[ExI] hard science

[Adrian Tymes]

On Feb 12, 2014 11:03 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> If all human knowledge, photos, corporate records, Tv shows, everything,
can fit into one cubic millimeter,

Wait, I misread.  I thought you meant "a man".  All information for all
time?  A cubic meter - and even that will only hold the most commonly used
bits.  Still, they can ask each other for things they don't know, a base
concept very similar to today's Internet, and the effect you're going for
still works - especially if everyone is still on Earth (which, frankly,
seems absurd after a few hundred years at most without very good reason).

> Now if a biological radio can be designed and fitted into their skulls
(and included in the DNA), then there will be no need for any sort of
inorganic gadget implantation in their heads.

This can be done, and is an avenue to explore by itself.  What sensory
modality does this take?  Is it a new, sixth sense by which we could speak
and listen?  I have often seen it referred to as "radiotelepathy" if that
is the case.

> The reason I think it will take tens of thousands of years is that
genetics and epigenetics is so incredibly complex that traits that depend
on dozens or even scores of genes will take a very long time to figure
out.  It wasn't very long ago that we called some of it 'junk' DNA before
we learned that maybe it did something after all.  I figure we are very,
very low on the curve - the positively accelerated part.

Even given that, tens of thousands of years massively stretches
plausibility.  A few hundred years is far more likely.  One thousand years
might be justifiable, but not much more than that, and even that requires
some interruption - some calamity or dark age - to interrupt progress (and
explain why everyone's still on Earth).

Tens of thousands of years just to figure out DNA to the level you're
specifying simply does not work.
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