Nanobots Working Up

Lemon – a 100 word story

The yellow acid known as a lemon smashed through my mouth, distributing throughout my body. I should have known it would contain the virus. I could feel the nanobots working up and down my body, changing it. I knew what was coming. I’ve seen it happen to many of my friends before, too many. My body would change, my memories would fade and I would no longer be. Who knows which terrorist group released the virus, or, maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe it was a madman in a basement somewhere. The end result – we are all ending up as trees.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 8, Nanobots Working Up

Nanotechnology is the ability to move atoms one by one and build new structures that way. A subfield of nanotechnology is programmable matter. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at the effect programmable matter might have on the future of reality. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about programmable matter. Programmable matter is the ability to move atoms one by one or as clusters of atoms by programing them to move a certain way. Right now this field is in its infancy and the basic blocks of programmable matter are much bigger than atoms, but those basic blocks are going to become smaller and smaller as this field of study advances and eventually, people are going to be able to program the atoms themselves. This is going to be one of the most influential fields in the future development of reality. When matter itself becomes programable the line between what’s real and what’s not is blurred considerably. How do you know if the table you are sitting at is really a table and not a cluster of atoms programmed to look and function as a table? How do you know the program for the chair you are sitting on is not going to be hacked by someone who would change the chair into some man eating monster? The possibilities are endless. I think I need to check what’s going on with my chair changing program in the other room. I’ll be right back.

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The Key Master – a 100 word story

A crack opened at the edge of the universe. I took out the key and closed it since that’s what I do. I track the cracks and close them with a matching key. I have a key for every crack. Once I close the crack I sniff the vacuum of space for another one. There is always another one. My job is never done. The universe is not merely curved, it’s cracked. Here – I can smell another one. Guess I have my work cracked out for me. Someone managed to hinder another part of this universe. Won’t they ever learn?

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Welcome back. Programmable objects like tables and chairs might seem like a harmless development at first, unless your chair tries to eat you. The real progress in this field though might come from video game developers. We seem to be coming back to computer games a lot in this podcast, and for good reason. Computer games are going to change our future. They are going to blend with the real world and programmable matter is one of the ways this is going to happen.

Computer games are the most complete form of entertainment in existence today. In fact, the art of creating computer games is the art of immersing the player into made up worlds or more accurately, virtual worlds. The problem is that those virtual worlds are currently separate from the real world, trapped inside your computer and that’s not immersive enough. In order to achieve even better immersion, games would have to invade the real world. Programmable matter can pave the road for that by placing game characters in the real world and since those characters would have substantiality in the real world you would be able to interact with them in a level not possible by today’s standards. We would have both humanoid looking characters and various objects and living creatures, programmed, but living in the real world through programmable matter. No one would be able to know what is real anymore and what is programmed to augment our reality. The game would be on for real. This concludes episode 8 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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You Are Not Real

Revenge of the Crash Test Dummy – a 100 word story

The crash test dummy looked pissed. “Are you trying to kill me?” he asked indignantly. The tester just looked at him, blinking in disbelief. “You are not real” he kept saying, “you can’t be real.” The dummy shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Maybe I should teach you a little lesson” He said. Soon the tester found himself in a test car running at 100 MPH towards a wall. As he screamed the car crashed into the wall and two airbags opened, saving his life. “Oh – that looks like fun, let’s do this again,” said the crash test dummy.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 7, You Are Not Real

So, I am human and you are probably human too. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at what makes a human being. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about being human. What is a human being? Let’s break this human creature of ours into two distinct components, hardware and software, body and essence to try and understand what this thing we call a human really is, what we are. If we start with the hardware part of the human equation, that is our body, we can distinguish between various physical components such as heart, lung, hand and nose, then if we try to define ourselves using those parts, we run into several problems.

We can say a human have a certain kind of genome that dictates that we would be made up of certain parts that would connect in a certain way that make us human. The question is, how much of our genome would have to be different before we are not considered human? Bonobos and chimpanzees have 99% of their genome identical to that of a human being, but still we don’t think of monkeys as human. Another problem is that body parts can increasingly be replaced. If you for example lose a leg, it can be replaced with an artificial one. More and more body parts can be replaced as technology advances. How much of your body has to be replaced before you stop being human? What if the contents of your brain is uploaded to a silicon chip? Do you stop being human then? That silicon chip sure doesn’t think so. It just thinks it is you. Who are you to say it isn’t? I don’t think being human has anything to do with either our genes or our physical form. Let me take a small break. I need to upload my brain into a new silicon chip since my current one is getting old. I’ll be right back.

