biosynths VS Cyborgs, futurism VS Science Fiction

Well, so how do such civilizations overcome the limitations of DNA? DNA after all has to conduct its functions using the water-filled protein-driven medium of cells, which have temperature, gravity, nutritional and radiation tolerances much narrower than similar beings made of metal, computer chips and electric power generation? Injecting DNA through the medium of nanites still counts on the growth and maintenance functions of human bodies to make the changes, human bodies which must continue to maintain that fragile state called "life" throughout the process of modification. It's like trying to write a masterpiece of literature using only 1/4 of the alphabet, and requiring iambic pentameter throughout.

To: spacesettlers@...m
From: prometheuspan@...
Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 02:13:03 +0000
Subject: [spacesettlers] biosynths VS Cyborgs, futurism VS Science Fiction

Million year old civilizations don't choose that path in general.

Because they haven't, I'd guess neither will we.

That may seem odd to you but, I'm the Alien and I know.

The best and simplest way to explain why your scenarios are science fiction is that we are only a few decades away from genetics by design.

Rather than wait for genetic mutations to happen, we will soon be able to give anyone a shot in the arm of nanites and have them develop new morphologies and new structures in days or weeks.

The true path of evolution is continual augmentation and improvement of the bodies we have, which are for many reasons always going to be the bodies we more or less keep, because of ethical, aesthetic, and even pragmatic reasons.

It should also be noted that the few very advanced civilizations which do go that route die out fairly quickly, the problem with living in full on machine bodies is that human needs and thus motivations are what drive us, and machines, having no such brain functions, and far fewer real needs, tend to cozy up into their AI entotainoverses and masturbate to death.

Masturbating to death over a million years may be a fine way to go,

but I'm not that interested personally.

Cyborg bodies and uploading ourselves into machines will become possible, but we won't do it for the same reasons we wouldn't now say for instance cut off our arms to replace them with "more functional and durable" prosthetics.

The future still has aesthetics in it, and it still features human beings. Human beings with Nanites in them, and mainframe computers printed digitally into the inside of their skulls, and even life extension and etc, but still human beings, more or less, and still recognizable to buck rogers and still even genetically compatible with him.

Cyborgs in any case are a low tech interpretation of the future, whereas biosynths are the real future disentangled from science fiction/ horror.

:)

peace and light

pan

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Brad Walsh wrote: