Hotcod
01-25-2010, 12:02 AM
Don't worry the time travel one is still being shaped and if I ever stop being lazy I will get around to writing it but I have had an idea for something I view as a real short story. Most ideas I have tend to spin off in to a big epic thing but this, while big in it's basic idea, I think would work best as a short story so there's more of a hope I will try and write it.
I was reading new scientist which had stories based around the Idea of a active SETI program. Broadcasting in an attempt to make contact and how if contact does come it will far more likely be in some digital form, maybe even a level of AI. And that struck a cord with me, the idea of contact being with a transmitted AI. What's more I started to think about contact already having happen but we are unaware of it. Some how a transmitted AI program got in to the internet network and is roaming around it learning about us and maybe even building it's own hardware for a more fully complex AI to be integrated in to. It could even be playing MMOs, using our own virtual worlds to learn to interact with us in our own. The story possibility's in this could be rather fun. I want to try and skirt the corny hark ball way it could go dealing with the MMO front.
But the reason i'm posting is I need to come up with a reasonable to get the AI in to the network. There's huge problems with time scales in that regard, very little of our broadcasting will be anywhere near somewhere useful for my story to work and even if it was there are just the fundamental problems of translation and compatibility with the way our computers work. In essence based on hard science the story is dead. So I'm trying to get inventive.
Here's the idea I have at the moment and I want to know if you think it makes sense and/or if it's too hacky and cornball. An intelligent race is dying they've sent ships out in to space in the hopes some of there race will live on but they've not found a way to get over the slow travel time. So they embark on a project to leave something behind, a lasting testament to there existence that will seek out other life if it exists and let them know they where not alone.
They way they propose to do this was ingenious, they built a huge cloud based computer network spread out across millions of probes that was connected using Quantum Entanglement. The idea being that you have a giant and powerful computer that can be spread out across the how universe but still function. They filled the network with all there knowledge and culture as well as "downloaded" personalties of there most gifted members along with constructed AI programs of grate intellect. The idea being that they would seed the galaxy with the probes (which where also incorporated in to the colony ships) and time then became no object to contact. If it took a million years for those probes to detect life so long as the network was still functioning they could turn it's grate power towards making contact with that life in a relative short amount of time.
What this lets me know is simple, a probe detected singles from earth and changed it course to get closer. As it gets closer it would become more and more in sync with our own time and rate of development and the network could determine a way to introduce an AI program in to the networks it thinks likely will come to exist if something didn't go wrong. The probe would then send that transmission and wait until it came in to a distance at which more 1 to 1 time contact could be made. The transmissions AI would learn about the culture in which it found it self. Determine if contact should be made and then start trying to prime the planet for that contact. It would send transitions back to the probe when it is able. If it fails then the network will know and it can either send another AI and try again or simply wait until it's able to make contact it's self.
The network making unprimed contact of course was the less desirable option for a number of factors. Partly that based on there own history the race that built them understood just how quickly an intelligent life could destroy it's self with a given level of technology. If they do that before the main network can make contact then it would be a great loss but what the planetside AI learns and transmitts back to the probe will be of great value and would add to the sum of knowledge the network has and is building about the universe. It would also be able to know if making contact is a good idea or not, they foresaw just what a huge impact that contact could have on a culture and they where determined not to have there grate work become a problem.
There fondest wish was that the probe would be able to land on a plant shear it's knowledge and collect more and make the lifes of the people on that planet better. If they could do this on a number of planets they would be able to connect the intelligent life in the galaxy together in real time communication so that no race would have to end alone like they did. They even hoped that those races working together with the network would be able to find a way to make physical contact unlikely as that might be. They simply wanted to leave the universe a better place than they found it, to help it move to the next stage and be remembered for it.
Of course the fun part of that explanation is that it does not have to utterly true... the Quantum cloud network has to be true since it's the only way to make the premiss of the story work, and if frankly just a damn cool idea i think, but the reasons for that network existing do know have to be so friendly and nice. Which means I can play on the ideas of there being another motive or at lest if the AI is discovered, which is clearly will be in a story, the fun questioning of it's motives can crop up.
