femtotech and consciousness (was: Re: psi as a boundary breaking possibility)

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Jul 14 2000 - 00:32:23 MDT


At 01:04 AM 14/07/00 -0500, Darin Sunley wrote:

>postulate the existence of a femto-robot.

>What would be the effect on the robot's functioning, if any, if it is placed
>into superposition with a series of particles, with preprogrammed
>instructions to perform some manipulation of those particles within the
>superposed state? What if the robot was placed in superpsotiion with another
>robot with different programming?

Something rather like this is used in a short story of mine, `Infinite
Monkey', in the latest issue of the Oz magazine EIDOLON. As it happens, the
entire contents of this rather good zine (which published many of Egan's
stories, and has been running a pop sci series by Greg on the foundations
of relativity and QT) is about to be made available in a week or two on a
pay-per-download basis from Fictionwise in the States:

http://www.fictionwise.com

(I hope to have a couple of my long stories - one a very long novella never
previously seen outside Australia - on the site soon.)

Damien Broderick



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