While I was writing my recent fever dream inspired article, "Optical Micro-Particle Shield Array (OMPSA) for Advanced Spacecraft Protection in Orbital and Deep-Space Environments", which deals with the application of photon traps to manipulate lattices of micro particles in order to create force fields, it occurred to me that the same underlying technology could just as easily be applied to other core "Sci-Fi" technologies:
Freaking lasers solve for basically 4 out of 5 Star Trek technologies!!! Basically the only thing that is missing is the transporter. And I wouldn't be surprised if lasers somehow solve for that too, but for now I wanted to write an overview of how these foundational technologies are imminently possible.
I'm sure you're as capable of intellectual discussion on the topic as anyone. I'm no expert and have zero formal training in any field. Like many of us, what I do have is the motivation to perpetually learn.
Michael Levin is great! Thanks for sharing all these great resources.
When I find some time, I want to put together a Python model/visualization that simulates some examples. Either way though, the part that makes this "fun" is just exploring the bounds of the universe and consciousness from the confines of my own mind. I have a feeling such activities are on some level what the universe 'wants itself' (us) to do. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've started work on such a "Distributed Client-Side LLM" project but I'm skeptical of the practical use cases. Largely due to the inference that can be accomplished expediently across most client devices. I'm working on a SIMD (WASM compiled), WebGL, and WebGPU based inference engine for a couple of baseline models (llama-7b, etc).
So basically like WebLLM but that supports requests between user nodes. So entirely web based with a p2p orchestration layer serving inference requests across the connected nodes of the network, serving from active nodes that are not being used.
Anyhow, writing a cross-model highly-compatible inference engine that can fallback to minim available compute option (SIMD at the worst) is proving challenging enough, so I have lots of time to over think whether such a system would even prove useful.
A long while back (2011 - I'm old) I wrote a barely functional "Web CDN" that used WebRTC (the spec was very new) that distributed requests for content to a given site across active clients. This distributed LLM project is basically just that except instead of content (text, images, video) we're dealing with inference requests to supported models.
I threw this one together after a few days of not sleeping. I don't understand why researches (people) find the defining aspects of consciousness to be so ineffable and challenging. I'm probably wrong, but after a bit of introspection it seemed to me there are obvious qualia for defining and then measuring ANY system against a consensus consciousness metric that would allow us to place 'it' on a spectrum. Be it a molecule, a slime mold, a human, an LLM, a bicycle, a dice roll, a rock ...
So anyway, I wrote this paper a long while ago, but was too lazy to publish anywhere because it would mean I needed to take the maths and insert images of their LaTeX representations for any given article publishing platform. But I was super wrong!!! ... Also I don't know how to write real scientific papers because I'm a spastic software engineer.
To really put a staple in my ignorance, maybe all markdown somehow supports maths? But anyhow, the markdown on Github renders LaTeX maths! So I went ahead and put together this paper for anyone who might be interested.
As I reread it, it seemed more inspirational last time. :-D. But there still might be something to it, and I will be in zero ways surprised if nothing new is discussed that the world doesn't already know about in the domains of information theory or anywhere else. But to satisfy my ADHD brain, I've got to get it out there.
If anyone else thinks a shred of it is onto something, please let me know. Most of my ability to carry things through to final form don't come unless I can get a few other head cases onboard to discuss.
I "invented" a practical Force Field Technology last night during a fever dream.
All of this could be implemented with existing tech to create an effective system to protect spacecraft from radiation and physical debris. My hope is such a system could be built on top of future spacecraft to effectively protect human space explorers.
Quick Summary of System:
Optical Micro-Particle Shield Array (OMPSA) uses holographic optical trapping to form a dynamic, self-sustaining shell of tiny, laser-controlled particles around a spacecraft, providing an adaptable, lighter-weight alternative to traditional shielding that defends against both high-speed debris and intense electromagnetic radiation.
I would like to also clarify that "invented" is too strong a word. I did what humans are most proficient at: I recombined existing knowledge and applied it to a different application creating a somewhat unique system to be used as the basis for further analysis to ultimately result in real-world production and implementation.
In other words, I did nothing, other than probe the collective mind along a path in an effort to learn more and determine if such a path might be viable.
- Force Fields - Tractor Beams - Cloaking Technology - Reconfigurable Matter
Freaking lasers solve for basically 4 out of 5 Star Trek technologies!!! Basically the only thing that is missing is the transporter. And I wouldn't be surprised if lasers somehow solve for that too, but for now I wanted to write an overview of how these foundational technologies are imminently possible.