So what you think? does the Quantum Cloud Network make enough sense in a sific context to let me run with it? or is it just stupid?
I was reading new scientist which had stories based around the Idea of a active SETI program. Broadcasting in an attempt to make contact and how if contact does come it will far more likely be in some digital form, maybe even a level of AI. And that struck a cord with me, the idea of contact being with a transmitted AI. What's more I started to think about contact already having happen but we are unaware of it. Some how a transmitted AI program got in to the internet network and is roaming around it learning about us and maybe even building it's own hardware for a more fully complex AI to be integrated in to. It could even be playing MMOs, using our own virtual worlds to learn to interact with us in our own. The story possibility's in this could be rather fun. I want to try and skirt the corny hark ball way it could go dealing with the MMO front.
But the reason i'm posting is I need to come up with a reasonable to get the AI in to the network. There's huge problems with time scales in that regard, very little of our broadcasting will be anywhere near somewhere useful for my story to work and even if it was there are just the fundamental problems of translation and compatibility with the way our computers work. In essence based on hard science the story is dead. So I'm trying to get inventive.
Here's the idea I have at the moment and I want to know if you think it makes sense and/or if it's too hacky and cornball. An intelligent race is dying they've sent ships out in to space in the hopes some of there race will live on but they've not found a way to get over the slow travel time. So they embark on a project to leave something behind, a lasting testament to there existence that will seek out other life if it exists and let them know they where not alone.
They way they propose to do this was ingenious, they built a huge cloud based computer network spread out across millions of probes that was connected using Quantum Entanglement. The idea being that you have a giant and powerful computer that can be spread out across the how universe but still function. They filled the network with all there knowledge and culture as well as "downloaded" personalties of there most gifted members along with constructed AI programs of grate intellect. The idea being that they would seed the galaxy with the probes (which where also incorporated in to the colony ships) and time then became no object to contact. If it took a million years for those probes to detect life so long as the network was still functioning they could turn it's grate power towards making contact with that life in a relative short amount of time.
What this lets me know is simple, a probe detected singles from earth and changed it course to get closer. As it gets closer it would become more and more in sync with our own time and rate of development and the network could determine a way to introduce an AI program in to the networks it thinks likely will come to exist if something didn't go wrong. The probe would then send that transmission and wait until it came in to a distance at which more 1 to 1 time contact could be made. The transmissions AI would learn about the culture in which it found it self. Determine if contact should be made and then start trying to prime the planet for that contact. It would send transitions back to the probe when it is able. If it fails then the network will know and it can either send another AI and try again or simply wait until it's able to make contact it's self.
The network making unprimed contact of course was the less desirable option for a number of factors. Partly that based on there own history the race that built them understood just how quickly an intelligent life could destroy it's self with a given level of technology. If they do that before the main network can make contact then it would be a great loss but what the planetside AI learns and transmitts back to the probe will be of great value and would add to the sum of knowledge the network has and is building about the universe. It would also be able to know if making contact is a good idea or not, they foresaw just what a huge impact that contact could have on a culture and they where determined not to have there grate work become a problem.
There fondest wish was that the probe would be able to land on a plant shear it's knowledge and collect more and make the lifes of the people on that planet better. If they could do this on a number of planets they would be able to connect the intelligent life in the galaxy together in real time communication so that no race would have to end alone like they did. They even hoped that those races working together with the network would be able to find a way to make physical contact unlikely as that might be. They simply wanted to leave the universe a better place than they found it, to help it move to the next stage and be remembered for it.
Of course the fun part of that explanation is that it does not have to utterly true... the Quantum cloud network has to be true since it's the only way to make the premiss of the story work, and if frankly just a damn cool idea i think, but the reasons for that network existing do know have to be so friendly and nice. Which means I can play on the ideas of there being another motive or at lest if the AI is discovered, which is clearly will be in a story, the fun questioning of it's motives can crop up.
So what you think? does the Quantum Cloud Network make enough sense in a sific context to let me run with it? or is it just stupid?