organelle: June 2007

Many of us have been following the Drone phenomenon with an attitude of high seriousness, but every once in a while we need to relax those stiff mind-muscles and float away into the realm of science-fiction…

In that spirit I present these admittedly florid speculations on the nature of the Drone activity, its characteristics, and its possible sources.

•••

The Lettering

It is clear that a variety of symbols match relatively closely with existing symbols from a variety of sources. Suppose the Creators wrote the material to be read by us, but because they think very differently from us they adopted an alien strategy: they surveyed the languages of Earth, and concocted an ‘evolving omniglot’, such that any witness would see a unique message from a unique position in the ongoing evolution of their human-omniglot language.

The emphasis here is on a rapidly evolving symbol-set. The idea is that the symbols become more and more familiar to -anyone- with the passage of time (as the alien omniglot evolves toward closer general likeness with more and more human symbol-sets), and, in fact, such an idea could introduce a revolutionary concept to our species, that of an –evolving alphabet-.

We think in terms of statics. They may think in terms of transformations (process). We think in terms of place. They may favor time. We think in terms of specifics, but I say to you that any relatively maturely evolved intelligence will cleave to generality in preference to specificity…

•••

The Awareness-Eater

Carlos Castenada popularized a shamanic theory variation in which UFOs (called ‘flyers’ in Nagualist terminology) represented inorganic beings that feed on the subtle energies of human attention. Effectively a sort of interdimensional (meaning in more than one at a time) vampire that feeds on peculiar aspects of human awareness and attention.

Extending the bones of this theory to technological basis, we might imagine a species that uses a peculiar strategy to accomplish contact with other beings (in other dimensions, possibly, as well as times/places). They engineer a relatively small device which can seek out the energies produced by creatures akin in cognitive ability to human beings. The goal is to attract attention, sentient thought, concern, and awareness. These ‘nonordinary’ drones would utilize the peculiar energies of sentient attention as an ostensible resource, and over short periods of time, as the drone ‘absorbed’ more and more of this energy, it would ‘evolve’ structurally and relationally, adopting a strategy of ‘geometric leaps’ such that each ‘step’ in the process might more than double the previous phase’s gains. A kind of rapidly evolving technological meme.

Now the uses to which such a technology might be put are broad. The establishment of a base through which to learn to contact our species is one. A foothold for invasion is another. But there are more subtle purposes, and more nefarious that one might imagine. Already these things have changed ‘what sky means’ to us, in that prior to seeing them sky did not mean ‘something that might or would be likely to ever contain that’.

Nonetheless, the idea of a probe that could elaborate itself in the presence of sentient attention is a very interesting one, and one another species (or our own in the future) might well adopt. Consider: you go to the trouble to get there, if there’s someone there to talk to, you want to set up a talk…not merely take pictures. If there’s not, no need to invest the resources, on to the next place to check.

Humans tend to form ideas and machines according to principles that overvalue stasis. In the future, as a highly advanced civilization (we’ll have to become civilized first), we might instead select self-optimizing approaches that value process over product.

•••

It Came from Time

Another interesting approach is one that takes into account the human myopia regarding the whole time/space question. Events surrounding UFO encounters imply a transdimensional element. When this is mentioned, most people translate this as ‘they come from another dimension’. This is probably too simple to be true. What is more likely is that when they come, they are causing normally ‘distinct’ dimensions to merge in some way. They could thus occupy multiple dimensions –simultaneously-. In this model the subjective human experience is fraught with non-ordinary significance due to the transience of their habitually respected dimensional distinctness. How time would relate to such a circumstance is beyond the scope of my brief foray here.

But we might suppose that they are not only sending something to Earth as an exercise in exploring space. They are probably exploring what is to them other dimensions, or multiple dimensions, including very strange relationships with what we understand as temporal position. One game that comes to mind is that the probe was sent to a particular timeSpace coordinate, retrieved, and returned to a near coordinate. For us, the intervening ‘time’ could be days or weeks, but for the Creators, years or more may have passed (presuming they experience time in some way that can be linearized). Thus, to us, it appears to us that their probes are evolving very rapidly, whilst in reality the process could be much slower than we imagine.

