Monday, January 26, 2009

Now we're talking.

A Science Fictional Take on Being There

In this era of space-based observatories like CoRoT and (soon) Kepler, most Centauri Dreams readers would likely agree that exoplanetary life may be detected from nearby space (at least with next generation tools), but what gets the attention is Metzger's riff on how a truly advanced alien culture might view us. No need to land on the White House lawn -- why not stay invisible, experiencing our Earth through billions of intelligent 'motes' sent by exploration craft the size of dust grains. One mote could dock with every organic entity on the planet, recording everything it experienced and shipping the data back to the home world.

Now that's telepresence!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ahhhh, 'Smart Dust'. I'd theorize that this also has time travel potentials, not just interplanetary.

~mad
http://conspiraporn.weebly.com/

Mac said...

I've been arguing much the same thing (albeit in a ufological context) for a while. My essay in the new "Darklore" anthology spells it out.