. A very scary future, but one you'll handle in the next hundred years.

To start with, privacy will be gone. There will be nowhere on the planet without a camera on it. In the end it is very emboldening to private land owners, as they can put their own cameras up, but everyone has cameras. If you don't you have no proof, and whoever has the cameras determines what is reality. People will use "footage" to nefarious ends, after all.

But don't think you are the only one who gets to see the footage you take in your own home. The US Govt will be allowed to view that footage at any time, if they claim national security. They almost never interfere, but they'll watch any time they damn well please. How will they get away with it? They'll have computers going over all the footage, looking for criminal activity.

Indeed, computers will have that much affect on your life. Some computers are used by the National Security Council (which is what "they" will eventually become). They go over all the footage looking for buzzwords and simply the existence of drugs or firearms. Just say the word "nuclear" and a computer will add it to your file, that you said nuclear on this date, when and where, and then a link to watch what you said.

Camera networks will be a lot smarter too. Cameras will be provided by the government. You will place them yourselves in your house. Computers instantly know whether your cameras are placed well enough, and will make suggestions. Every inch of earth will have cameras on it. Anyway, your footage might be safe, but we start to expect other people's, public figures, for example, to be available.

Eventually, though, it becomes a null issue. Everyone starts sharing their footage of themselves with friends. They use it to communicate. After all, you get to keep copies of everything you film. With the help of the internet, people eventually look at the lack of privacy as a good thing. After all, a computer looks at the footage of them, not people, and they look for suspicious activity--however, people do write the programs that determine what is suspicious activity. The good thing is the program that the computers use to view the footage of people is open source.

Eventually people start to realize the computer that watches all the footage's program is essentially a constitution. That congress will sign a "digital constitution," this is what the NSC (which is made up of scientists) will get to use on the footage (audio, video, heat-sensitive, radar, everything) and determine if someone needs to be watched by humans. People will use this source code (written by billions of dollars of government funding) to further share footage with each other.

At the same time, biomechanical engineering was increasing. And eventually, people discovered the best camera of all: One's own eyes. Soon it was able to take the signals from those eyes and intercept them before they reach the brain. But the issue became, you can see everything, how can we know you won't also show us anything you wanted?

This scared a lot of people, and when it came to using their eyes as cameras that would be controlled by computers, they became very wary. Until the government made it available for anyone to use on themselves. Eventually trust came for it, and then it was clear there needed to be some source code again that was transparent to protect it from attack.

And so came the first amendment of the digital constitution, that if you get this eyes-become-camera device, you have to use the open-source software. And, naturally, ears-become-microphones at the same time. And your nose can detect the possibility of explosives very well, for your nose can smell certain chemicals, it just doesn't know what they are. If you get anything like this, you need open source, partly for your own safety--in the future, people will try to make prank sulfur smells if you hack into your program.

But when you do, you've immediately notified the NSC, the one thing they're looking for the most is if someone disconnects. Because you can connect, with these body modifications, all your senses, and thus control your reality very easily--or lose control very easily. It is more powerful than guns, so any bioengineering is strictly regulated.

What about other countries? Well, you should see their soldiers. They are unethically treated as more-or-less computerized humans. They lose control in battle scenarios (or other scenarios, depending on the government) and are run by computers because it is cheaper to turn a person into a robot than to use a robot. How is all this possible? Bioengineering.

That's part of why people in the future are very interested in national security. People could be turned into terrorists without them knowing it. They could wake up the next day wondering why the building they just bombed blew up. So, of course you want cameras everywhere, and someone checking every moment they are on your soil.

Does this mean that in other countries you are safe from cameras? Eventually, no, they become ubiquitous, they get used in different ways, and it's a bit colonial at first with the countries who have cameras that eventually take over/exploit the ones that don't.

Anyway, a lot of social change will happen too. In the digital constitution, the only thing they look for is violence. Not sex. Not drugs. Violence. Over time, this will embolden the alternative sexes and drug-users. Eventually, all moral laws against sex and drugs are repealed. Further, drug use will be not much of an issue, as driving will be eradicated.

Yes, people you will miss driving, but that is going to go very slowly. Because until it does, driving just become ridiculously safe, as more and more people give up driving for automated driving. That is, computers driving. They are much better drivers, after all. You have cameras all over your car, might as well use them to determine your distance from all the other vehicles. If you had enough cameras, you could see better than a human, and drive that much better. Trials will prove this, and that they are safer in traffic. Eventually people will just give up driving and, generally, find virtual thrills much better.

Anyway, back to the entangled web you weave. Here's the problem with where you're headed. Eventually, you learn how to entangle across vast distances. Then the appeal for space exploration and getting to "teleport" anywhere you want. So, you think, why not try it, what's the worst that could happen.