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The Baby – a 100 word story

The young princess went skinny dipping in the river, when she spotted a small ark floating on it. She fished it and found a crying baby inside. She got home and asked her father, The Pharaoh, if she could keep it. “Sure” her father said, “As long as you take it for walks. I don’t want it shitting all over my palace.” She thanked him and decided to name the baby. At first she thought about calling him Moses since in her language it meant “the one that got fished from the river”, but then she just called him Fiddo.

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Welcome back. In the absence of a distinct hardware part that makes us human, let’s take a look at our software side, our essence. We can break it into three parts, our feelings, our thinking and our self awareness to simplify things. None of those are unique to humans though. We can see all of those qualities on the animal kingdom, so how do those make us human? One might argue that those qualities are stronger in humans but then there might be aliens on some other planet that have even stronger intelect, have greater empathy and a better sense of awareness.

When you examine the components of what makes both our hardware and our software, you might think there is nothing that makes a human distinct from a non human living being. When you examine us closer though, you might begin to see a pattern, a unique way those things are put together. I believe what makes us human is our own unique blend of emotion, intellect and self awareness. The unique way we perceive the world around us and interact with it, and with each other. It’s in the software. This concludes episode 7 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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A Ball of Arcane Energy

It’s Not Easy Being Green – a 100 word story

“We don’t like your kind here” said the elf to the orc. “Your kind?” asked the orc, bewildered. “Green skinned, orcs” the elf retorted. “I’m not an orc” said the orc. “What are you then” asked the elf, scratching his head. The orc answered “Isn’t it obvious? I’m an elf.” The bar exploded in laughter. A ball of arcane energy appeared at the orc’s hand. A few minutes later, everyone at the bar was either scorched or electrified. “My name is Viridi, I’m an elf and a mage, and no one laughs at me” the orc said as he left.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 6, A Ball of Arcane Energy

Fiction is often held together by what is commonly known as world lore. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at the lore of fictional worlds and what it is made of. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about lore. The word lore might be a derivative of the word folklore, but it is far removed from it. If you want to immerse yourself in a fictional world, it has to be a believable one and there has to be some amount of suspension of disbelief. That’s where the lore of the story comes into play. It’s there to help your suspension of disbelief by making fictional worlds more believable. Lore gives you a background for the story and can include everything that surrounds the story, giving it a unique setting like stage decor. Lore is most common in the fictional worlds of fantasy and science fiction, though not exclusive to them. It would include the history of the fictional world, it’s mythology and even the geography of that world. It would include everything that would make it a living, breathing world. If it’s a fantasy world, the lore of that story might include things like the science of magic, how magic scientifically operates in that world. I have an experiment running in the other room. I’m trying to discover how magic works in our world. Let me check out how it’s going. I’ll be right back.

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Golbins – a 100 word story

“The Golbins are coming.” I looked at the man with the unwashed hair and seven day beard and was sorry I sat next to him at the bar. I had to correct his mistake though. “Don’t you mean Goblins” I retorted. “No, those are completely different creatures. Goblins are little and green and they are only after your money. Golbins are furry and cute looking until they go for your throat.” I gave up and went home. Later that night, when I went to bed a little furry creature attacked me and gave me a good bite at the neck.

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Welcome back. Apparently we live in the real world and magic doesn’t really work here. If we were living in a fictional world though, part of making that world believable might be an account of how magic scientifically works at that world. That would be only a part of the lore of that world. There might be, for example, a political counterpart of the lore. That’s where factions in video games come from.

Some games and stories, such as the worlds of Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft, have such developed lore that they have entire encyclopedia volumes devoted to that lore. Such volumes can include things like maps of the fictional world, information about it’s politics and the races evolving there and even things like studies of the languages spoken on those fictional worlds, including professional looking essays on linguistics. In fact, you could put anything that makes up that world into that encyclopedia, and if it’s a well constructed fictional world you would probably need several volumes to cover just a small portion of that world. In fact, you can put so much lore into a fictional world, even the people living in that world would start believing it’s real. If our lore is rich enough, even we might start believing our world is real. This concludes episode 6 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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