[ExI] Where is the new space odyssey epic?

[BillK]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2022 at 15:58, spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> The bright side of all this is that there is plenty of inner space right here.  The most interesting Space Odyssey in the future will be about how we reach inner space (no, I am not talking about smoking anything or some philosophical hippy-ey getting in touch with the inner self and meditation, none of that (hard sci-fi only please.))  I really mean the actual figuring out how to get ourselves down somehow to a very small scale, for there is plenty of energy here, plenty of resources, plenty of room at the bottom (if I may borrow an inspiring phrase.)
>
> Space shmace: there is more than enough of everything down here and lower, if we somehow spawn centiproles, in which we live on the centimeter scale rather than the meter scale.  Most life on this planet does exist at that scale and smaller.  We are way up here at the big end of the spectrum.  Think about it.
>
> spike
> _______________________________________________


Hmmmn.   There are problems with humans of centimeter size. Did you
ever see the 1957 film 'The incredible Shrinking Man' or read the
novel by Richard Matheson? The hero ended up fighting spiders and then
continuing to shrink to atom size.
The world doesn't reduce as well, so, for one example, bad weather
would destroy tiny humans and tiny cities. And the cat would eat us.
:)
Speeding up intelligence means moving intelligence into computing
devices, and probably in space. But the other effect of speeding up
intelligence is that it makes long space journeys many times longer in
time. As Mike says we would have to take our whole civilisation along
with us on the journey.


BillK