Subject: (whorl) disposable robots and the talus

From: Greg Neyman <greg.neyman at gte.net>
Date: Tue, 04 May 1999 23:03:34 +0000

hey Michael, about your last post:
>the very concept of a seedship strikes me as so flawed . . . even the
>notion of a robotic terraforming flotilla (which is a near cousin) is based
>upon the premise that robots are disposable slaves!  "Thanks for the
>planet, Tinman--now go rust someplace else, you are staining the
>lawn."

I think I take it for granted, but I'm glad that when I wake up at two in
the morning to do that paper that I've been putting off, my computer doesn't
return the error message "what the @#$% are you doing up at 2 in the
morning, and more importantly, why are you bothering me!!!"  the thing is,
my computer was created to be my unquestioning servant ... if robots are
created, whose sole purpose is to make a planet habitable for human
detachment, then they won't care that they're thrown out like rubbish as
soon a the terrans arrive ...

ALSO, the late Dr. Asimov has kindly provided me with information on the
origin of Talus ... from an essay he wrote of the history of robots ...
Greek mythological inventor extrodinaire  Daedalus gave the people of Crete
a fab gift, a giant brass man who could move, and whose sole purpose was to
protect the rich isle from invaders ... the name of the brass man was Talus
...

    /\/\     Greg Neyman               Greg.Neyman at gte.net
___/____\___      http://home1.gte.net/web100to/
  |HE  HA|

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---

From: Robert Patterson <rpatterson at promus.com>
Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 09:56:18 +0000

Greg, about Michael's post:
>planet, Tinman--now go rust someplace else, you are staining the

Another point is that if humans are ever going to inhabit other planets,
with or without current biospheres, those planets will almost certainly
require some level of terraforming. While I find the probability-based
arguments for the existence of biospheres on other planets to be fairly
plausible, I see no reason to expect that their life-chemistry will be in
any way compatible with ours. I just re-read Vernor Vinge's
_A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep_, and while it is a great book, he seems rather naive
in assuming that everyone can eat everyone else and not die.

Of course, if we discover some nice e.t. delicacies on Europa, all bets are
off.

R.

--
Robert Patterson

http://home.midsouth.rr.com/rpatterson

---

From: Alastair Reynolds <areynold at estsa2.estec.esa.nl>
Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 15:20:20 +0000

> in assuming that everyone can eat everyone else and not die.

there's a nice Joe Haldeman short story which exploits the idea of
incompatible biochemistries - I think it's in his last collection,
whatever it was called.

It's interesting that at the moment, SF seems to be questioning some of 
the core assumptions which have held good for decades - like, if we
had the ability to settle other worlds (in this solar system or elsewhere)
we automatically would do so. Remember in Sterling's Schismatrix, how
the entire solar system has been "taken over" by humans, but hardly
anyone actually bothers with settling planets or moons. Similarly in
Egan's recent Diaspora, the posthuman explorers (actually just software
running on tiny spacecraft!) are deeply reluctant to introduce any sort
of contaminant into the planet they are exploring. Rather than sending
submarine probes into the planet's ocean, they toy with the idea of
waiting a few hundred years until a tsunami dumps some sea-life onto
dry-land, where they can study it from orbit.

Incidentally - for anyone interested in the science (and art) of
extrasolar planets - I'd suggest having a look at this *very* nice
website I found yesterday (needs Java though):

http://www.jtwinc.com/Extrasolar/

cheers...

Al