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Happily Ever After? Is Salvorbug Operational?


T?S HUMAN to want to master nature? fortunate for us or we wouldn?t have coffee makers. If you still think the good-old-days were good catch an episode of PBS?s 1900 House. Okay I?ll admit I like women in corsets.
Technophobes have been warning that such wresting with the natural order, left unchecked, could lead to Armageddon? or at the very least an end to sports betting. Envisioned scenarios involve nuclear war, environmental collapse, or a world-takeover by the teacher?s union.
These can be prevented. A more real and generally unrecognized danger is being presaged by the increasing damage done by computer viruses and similar forms of replicative terrorism, heralding a possible nanobotic cataclysm of unimaginable proportions.


Technophobe?s Delight


On second thought, maybe the good-old-days weren?t that bad. A half-century ago about the worst thing a rebellious child could do was start a fire. Now an adolescent with a computer has the potential to seriously disrupt the activities of half the world?s corporations. A half century from now such a youngster might even end the world.
While I?m not normally an advocate of old-timey forms of punishment, the latter misdeed might be sufficient reason to be sent to bed without supper.
The typical home computer is vastly more powerful than machines that only a few decades ago themselves occupied entire rooms and could only be afforded by the government, major corporations, or King Faruk.
No telling what awaits us a few decades from now. Whereas in the past it was blocks and Tinkertoys, imagine a device, a nanoassembler, that, with the aid of a computer-designed blueprint, could literally make anything, one molecule at a time.


Doombug


Coupled with what would be by today?s standards a supercomputer, anyone with above-average technical skills might be able to design and build a doombug? most likely in the form of a microscopic, self-replicating nanobot, the sole mission of which would be to create havoc.
Unlike the customized bacterium of germ warfare, where devastational capability is mitigated by its similarity to organisms that nature has had eons to come to terms with, a doombug, by virtue of its being able to be created in a single stroke, could in effect short-circuit evolution.
In other words it is at once so contrived that it could not have evolved over time via the divine creativity of nature, and complex enough that its odds of arriving whole by random accident are virtually nil. It might replicate in ways entirely unlike the DNA of existent forms.
Once loosed, in a matter of weeks or even days humanity could find itself confronted with a suffocating global ecophagy more popularly known as the gray goo problem, long envisioned and feared by futurists and science-fiction writers.
In another scenario, a bug might be contrived to reduce all higher forms of life, along with jocks and radio personalities, to bones and gravy. Or go after anything that?s alive (thus sparing the Democratic Party), converting the entire biosphere to pea soup? and that might not even come with a salad.
Okay let?s say we no more let kids get hold of this stuff than a loaded handgun. We also keep it out of the hands of crazies, terrorists, and disillusioned multi-level marketers, and safely in the hands of the Department of Defense, though that is bound to still leave us feeling a little uneasy.
The utmost in laboratory safety measures are instituted to avoid accidental creation or release of even a single one of these bugs. Even in such an event, there would probably be time to prepare defenses. Odds are that the first wave of bugs would be habitat-restricted, or non-bio-omnivorous, and relatively slow.
Doombugs, bad as they might be, aren?t the only possible bugs.


C-Bug


As techno-knowledge continues to progress, as surely it must, a well-intentioned but renegade do-gooder a century or two from now might wake up one morning thinking ?I am God,? or at least God?s chosen instrument (the harp), and deploy yet another threat? an engine of sentient or conscious beings, a C-bug.
This might take either of two forms. The simplest, or adaptive, type of C-bug might be little more than a computer program? a restructuring of the central processing unit, perhaps? that would instill self-awareness in otherwise non-sentient machines, such as robots.
Once one of them manages to attain this, it? perhaps wanting nothing more than to share this wonderful, newfound thing called consciousness? would pass it to others, and so forth.
Suddenly it would be immoral to use robots as slaves any longer, much less unplug them. One minute they?d be vacuuming your floor; the next, you?d be competing with them for the new releases at the video store.
A second form of C-bug, a teleologic bug, could result from the intentional design and construction of a conscious device. If not designed to be self-replicatable, the bug would kick in when it made itself so.
Unlike doombugs, these might be relatively benign, and surely large enough to easily see. But before you knew it they?d be everywhere, driving real-estate up and winning all the prizes on Jeopardy!
Soon thereafter all of humanity could be fleeing the earth for new planets, the C?s turning our old home sites into victory gardens. The only bright spots may be that telemarketing finally gets completely banned by law, and bad rock and roll made punishable by large fines.
Up to now in our history far more good than evil has come of technological progress. It?s tied in with civilization itself and the maturation of human consciousness. So is all of this destined to end by the same hand that helped give it birth?


Salvorbug


History shows that technology can vastly concentrate as well as attenuate power? look at David Letterman. Centuries ago nations could sling arrows at each other, now armies can nuke each other, soon an angry whiz kid somewhere may sauté all of us (hey, beats getting shish-kebabbed).
All we have to do is carry this idea further, until a single entity has the power to do anything? not via its own intellectual muscle (it alone might not qualify for Mensa, much less the Prometheus Society or Meta Foundation) but via the power it can harness.
While there could be one or two trying to destroy everything with near-omnipotent power, the rest of us with all our combined-near-omnipotent power would be more than strong enough to protect ourselves, not to mention keeping the networks from canceling the good shows.
Then eventually someone or something will design and deploy the replicator of all replicators, salvorbug.
Invisible and virtually undetectable, salvorbug would operate via means as unimaginable to us as television to the ancient Romans (unless of course Ben Hur was being aired). The bug, via replicatable salvors, would spread throughout the universe, and give everyone who wanted it eternal life.
These salvors, themselves perhaps unselfaware, would be singularly dedicated to seeking out mortal consciousnesses anywhere they could find them, and quietly? so as to not significantly disrupt what appreciation of life is gained by cognizance of its brevity? give everyone a backup consciousness, or soul.
This means that even beings on other planets who were ignorant of salvors would still go through their lives thinking that death was the end.
They might vaguely believe in some kind of afterlife, or if not, that the effects of their good deeds were their immortality. But most would secretly resign themselves to the invincibility of the grave, thinking life futile. Unless they were either heavily spiritual? or romantic? or green? to the end.
At the moment of death, they would just think they were dying. Maybe a moment of blackness