Where to start a program for right sizing humanity - with flight of course!

How to right-size humanity? How to create a trajectory and momentum towards smaller human body forms with smaller energetic profiles?

Computation is one of the key costs of being human - but the transition from biological computation systems to inorganic is already very well discussed.

In this post I will concentrate on the physical and social aspects.

Firstly - motivation is the key - the offer must be obviously, demonstrably, persuasively better than current existence. This can be achieved negatively via deterioration of the real world environment to a point where lower quality simulations, or even cessation, becomes attractive (e.g. Chinese WoW Gold Farmers, Japanese suicide cults).

However to be optimistic about the future, we must attempt to construct positive pathways to the same goal, using the technology we have now. And I believe that we are very close to this point. Consider this:

The convergence of prosthetics technology and robotics is accelerating rapidly. The need to have biological limbs to function in richer urban societies is fading. In some cases it could even be said that limbs may even no longer be a prerequisite for a pleasurable existence (a good life).

Consider also that humans have always dreamed of flight, and that we naturally understand that weight is a key issue in achieving flight.

What better motivation is there than the dream of flight? If a smaller body is required for a human to be able to fly on a day to day basis as part of normal life, is it a price worth paying? For many people I think the answer is unequivocally "You bet!"

But to make sense, the cost of flight (in energy) must be lower than the cost of traditional human limbs.

Insect muscle is the most active tissue known to man, and therefore a great candidate for a meta-biological flying platform. With organ printing technology, fabrication of a pseudo-muscle may be possible using insect stem cells combined with more traditional substrates (plastics, metals.)

One interesting fact that may be worth bearing in mind is that insect muscle runs on Trehalose, a sugar which is also implicated in the biological mechanism of anhydrobiosis - the ability of plants and animals to withstand prolonged periods of desiccation. This means that artificial, detachable wings/muscle systems could potentially be stored for long periods and shipped cheaply.

These factors make possible a single-use unit approach (rather than a rechargeable unit approach)- and this reduces the complexity of an artificial wing/muscle system design by some orders of magnitude, and reduces time to market. And while single use may seem contradictory to the aim of reducing energetics footprints, the fact that the product can be entirely biodegradable is undoubtedly an important consideration.

So the target needs to be - what is the minimum size that a human body can be revised to, and still be viable, and what is the largest size an artificially created insect muscle/wing system can be constructed?

The 4 elements: fire fire burning bright

There is nothing like fire under the ocean. This may sound pretty stupid but it is of interest when you consider the evolution of life and of civilisation.

First - what is fire? It is a rapid and runaway oxidation reaction which releases energy and consumes local fuel until it is exhausted.

Why can't we have fire under the ocean? Well in fact we can - there are certain chemicals which when mixed and subjected to ignition will commence a runaway oxidation reaction. But these chemicals do not occur naturally, as does wood and air.

There is another exception to this point which I feel I should also address. By stretching the definition a little we could perhaps say that life (which is a heavily modulated oxidation reaction) is itself a type of fire.

And by stretching the definition of fire in this way to include life I have actually managed to refute my first assertion. Life evolved in water and life does exist in water. Please bear with me.

Why do we have fire in our world? A good way to think about this question is to ask - what burns? And when you think about it - life burns. Before life left the oceans there was nothing - no oil, no wood, no people - to burn. So the modulated oxidation reaction called life that began in the oceans evolved up and onto land and carried with it oxidisable material to where it could burn. Thus fire.

It has been argued that life is only likely in places where liquid water can exist. This is because water is a unique molecule, whose electromagnetic properties are predisposed to generation of complex surfaces, films and structures, among many other specialities. This generative nature of water give rise to a wildly heterogenous environment of liquids, solids and gases and it for this reason (the argument goes) that life formed on earth.

Could we argue that water gives rise to fire?