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random fiction idea
I have this strange idea rolling around in my head, about how most of my preferred space-based games have all just been about interstellar truckers and garbage men.
Here's the thing. Space is vast, and barring these mythical FTL drives that have become the common parlance of SciFi novels, it will take incredibly long periods of time to get from one place to another. On the other hand, in order for us to achieve that snail's pace of interstellar flight, computer technology will have to advance to speeds barely imaginable even today.
That there would be an evolutionary divergence seems obvious. On the one side, humans living at ground level, employed in jobs which require interacting with information at the speed of thought. On the other, the menial yet-seemingly-glorious jobs. Space travel. Moving commodities and cultures between worlds, through vast empty spaces. Even if travel only took days instead of months, how much work would there be for the human element? Our job would remain the cognitive elements that computers are inherently incapable of. If I were a space pilot, my job would essentially be to sit in a desk and do nothing until work was demanded of me.
What would I do with that time? Extrapolating on current technology, would I sit and make internet comics? Computer animated movies? Would I be able to hold a duel income, on the one hand piloting a spaceship while also editing photos for an intergalactic publication?
Curiously, this thought leads me to one slightly askew, I fall into the trap so common to sci-fi writers, getting lost in the details of how things work.
It seems to me that it would be possible to set up a wireless relay between two worlds through the spaceships flying between them, each acting as signal boosters, amplifying, redirecting, pushing the data in the direction they belong in, as I simultaneously move a thousand crates of clothing, suits that become unfashionable on Earth even before I left our galaxy.
A moving network, utterly dependent on a consistent schedule of departing cargo shipments. Break the supply line, break the communications, break the contact.
Worlds revolve in my thoughts. All of this in response to a simple thought I had last night at Neo:
Sometimes, it seems like all of human history can be separated by how much time & energy we have left to dance.
Here's the thing. Space is vast, and barring these mythical FTL drives that have become the common parlance of SciFi novels, it will take incredibly long periods of time to get from one place to another. On the other hand, in order for us to achieve that snail's pace of interstellar flight, computer technology will have to advance to speeds barely imaginable even today.
That there would be an evolutionary divergence seems obvious. On the one side, humans living at ground level, employed in jobs which require interacting with information at the speed of thought. On the other, the menial yet-seemingly-glorious jobs. Space travel. Moving commodities and cultures between worlds, through vast empty spaces. Even if travel only took days instead of months, how much work would there be for the human element? Our job would remain the cognitive elements that computers are inherently incapable of. If I were a space pilot, my job would essentially be to sit in a desk and do nothing until work was demanded of me.
What would I do with that time? Extrapolating on current technology, would I sit and make internet comics? Computer animated movies? Would I be able to hold a duel income, on the one hand piloting a spaceship while also editing photos for an intergalactic publication?
Curiously, this thought leads me to one slightly askew, I fall into the trap so common to sci-fi writers, getting lost in the details of how things work.
It seems to me that it would be possible to set up a wireless relay between two worlds through the spaceships flying between them, each acting as signal boosters, amplifying, redirecting, pushing the data in the direction they belong in, as I simultaneously move a thousand crates of clothing, suits that become unfashionable on Earth even before I left our galaxy.
A moving network, utterly dependent on a consistent schedule of departing cargo shipments. Break the supply line, break the communications, break the contact.
Worlds revolve in my thoughts. All of this in response to a simple thought I had last night at Neo:
Sometimes, it seems like all of human history can be separated by how much time & energy we have left to dance.