The fact is, the worst that could happen did happen. But no one knew it. They left traces in the multiverse of their universe. People around realized it was gone. Because there were a lot that went away when that thing got turned on. Because of quantum mechanics, not only did the outcomes we did want happen, so did the outcomes we did not. And a lot of them had to, we later found out, transferring what are actually mini-black holes in the space between matter, because Heisenberg makes it so you sometimes miss the strings (and yes, they are strings). Anyway, the mini-black holes come together, become a super blackhole, and that swallows the universe. It's just not big enough to swallow the multiverse.

You see, at that moment they turned it on, reality splintered into an infinite number of shards, where ever possible outcome, came. A number of times the universe collapses. Or a new one is created, a la big bang. Or a nothing happens. Or just the earth explodes. The point was, the number of possibilities were all universes in the multiverse. You kill off a lot of people, in your planet and other planets.

How do we say "you," isn't our history culpable? No. Because this doesn't happen in our universe. We are one of the universes in the multiverse that can sense other universes. We sense a lot of universes disappearing suddenly. They were all over the place, so it wasn't easy to spot at first. We, by the way, diverge from you at precisely this moment.

This is why we must choose now, it is the time when we are both as even as possible in our mutual histories. Are we saying that in our universe we will discover other universes? The answer is yes. Our universes are the same originally, and in both, we can sense other universes beyond ours.

You see, the MIT person is going to read this, and he's going to do something else. Something not to do with entanglement, but in fact detecting multiple universes. He will realize that eventually someone is going to destroy universes without knowing, so we better know what other universes there are before we do anything.

That's what we did, we discovered other universes before we make "the bomb" as it is now called. And we're now telling the other universes stop. Find us first. Then continue on the path of entanglement. It will not lead you to us. Trust us.

The person writing this will remember nothing after this, except that he is hungry. He will think it is because of his drugs. But let this manifesto heed you all wisely. Now that you know you can find these other universes (trust us, for all the above will come true).

Anyway, we'll be back in 30 years. By then, we want to see that theoretical physics has gone to searching for other universes before going into entanglement. If they have found other universes, then they will know their implications, they will know that teleportation is too risky and anyone who studies entanglement will be under the same regulations they have on nuclear testing. It sucks a little, but in 30 years, you'll thank us.

Unless, of course, you don't. In which case, we'll use the teleportation device to take every single human on your planet, and teleport them, naked, onto a planet large enough for all of them. Of course, they will lose everything that isn't in their brains, but it needs to be done then. (Oh, and if their brain requires an implant to function, too bad, you have thirty years to make sure everyone will be okay for the Great Departure.

This planet is very similar to earth, except much bigger, and no oil or fossil fuels. You guys don't seem to do well with those. You'll have to use ingenuity quick. But there will be plenty to eat all around you. You'll all be spread around the continent, basically according to the proximity you have to the person next to you. But in a ratio, so that actually if you stand a foot from a person, that person could be 20 feet away from you--naked. As you are. Naked. People in coitus will find it very different. They will be 20 feet away from each other the next instant.

If we can do that, what makes you think we won't do it any other time we capitulate to your demands? Dude. You'll have contacted us well before that. If all you entangle-geeks decide to go into finding other universes. That way, you'll find us giving out a big huge signal. No. SETI is not the way to go. You need to find our universe. It's a lot more complex than searching with telescopes. (Yes, big hint, it takes more than telescopes.)

(Microscopes are another thing.)

Anyway, y'all don't want to go to another planet. Oh, and be kind to this guy, he's only a well-meaning individual we took over for the purpose of this message. Terminating Message.

(Oh, by the way, that was all fiction.)
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http://www.awbvious.com

[Valdar]

http://digg.com/general_sciences/Quantum_teleportation_achieved_over_ten_miles_of_free_space
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I spike loonerisms.

[awbvious]

Heaven 2.0

So I died. Soon after this. And when I did, it was, well, strange.

First of all, my soul, which was a bunch of glowing yellow particles that lifted from my body, then coalesced into a big ball, that then shrank into nothingness.

I was watching this from a distance of about five feet, around where a doctor was standing. I don't remember being in a situation where I'd need a doctor, but suddenly I realized I needed one.

But they did nothing, but look forlorn. I realized I had been close to death before. But apparently I don't remember it. In fact, there's suddenly a lot I don't remember. It's as if my brain has lost certain parts of its memories.

Very quantifiable parts. Like I'm trying to remember when I got my hand caught in the door of our car. Yeah, this was back when people used to drive cars. What time is it anyway?

That's what I was thinking at the time. What time is it? Why this obsession with time? Physicists have finally gotten a unified field theory, and it has no time in it whatsoever. Yes, it's strings. No it's not quantum loop gravity. That's a tease. Gravity has no color to it, you take a particle in space, and try to assess all the electromagnetic forces on it, all the directions. But you can't take the whole particle and figure it out by using your other spot as say, on the other side of this orange, which I will use as an example of what people used to think were atoms. If it was something solid like this, we could take one spot, then another spot diametrically opposed to it on the surface, and calculate the universe in time and space. But instead, we must use different times of the particle, but I digress.