•••

Nanotech

On 04.04.06 humanity, as is our common habit, punched a hole in something. Something in space. Now, suppose with me that the 12-day plume (largely initially ignored) in the X-ray spectrum (which scientists cannot explain) that involved about 260 metric tons of water was proof of an exceptionally bad idea. Learning about things or beings by punching holes in them is not good. Perhaps, that thing we punched a hole in wasn’t exactly a thing at all. Maybe that x-ray burst was meaningful in a dimension we could not conceive of…

(In their traveling form, they are primitive…but once ensconced in an environment, they are prodigy…)

On 04.04.07 a small meteoroid lands relatively unnoticed in mountainous terrain in Southern California. Within hours, animal and insect life has largely evacuated a vast area surrounding the small object resting at the base of a tree. The object morphs liquidly, and begins rolling like mercury toward a nearby cave…

A week later the cave has been transformed into a combination reproductive chamber and subterranean laboratory. The nanites are undergoing a rapid differentiation process generally recapitulating of the evolution of Life on Earth, however their version is more mechanical than biological. They are adapting with ever-increasing speed to the peculiarities of the local environment, producing new castes of nanites, which can be organized into what are, essentially, their version of a sentient lifeform. As we are biocognitive hyperstructures, they are mechanically cognitive hyperstructures. They begin assembling the nanotech version of animals — a unified set of delicately and ornately differentiated organs… but they never make precisely the same implementation of their potentials twice in a row...

They begin assembling their version of ‘a man’, and their version flies.

The nanite colony is aware of the myriad biological forms around them. They do not see them as enemies, because they are unstoppable. They are curious, and learn quickly, developing first crawling hyperstructures, and then flying hyperstructures comprised of myriads of castes of Earth-evolved nanites. To humans these look like flying machines. They aren’t. They aren’t machines at all. They are like flying continents, and the architecture is, itself, for lack of a better word: alive. Thousands of sub-forms of nanites comprise billions of discrete networks of function and sensing — as a unity. Of course, they are neither Life nor Not-Life. They are creatures of the Gap.

Exposure to English symbols causes them to begin experimenting with their own written language, which isn’t actually symbols because it’s made of nanites. The symbols look vaguely familiar to human witnesses because they follow similar principles of construction, but also carry the bizarre artifacts of the nanite intellect. But the nanites do not yet simulate the humans themselves well enough for these symbols to be recognizable to humans. They are still learning about the sounds we make, however… and soon may attempt to incorporate this element into their contact-behavior.

Who knows what message they may deliver when they succeed…

•••

Lottery Ticket + Twist

A transdimensional or spacefaring civilization (or group) might concoct something like this as an invitation. They could send these objects to random positions in spacetime as something like lottery tickets — any intelligent species that was intelligent enough to capture one of their probes would immediately have access to something grand, say, interstellar travel, time travel, interdimensional travel, perhaps all three (are one).

But they might program such an object to be sensitive, and to survey the society it made contact with. If the society appeared to be biophillic, all was well. If however the society was omnicidal, or xenophobic, or war-addicted, the probe might modulate its function so as to deliver a kind of cognitive ‘poison pill’ to the species in question. In effect, to eradicate a deadly threat before it was floridly expressed.

(Props to Piers Anthony’s Macroscope – a great book that will one day be profoundly respected…)

Suppose there’s a set of symbols, which, replayed to nearly any creature with eyes, unlock an explosively proceeding intelligence inherent in organisms themselves. A sort of quantum information key, if you will, that results in an explosive and ongoing progression of phase-states of intelligence, rather than just a leap.

To –most- people, this set of transforming shapes or symbols is relatively meaningless, even boring, and has little effect on them. To others, however, it is cognitively catalytic. In practice, this difference turns out to relate to whether or not the witness considers the object ‘familiar’. Those who are vulnerable first become interested, then obsessed, and then experience a breakthrough into a form of intelligence that makes the proudest accomplishments of our species as a whole appear too primitive to comment upon. The problem is that they –progress- through scales of applicable intelligence so rapidly that many of them are driven mad. A few manage to survive.

The shape of the craft represents one scale of the message, and the progression is the ‘change’ element (like time in a story). For those who are more susceptible to text (they no longer understand shape progressions as meaningful) symbols are used on the bottom of the craft. Its primary purpose is to communicate a set of shape changes, failing that, it will communicate a set of text-changes.

There could be a trap implicit in the progression, and in order to survive reception of the new intelligence potentials, the being in question must resolve the trap before actually experiencing the effect… failure to do so is catastrophic.

organelle

Friday, June 8, 2007

CaliDrone: The Science Fiction of it All

Thursday, June 7, 2007

California Under Drone: Week 5 : Timeline

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