superconcepts

I'm extremely proud to announce that I've been awarded "Blogger of the week" at FutureBlogger ( Memebox.com ). The articles mentioned were the ones I'm currently most proud of; "Virtual Unreality" and "How to Destroy Humanity", but "Science & Serendipity" has a high ranking there too. Needless to say I'm very pleased to be noticed so early in the blog's life. Now for the difficult part: maintaining the standard...

Imagine, a life fully immersed inside a computer game where our every desire is fulfilled, and the suffering of reality is absent.   One day, we may decide that a virtual existence is a more appealing option than the real world of pain and limitations. Perhaps we could create such an amazing alternative, that reality itself becomes obsolete. Even today, without the "fully immersed" aspect, there are thousands of people who already spend more time in virtual worlds than the real one. As virtual environments improve, this will only increase. Since the early 21st century, the residents of the virtual world Second Life have been working hard to recreate real "life" as accurately as possible. Despite the virtual platform giving occupants the ability to fly and teleport, they still prefer to meticulously create staircases to walk their avatar up and down. At discos, people require the coolest dance animations and best looking clothes. In meetings, virtual charact

Imagine we learn to read human brains down to the most intricate details. Imagine we learn to record, in detail, every action that occurs within the brain, every synapse firing, every cell interaction, every memory. Imagine if all of this data could then be stored on a computer and used to re-engineer a new, identical brain. Imagine this brain could then be put into a new body, thus creating a new version of us when we die. Imagine we knew for a fact that there was nothing after death. Imagine we live forever using this, or some other mind transfer technique. Imagine then we discover another civilisation on another planet, who is still too primitive to save minds, and who still believes that death is natural and essential. Imagine we then engineer a situation, for example we send swarms of microscopic probes to their planet to monitor, transmit via microscopic satellites, and then record their minds on our computers. Imagine we use this data to re-engineer the brains of these p

Nuclear weapons are so 20th century. If you want to bring annihilation to the planet for not conforming to whatever depraved idealism you aspire to, there will soon be many much more interesting ways to do it. Unlike nukes, these technologies won’t be reserved for elite governments.   Nanotechnology Nanotechnology presents many interesting possibilities. How about using self replicating nanoscopic robots to turn everything on the planet into grey goo? This kind of destruction would be so effective that nothing would remain of the present world. Perhaps this kind of disaster has already happened in our history? As there would be no evidence, we would never know! However, for many supervillians or religious fanatics, disassembling us to our core molecules just wouldn’t be fulfilling enough. Fear not, the destructive power of nanotechnology is limited only by our imaginations. What about swarms of predatory nanobots, programmed to hunt down and kill “non-believers” and kill t

  We all know how the internet has changed our lives. It's not souly because of the information it can fill our minds with, but because of the applications that it brings us. We can go shopping, check flights, make money, network with people, form movements, archive entertainment, connect businesses, and lots more. There's no knowing where the internet will take us in the next 10-20 years. What if, we were to look far further into the future? This century we are closer than we have ever been to discovering alien life. If it exists, we may well discover it in the next few decades. Far more significant however, will be the discovery of intelligent life. The implications of discovering an extra terrestrial conscious life form are immense. It will shake the entire foundations of our society. It will give us new perspectives on both the problems and pleasures of human life. Given the vastness of the universe, and the unimaginable timescales it presents us, the discovery of ali