Since being a superbrain seems about as attractive
as choosing between life as a sea sponge or a pot plant, one option is
to avoid the whole brain thing and leap straight to pure
energy. For some reason a lot of people regard this as
extremely cool, though they never consider what being pure energy
means. For one thing, if there's no brain, what do you do your
thinking with? Energy is like water running through a pipe.
It doesn't have any ability to alter itself unless something channels,
portions or otherwise acts on it. That's why energy is so great
for sending information. Streams of photons may degrade, but
they don't spontaneously edit your messages en route from transmitter
to receiver. Also, energy has this nasty habit of not staying in
one place. It spreads out at the speed of light, so the moment
you achieve energy being-hood you're already halfway to the Moon.
"I am FOOMMARGH! Fear me and... Oh, bugger!"
Despite
these little setbacks, Sir Arthur C. Clarke considered energy
beinginess for mankind in his 1953 novel Childhood's End.
Just when man is on the verge of conquering space up pop an armada of
flying saucers the size of cities that put the kibosh on the whole
thing. The aliens, which rather pointedly resembled devils (oh,
the irony!), impose a golden age of Enlightenment and Reason that
would have done Voltaire's heart good, but it turns out that it's just
a booby prize for mankind, as the human race is about to spontaneously
evolve into a race of superbeings with a single collective mind that
will merge with a sort of galactic supermind and the devil aliens are
along to make sure it all goes smoothly. "Sorry about your
civilisation and all your achievements being a pointless waste of
time, chaps. Can't be helped. Toodles!" Mind you,
the fact that this next great leap in human evolution seems utterly
devoid of individuality, personality, or anything like basic human
compassion makes one wonder if there isn't a wee bit of power worship
going on here.
Despite
these little setbacks, Sir Arthur C. Clarke considered energy
beinginess for mankind in his 1953 novel Childhood's End.
Just when man is on the verge of conquering space up pop an armada of
flying saucers the size of cities that put the kibosh on the whole
thing. The aliens, which rather pointedly resembled devils (oh,
the irony!), impose a golden age of Enlightenment and Reason that
would have done Voltaire's heart good, but it turns out that it's just
a booby prize for mankind, as the human race is about to spontaneously
evolve into a race of superbeings with a single collective mind that
will merge with a sort of galactic supermind and the devil aliens are
along to make sure it all goes smoothly. "Sorry about your
civilisation and all your achievements being a pointless waste of
time, chaps. Can't be helped. Toodles!" Mind you,
the fact that this next great leap in human evolution seems utterly
devoid of individuality, personality, or anything like basic human
compassion makes one wonder if there isn't a wee bit of power worship
going on here.