For instance, in Last and First Men (1931) Olaf Stapledon imagined Martians as little green clouds composed of tiny droplets – sub-vital units that could transmit and receive fields, and serve as muscles and nerves to make the cloud behave as a coherent individual. It was a nice, spooky idea more than once picked up by movie-makers, but Dyson turns it into neurophysiology.
To understand what is going on in the brain we need "observing instruments that are local, non-destructive, and non-invasive, with rapid-response, high-bandwidth and high spatial resolution. We need to invent the terrestrial equivalent of a Martian sub-vital unit." And then he adds "There is no law of physics that declares such an observational tool to be impossible." And then with help from his sub-vital units, he proposes communication by radiotelepathy.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Never dull ...
... and never vague: Freeman Dyson explores the farthest limits of human imagination. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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