How to Steal Ideas and the Impending Man-Machine Merger

Yes, you read correctly: we're going to learn one of the best ways to steal ideas. Why? Because it's important. But isn't stealing wrong? Not really. Enough of this boring prologue, on to the heroic battle scenes and titillating adventures.

So, we have this big, messy patent system. Someone scratches down some thoughts, spends lots of money on lawyers, mails off a package to the handy-dandy USPTO, and presto! control of intellectual property and the ability to sue someone for making progress for the next 20 years. Kind of annoying, right? Especially if you independently discovered the same idea. C'est la vie. Better luck next time. No free energy devices for you. What to do?

There just so happens to be the Mother of All Inventors. This lady is crazy-creative. Pretty much anything that could be needed (or not needed) has been tried out by her. To be fair, she's had some 4.5 billion years to test out these various inventions and processes (unless you're a radical Christian, in which case she's had 6,000 years to accomplish this... and she's a guy in a white robe that knows your every move, but that's immaterial). What does this mean? Massive amounts of time, creation driven by necessity (and a little bit of curiosity), and plenty of testing? It means rugged, robust inventions in the world around you. Best of all? She's not a greedy, money-grubbing idea-whore, and has absolutely no interest in suing you.

That's right. Free ideas. For you FSF people and general fans of Richard Stallman, that's free as in beer *AND* free as in speech. Tons of prior art existing out there. Tons of ideas for implementing things that could benefit humanity. Just borrow the concepts from the world around you... they've taken care of most of the R&D for you. How considerate!

Some animals fly. Some animals have crazy-sensitive hearing. Some animals can even see wavelengths of the electromagnet spectrum to which we're completely blind. Some animals live under water. Some animals can survive deep dives. Some animals even generate 500 volts of electricity with a current of 1 ampere! Don't you think some of their methods could be borrowed instead of reinventing the wheel, as it were?

Oh, lest I forget... the other part of this article was supposed to talk about how we can all modify our bodies with machine parts... so about that:

How many of you out there realize that we breathe a fluid? Yes, gases are classified as a fluid. Moreover, it's not really oxygen that we breathe. Oxygen only composes about 21% of air. Most of the rest is nitrogen. Liquids are also fluids. And it's also possible to breathe a liquid. Maybe you believe you lived in a air bubble for the first 9 months of your life? Sorry to disappoint, but it's a liquid sac. All that's needed of said fluid is an ability to transport oxygen in and carbon-dioxide out. I'd suggest we study how that superb inventress Mother Nature handles our own situation to find a suitable liquid for humans to breath after birth. Maybe we could even dope it with some algae that can convert the CO2 back into usable oxygen. Biological engineering is great. So is symbiosis.

Why in the world would we want to do something like this? Well, deep-sea diving, for starters. One of the reasons we can't go too deep (without machines) is the way pressure acts on our lungs when they're full of gases. A liquid, however, is a different beast. Another reason: a full-on exo-suit. We could live our lives in these suits... they'd become something like personal vehicles. They could allow survival in any condition... deep sea, deep space, or terrestrial.

The next (obvious) question is 'well, how much of our bodies are 'necessary' to maintain our individuality'. And that's a good question. A damn good question, as a matter of fact. So good, that I'm not sure anyone really knows the answer. Let's assume that there is some sort of soul. This means that we can't simply build an advanced artificial host body and transfer our personalities into it. Uh-oh, looks like we'll never get that immortality thing, right? Not so fast, skipper! There's always the possibility of whittling away the excess flesh and building an artificial host around the necessary remaining organic bits. We could take what Mother Nature has given us, strip away the excess, engineer a tighter system, and take ourselves to the next level of evolution.

There gets to be a point in an intelligent species' life cycle where it starts to understand enough about the processes underlying its universe to be able to become an active agent of evolution. There's no need to stand around and wait for random mutations when we're given this incredibly creative, symbolic, and intelligent streak. It's time to evolve.

I know I'd rather be exploring planets, the bottom of the ocean, and even the complex series of caverns under our world than waiting for salvation or hoping the political scene keeps running smoothly. That's simply below human potential. Silly wabbits ;-)

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