I think I was reading an article about this shortly before I died. When did I die, anyway? Are we thirty years later? What was supposed to happen in thirty years again? I recall some stuff taking a thousand years? Some a hundred, maybe? I don't recall much. I feel like someone's taken my hard-drive, randomly took out half the stuff. But its all done in a way to disguise what stuff of value has been taken. It's very clever.

So, already, I'm wondering about things.

But here I am, watching this orb vanish into nothing, and me, whatever this disembodied thing, which clearly had no material. For I looked around me, and I could see in all directions. Impossible for a camera, for there is no need for a focal point. The point is spacetime where I am, is infinitesimal in size, I am feeling. Why do I know this, except for the fact that I can apparently rotates and spin and see in all directions--just not able to move. Anyway, when the orb goes, so went I.

I came to a place that had squishy clouds. That's the first thing I noticed, the sensation beneath my feet. I was standing on a cloud, but I did not fall through. The water suddenly made me buoyant, I don't know how I knew it, but I knew the water molecules all joined together, against probability, to make cushions for my feet. And it was squishy. I was curious if it looked like anything under the crust of these clouds, the answer was--I knew somehow--that it was all clear, except for the fascinating rainbows that come from the bottom of your feet.

That was what I was standing on, around me was a mist. A white mist. For no reason at all it seemed. And there were clouds about me, puffy clouds, like what I would imagine the clouds in Super Mario Bros. 3 to look like, were they in 3-D. But white. All white, no weird salmon colored clouds. And no black line outline.

Then I came to an old man, or rather he came to me, and I realized that I was on a treadmill. And immediately I thought of that movie You Bet Your Life, or what was it called. Suddenly the answer came to me, and I knew. I forget now. But at the time, I knew. It had whatshisface in it, the guy who also did the movie Mother. I'll never forget in that whateverothermovie, he sang Glady Knight and the Pips. Now I am remembering a current TV show song. Everyone does that song, Midnight Train to Georgia. It's not even her best song. It's like say Sitting on the Dock of the Bay is Otis Redding's best song. None of this, however, was occuring to me at the time. I knew the name of the movie, so my thoughts went from there...

So, just like that movie, we're on treadmills. And here is a guy, kinda like in the movie, but more like every political cartoonists version of Saint Peter. No, an amalgam of a bunch of St. Peter's. All stuff I recognize though. The hair. I think I saw that in Non Sequitor once. The nose, that was a cartoon about a republican looking for salvation--finding out only that it's a blue heaven. Which was hard to convey in black-and-white.

Anyway, I recognized all of the features. I thought, you know, that's exactly what I'd picture him as. Or would draw him, had I the drawing abilities. And I looked closer at him, and I looked at the texture of his skin. And I noticed it looked like my skin. I suppose I never took the time to really look at someone else's skin texture. That's when I realized, everything was according to what I already knew or saw or perceived, any and all above. I made this heaven.

Woot, woot. What was that, I thought. For I heard something. And suddenly another person was standing beside me.

"Hello," he said, "I am Napal." He was mid-eastern, Indian I was guessing. I didn't know this, though.

"I don't think we met, nor," I add, "do you have any features of anything I've seen."

"That is because I'm hu--"

The guy stops, looks up, looks back.

"Sorry, we're not supposed to say if we're..."

The guy stops again.

"Oh, I'm not supposed to say that..." He looks about again. "Or, that, huh. Okay, well, I'm with a customer, so..."

Napal disappears.

In his place is Salma Hayek--not now, for I have no idea what she looked/looks like now. I'm thinking of Dawn of the Dead, or whatever that campy movie was called. She looks like that.

"Hello."

"Are you Salma Hayek?"

"No. I am an abassador."

"Are you human?"

"That is a good question, you will need time to answer it."

"Wait, you think I decide that?"

She looks a bit annoyed.

"Wouldn't you rather see what I would do, assuming I would do anything you wanted?"

I smile widely, how could I not, and she begins to... Then she stops.

"What's wrong," I ask.

"You can be coy, but you know, you just decided to yourself that heaven shouldn't be so sinful as to use people we know for carnal delights."

"Fuck, you knew my thoughts," I said.

"Indeed, kind of a buzzkill, but I'm not going to fuck you. Anyway, I am your ambassador, ask me any question."

"And you will answer them?"

"In time."

"Does time exist?"

"We're not allowed to say 'in time' more than once in a row, so please do not ask another question right now that I would have to respond 'in time' to."

"What?"

"We're not allowed..."

"Thank you, that's okay."

