11-13-2016, 08:59 AM
(11-13-2016, 04:04 AM)Rynn Wrote: Late setting example
As he walked through the grounds, near bored to tears, a patch of rusty brown amongst the flowers caught Bob's attention. Curious he approached until he was looking down upon the aberration. Long, spindly threads of some earthy material had grown all over the blue roses. He searched his mind trying to recall if he'd ever seen anything like it during his long sojourn on the estate. He drew a blank, quite literally. His natural thoughts flickered through irrelevant connections and his exoself memoir-sense was silent. Drawing closer he began to mutter to himself; "What's this then...weird shape, striated? Yes striated. Funny angles where the threads meet, maybe fifty or sixty degrees all of them. Ah no, fifty-seven point two precisely. Not a fungi...no not biological at all but technological." If Bob cared enough about the source of his conclusions his exoself would have induced a synthetic feeling alongside the answers it was feeding his subconscious. As it was he didn't and so was blissfully ignorant that his thought process was being nudged towards a rational optimum, as well as being supplemented with micro-knowledge downloads. Rapt now Bob was convinced the growth was a mutant strain of soil nanomycelium. There was some self-awareness that he had never studied nanoengineering or horticulture, but Bob was now fascinated by both topics. As a bench extruded under him he spent the rest of the day thinking and learning; half formed questions in his mind were nipped in the bud by didactic snippets merging with his concept map. Scenes of molecules danced in his Cartesian theatre as he contemplated metabolic pathways of diamondoid-based replicators. As evening drew Bob finalised an antibot to deal with the mutant strain (a simple fix for the simple sabotage committed by the groundskeepers). Returning to the house Bob smiled; his schedule was going to have to be rearranged around his new hobby, he looked forward to a long period of doing little besides remembering knowledge for the first time.
Hm. This is a fun example, but I can't help feeling that it is still either from pretty early in the setting or that it represents a fairly 'basic' level of IA, possibly because Bob has his system settings configured to making teaching him things the default or preferred option.
Consider the scenario above, but now add in things like the municipal computronium described here, skill modules, and the ability to temporarily 'upgrade' and multi-plex one's consciousness/perceptions/intelligence as described in this story, as well as the impact of advanced communication tech that would allow Bob (or Bob + Exoself) to:
a) use his DNI to order one of the home nanoforges to whip up some synsect size sampling and analysis bots in a matter of seconds to minutes.
b) have them fly to his location or have one of the house bots deliver them.
c) have the results of their analysis wirelessly transmitted to either a lab onsite of a municipal lab/nanoengineering space or spaces (those 6000 vots could each use one in principle) that rapidly simulate and synthesize a countermeasure and test it against a copy of the infestation that was synthesized onsite from the data gathered by the sampler bots
d) transmit an encrypted copy of the countermeasure design to Bob's home nanoforge where it is synthesized and then applied by other home bots or delivered to Bob for him to apply.
Bob could, in principle, see the infestation, and have a fix completed and in use within minutes while using the tech mentioned above (skill mods, exoself, mental augments) to sort of experience and 'supervise' the entire process - perhaps directly up to a point, perhaps with his exoself doing most of it and Bob mainly feeling like he was having a very vivid daydream or fantasy of sorts. Once the task is done, Bob reverts back to his 'normal' self and may not fully remember or understand what he did, unless he re-engages his exoself and augmentations.
Just some thoughts,
Todd