So the other day while I was working on my plan to not drop dead in front of my kids by running on the treadmill, I was flipping through the channels and came across NOVA: Rise of the Drones, which sounded sort of badass until I realized it was on PBS.
Still, it turns out that it was pretty cool as it explored advances we’ve made in the field of robotics and aviation—and by “pretty cool” I mean it’s sort of freakin’ scary.
Here’s the promo.
Some of the scary/cool stuff you see at the end—small drones that can make remarkable adjustments in milliseconds that allow them to fly though hoops tossed in the air, or ones that can distinguish a person standing motionless in the middle of a room.
In the show, one scientist discusses making a drone that could, for example, find a person trapped in a burning building and then relay that information back to rescue personnel. He also mentions his concern about someone taking his work and using it for “unintended purposes,” i.e. that same drone hunting down someone and killing them. And in the show, they do discuss how drones are, in fact, being deployed with explosives for “military applications.”
I immediately thought of Runaway, where KISS’ Gene Simmons is a madman who builds an army of killing robots, only to be thwarted by Tom Selleck, who with the help of Higgins and TC saves the day …
… Or something like that. It’s been almost 30 years since the movie came out and “Magnum P.I.” was on. I guess it all blends together.
But really, we’ve gone from almost laughable science fiction to items that have become given science fact, all in a short time. It’s remarkable to me—in that I’m going to make a remark about it—that the original Star Trek communicator pales in comparison to what my actual iPhone is capable of. Likewise lots of other “sci-fi” ideas from a few decades ago, things such as touch computer screens (Star Trek), video phone calls (“The Jetsons”) and digital billboards (Blade Runner).
I would say that I can only imagine what technologies may be available to us a century from now, but I’m not sure that I can. I mean, even the greatest minds of the early 20th century didn’t imagine things like nanotechnology being used to cure cancer or even something that seems basic to us now like GPS. How the heck can I come up with ideas that future generations will take for granted?
Well, regardless, here are a few “science ficitonal” things you may chuckle at today that may someday become science fact.
• Dream broadcast & interaction – Yeah, like Inception to the next level.
I have to think that eventually someone will figure out how to wire our brains so that we will be able to tap in and literally see what’s in our mind’s eye, both when we’re awake and unconscious. Considering that cochlear implants are already widely used for the hearing-impaired and electronic eye implants are already in clinical trials, it only stands to reason that at some point, someone will learn how to reverse the process in a sense, recording impulses from the brain rather than creating ones that go in.
If we can start tapping into our dreams while they’re happening, then the next step would be networking of brains and consciousnesses like in The Matrix. I’m just not sure we end up living our existences floating in tanks, but hey, you never know.
Whoa.
• Uploading the world’s knowledge to our brains at birth – I heard this story on NPR the other morning about how scientists have figured out how to store information on strands of DNA.
In a nutshell, rather than storing data electronically via conventional means—which is taking up more and more space and energy—information can now be encoded and loaded into DNA, making for a biological solution to the world’s electronic storage needs. Oh, and it’s mindbogglingly efficient, too.
From the story:
If you took everything human beings have ever written — an estimated 50 billion megabytes of text — and stored it in DNA, that DNA would still weigh less than a granola bar.
And that’s all at this point—imagine what happens as the process evolves.
So if you have a way to viably store information in the basic building blocks of life, then how long before someone figures out how to incorporate that DNA into the making of people? Genetic engineering has been going on for decades in vegetables and fruits, and more recently, on living creatures such as pigs, cattle, chicken and other “food-type” creatures to improve quality.
Gene and DNA research has also been ongoing in efforts designed to eventually eliminate “imperfections” in humans, such as susceptibility to certain diseases. Eye color, hair color and all sorts of other distinctive traits are also on the table for theoretical modification.
So that all being said, if some day scientists are getting into and tweaking embryos for certain characteristics, then why wouldn’t they add knowledge to the equation? Having a kid could be like ordering a computer online—just click on what programs/knowledge with which you want to preload your model, and boom! Instant total awareness at birth.
Speaking of DNA …
• Retrieval of past lives and memories – Okay, I don’t know if any research is being done in this area, but as we continue to discover the amazing amounts of information that can be stored in DNA, it may be only a matter of time before we realize that there’s more in there than we know.
We obviously get all our physical characteristics from our parents—eye and hair color, height, build, etc.—as well as many of our personality traits and other abilities. For example, if your parents were both great at math, there’s a good chance you may be predisposed to having the same mental qualities that would make you good at math, too. Not always, but there’s a chance of it.
Now, I’ve always wondered that if at the time of your conception, in addition to the genetic baby batter, there was also a possibility that all the experiences that your parents have ever had up to that very moment were somehow recorded in their DNA. I mean, the physical stuff is in there—who knows what else might be hidden? So when the pieces come together to make you, you also might get access to a portion of your parents’ lives.
But, wait—if that’s the case and you follow it back, then you would have to think that the information of their parents (your grandparents) up to the moment of their conceptions would be in there somewhere. And then your grandparents would have partial access to their parents (your great grandparents) and so on and so on, all the way back to who knows when.
(No, I’ve never smoked weed. Why?)
I’ve often wondered that visions of previous lives or flashes that we attribute to things like deja vu, might be those tiny snippets of knowledge from our ancestors somehow popping down the DNA chain. Ultimately, if it’s all somewhere in there, then as geneticists learn to extract memory-type info from DNA, it might be possible to access it, like with the aforementioned “dream access” breakthroughs.
Who knows how far back up the family tree you can go? To the birth of Man?
The ultimate joke on scientists would be going back to the Beginning and discovering it started in what appeared to be a beautiful garden, aside from one big snake who hung around this one apple tree. Or from some alien race seeding the planet.
Speaking of which …
• A hybrid cyborg-human race – The recent reboot of Battlestar Galactica sort of headed in this direction with their ideas of cylons, which were robots cloaked in human skin. What I’m thinking is that eventually we’ll start building better bodies for our brains to be put into.
We’re already working along those lines—people are constantly having worn-out or broken body parts replaced, from hips and knees to prosthetic limbs and artificial heart valves. It’s only a matter of time before complete exoskeltons are being crafted—tough, augmented, possibly indestructible outer shells that we slip on to protect our fragile, soft and fleshy bodies.
Once that happens, you know it’ll be rigged with the latest technology (the internet wired directly into our skulls, right?). And after we have a few generations who are literally wired, eventually it’ll get to the point where the technology becomes part of our DNA.
The next step, of course, would be building bodies with interchangeable and upgradable parts that would essentially render us immortal.
Scary, right? We actually become eternal “toasters,” as the cylons were called on BSG.
Then again, if we all look like Caprica 6 …
Frack me!
Warp drives are possible!