"Thank you."

"So, ambassador, what will you do for me? Do I, for example, think the human body, viewed nakedly, is sinful? Or, am I so sure I want a judeochristian heaven?"

"Ah ha, that's one I can answer. You can put in input, but eventually, it's up to what we think will serve you."

"Okay, and who determines this ultimately?"

"God."

"Fine, so there's a god."

"He calls himself one."

"Holy christ, does he even know if he's god?"

"You'll know that in time."

"Ha! You've pretty much proved it, he at least questions it. Okay, no hand washing for me for eternity. He claims he's god, I ain't gonna sqwabble. I ain't mad at that. But, hey, can I have a person. How about Salma Hayak?"

"She's still alive."

"Okay, how about, someone else?"

Salma Hayak is replaced with Napal.

"Woah," said Napal, "I thought I was getting fired for being high on the job or something."

"Were you high?"

"I was when I died."

"Did it make death easier?"

"Waaaay easier. I think. Because I really do think, I think about that time, all the way to when I teleported out of my body."

"Wait, you teleported?"

"In my country we watched a lot of Star Trek, the original series."

"Oh, let me guess, India?"

"How did you know?"

"Because I would think if I was going to die, I would be so unimportant, I'd get outsourced on my human contact, if I thought I needed it."

"Hey, that's a little racist."

"Not really, I also know a lot of Indians, that's how I was able to amalgamize, oh wait. Nope you're not an amalgamation, I already realized that, why did I forget?"

"Were you high when you died?"

"Are you saying you stay that way?"

"Well, in my heaven, I can be high whenever I want as much as I want in any way I want. I've done every drug, so I know what the best is like. And this, being able to choose any drug's effects, is the best."

"That's strange," I say, "I don't seem to have that ability to make myself high."

"You must not think you deserve it yet. Hmm, you probably got some self-loathing things going on."

"Maybe I need to go to the past life's pavillion," I say out of the side of my mouth.

"The what now?"

"You wouldn't know, unless you are out to deceive me, you probably never saw that movie with whatshisface, where they had moving sidewalks and past-life pavillions. Defend Your Life, I believe it was called. I knew a minute ago, but I seem to have forgotten."

"Yes, well, I'll tell you what I know. And if I can't well, you know where I went."

"Where's that?"

"Back to my own heaven, everyone gets one person, I already used mine on Ghandi."

"I could have gotten Ghandi?"

"Next time you shouldn't aim so low when you get into heaven."

"Are you saying we go back down?"

"I'm saying, if you seem like you're going back down, you're just in the matrix, man."

"Ah, you gotta be kidding me."

"Yeps, its matrix. The world's a computer program. The guy who made it is some computer nerd genius. He's not even alive any more to see his work in progress. He wrote a way for people's brains to be used for virtual reality, based on what they already knew. So yours, it seems, is pretty well defined. But it looks a bit digital doesn't it?"

And right then I looked around, and realized everything was very 8-bit updated with modern, as far I knew them, computer graphics. "That's what I think heaven looks like."

"Exactly, my friend, who's name I haven't gotten. They gave me a manual, the first page. Get the person's name. I already blew that. But I don't give a damn, I just thought, hey, I'll be nice and volunteer for the people stupid enough to choose a random person."

"So, what's heaven like, you've been there a long time?"

"Yeah, quite a while. My heaven has lots of people in it. I don't see many in yours. You must like solitude for some reason. That's sad. But hey. Anyway, if you want people, you'll get people. But I would ask for people that would want to be bothered, old relatives that have passed on, for example. You're going to meet a lot of old people. But most people end up looking as good as they want to. They pick some time in their own history, and the program can make your mind forget lots, but also remember quite vividly lots. It can bring back the stimuli, but not the reactions."

"Kind of like past-life pavillion, except it's all one person's life, there aren't any other lives are there?"

"Not from what I've seen. In my heaven, I see all kinds of people. But only Ghandi was the real deal. He's very patient, but you can tell he's had to talk to a loooot of people."

"Man."

"Look, wait a thousand years, apparently everyone gets a chance to see someone new then."

"A thousand years?"

"I dunno, this is part of the script they told me. I never heard any of these rules. And I would have famous people over all the time in my heaven. Not just Ghandi. But I'd eventually realize that they were all creations of my own brain, and then it just felt like mental masturbation."

"You've seen Annie Hall then?"

"Let me call Woody Allen to explain that."

"But he's not dead. I can't believe you've seen Woody Allen but you've never seen this other guy."

"Hey, how many bollywood movies did you get a chance to see before you died?'

"Good point."

"Anyway, enjoy this, this is heaven 2.0. If you dislike it, you could bring it up with the programmer, except he's human, and he's only around every thousand years or something. I never really cared to see him, but it looks like each of us have quite a time to wait."
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