From: paul@i2.to
Date: Wed Jul 21 1999 - 13:50:21 MDT
In answer to your questions and concerns Greg, I also came from
the old school. I was 4 years old when we first landed on the
moon, and the entire Apollo program left a deep mark on my
developing psyche. I have always sided with humans in the
humans vs. robots debate. Obviously it is more economical
to send robots, but it defeats the whole purpose of why we
explore in the first place.
Imagine if robotic technology developed to its current state around
1800. Rather than send Lewis and Clarke on a cross-country
expedition, we sent robots. The fiscal conservatives would've had
good grounds for saying that we need to limit more risky human
exploration of the western frontier in favor of robots. Obviously the
circumstances are quite different, since in our current case it
requires a quantum leap in cost to achieve the same thing
with humans in space, but the reasons remain the same.
In parallel with the western frontier, despite a quantum leap in
cost we get a quantum leap in human freedom.
The fact that humans did explore the western frontier allowed
those who pioneered it to experience a degree of
freedom that the most rabid libertarian can barely imagine. The
human colonization of space has offered the same promise to an
exponentially greater degree for those willing to risk it. This has
been my operating paradigm since I was 12 years
old.
Then along comes the nanotechnological ideas of Drexler which
for the most part deepens all my previous convictions about the
imperative to colonize space. With nanotech and zero-g, all of
the trickier problems of space colonization become easy, and
the freedom pontentials exponentiate even further.
It is my feeling now, that any substantial effort made to colonize
space will ultimately be a huge and wasteful boondoggle without
the assistance of nanotechnology. And ironically the same
nanotech that allows us to colonize space is the same nanotech
that will allow us to go beyond the human form. And it is in this
hope, that I stand by my earlier conviction that we as *conscious* entities
become the 'robots' and not as Hans Moravec proposes be *replaced*
by them. Future nanotech and singularity issues not withstanding, if
we are to eventually achieve any sort of freedom equivalent to the early
pioneers, then space is where we must go - whether we go as humans
or post-humans is no longer relevant.
Paul Hughes
http://www.i2.to/planetp.html
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