A Bureaucracy of One

Powering Our Future Selves

So, let us assume for a moment that the Singularity is going to happen. We are all going to get eyes that can see UV, near-infrared, have infinite zoom, and biomechanical chips in our head will allow us to record and upload anything we see to a matrix that will make the Internet look like the telegraph. Synthetic myomers and carbon fiber nanotubes will allow us to become faster, stronger, and have greater endurance than the heroes of myth. Sort of like the Borg, but with better fashion sense.

And our caloric intake is absolutely going to go through the damned roof!  Really, short of implanting nuclear batteries, or converting our spleens into fuel cells, we are going to need some way of providing energy for all these wonderful new toys. So, what about solar power?

Last night I was reading yet another article on sunscreen, and Point 4 combined with Comment #7 and Comment #12 deep in my sub-conscious, and then burst forth right as I turned out my light and my head hit the pillow. What if, instead of simply absorbing UV radiation and releasing it as stray electrons, sunscreen was made up of nanomaterials that could absorb the radiation and instead of releasing it, concentrated the electrons and stored them, or channeled them into whatever bionic doodad needed it?

These solar collectors could be part of the standard nanotech package that every transhuman child receives, and would act foremost as protection against the malignant rays cast upon our planet by the Evil Daystar!

These nanomachines would pull double duty as solar cells, channeling energy into devices that needed it, but their efficacy would be limited by their relatively scarcity in the body. However, if a person finds that they have a huge demand of power, or their fuel-cell spleen is in need of a recharge and no cheap whiskey is available, the nanomachine sunscreen could be directly applied to the skin providing a significant boost of power. Cheap brands would lose efficiency and be flushed from the body after a period of 6-8 hours, but more expensive sunscreen would actually permanently boost a person's power generation capabilities and resistance to UVA and UVB radiation.

Now, I just hope the Singularity gets here before I die of old age.

Give Me a Reason to Wear a Watch

My lord, I dearly want one of these.  Alas, it is a concept only.  For shame, cruel world.  For Shame!

Found via Ectoplasmosis.

Endless Amusement - For Human and Dog

This video combines three of my favorite things: dachshunds, robots, and artillery.

Found via Ectoplasmosis.

I Need an Idea Dump

About twenty minutes ago I was walking down a hallway, humming to myself and making up new lyrics for songs I like.  I remember thinking it would be pretty funny to make a post about various songs with my altered lyrics.

I remember that, but I can't for the life of me remember what song it was.

And that is why I cannot wait for the Singularity, and the unimaginable changes it will wrought.  Augmented Memory (arguably already present today in the form of Google and other search engines) would be such a boon to me.  Far from merely being able to remember everything, the augmentation I envision, my Idea Dump, would allow me to be able to order, catalog, and prioritize specific memories.  It would be like having an internal heuristic wiki.

For instance, in my example above, my augmentation would be set to monitor my conscious thoughts, and when I get a flash of inspiration I would be able to shunt that memory into a special short-term memory.  That way I, if I am in the middle of something, or suddenly get distracted (as I so easily, and often, am), I could then bring that memory back into the fore of my thoughts later on when I am not as busy.  The storage would be enough that I could store an entire day's worth of memories like this, and then be able to sort through at leisure ,such as just before falling asleep.

Should the idea warrant keeping (as, of course, all my ideas are), I could then tag it, much like blog articles are tagged, and store it with similarly tagged ideas.  All these ideas could also be cataloged and ordered so that any underlying associations that I was unaware might exist would be represented visually by lines.

I am pretty sure that an entire novel could be self-organized by my subconscious in less than a week if I had this Memory Dump.  It would be AWESOME*!

*nanite-based plagues excepted.