Singularity Special Report
Submitted by eclipseadmin on
IEEE Spectrum recently published a special report on the singularity. It’s well worth reading, particularly “The Consciousness Conundrum” and “Economics of the Singularity.”
Blogs
Five for the Future
Submitted by eclipseadmin on
- Hairy Blobs Discovered in Acidic Lake Could Have Lived on Mars
- ‘Skin-tenna’ wireless signals creep over human skin
- Giant telescopes (and igloos) could be built from Moon dust
- ParanoidLinux Escaping From Doctorow Book ‘Little Brother’
- Researchers develop wall-climbing robots
These links and others related to Eclipse Phase are saved at http://del.icio.us/infomorph
Scientists and Sci-Fi
Submitted by eclipseadmin on
One of the most difficult challenges of writing a detailed hard sci-fi setting is making sure you get the science right. Not being a scientist, this usually means turning to the internet for research, which is always a risky proposition. A lot of the information you find is incomplete, muddled, or outdated. Take wikipedia, for example — for some reason most of their science articles are either skimpy or so thick with science-speak that you need a degree to understand it.What would be really useful is to gather scientists who are fans of science fiction and who don’t mind educating the public. Put them all on the same forums online, and invite sci-fi writers to come and ask questions. Who knows, it could spark some interesting ideas and discussions. Unfortunately, it would rely on the willingness of scientists to take the time to do this, and they’re usually far too busy doing, y’know, science. But I can dream.
First Interior Art Piece
Submitted by eclipseadmin on
This illustration by Davi Blight gets props for being the first completed interior illustration to be turned in. Go Davi!The topic for this piece was reputation systems. In Eclipse Phase, a significant portion of transhumanity has shifted into a post-scarcity economy thanks to ubiquitous access to nanofabrication machines — when anyone can simply make what they need from scratch, money and property become meaningless. As a result, new things take on value, such as creativity and reputation. In anarchist habitats, acquiring services is relatively easy, as long as your reputation is good. If you’re a bad anarchist who does nothing to contribute to collective well-being, your reputation will be crap, and no one will be willing to help you out.
End of the Week, End of the World
Submitted by eclipseadmin on
Since Eclipse Phase is based in a post-apocalyptic setting and a major theme of the game involves existential threats to the existence of transhumanity, we decided that we’d start a feature on this blog where we devote every Friday to something that may just spell the end for humanity. Nothing like a little Doom to get you psyched for the weekend!To kick off, here’s an amusing comic strip regarding the possible black hole that might be created by the Large Hadron Collider.