Children w/ real visions for the future

[Solrojo]

I heard in the news that most children between the ages of 5 and 10 years who have an incredible mind(some that attend college or university) are mostly located in South America. Supposedly this is due to the location of South America. Could this be true? These children are incredible because not only do they have extrodinary minds but they could be important leaders that would led us, humans, to Type I, II, III Civilizations. But it is truly sad that were they are also located corruption is everywhere and the corruption keeps them away from becoming pioneers of science and politics. Have any of you people met any children like these who have increadible minds?

 

[Moni]

I am not from US and I also don't believe so...
Why don't it be in any poor Asian country where Ramanujan was born in a village in a poor family ?

 

[JLawrenceIV]

I don't think Super kids are the way of the future until we start genetically engineering them, ie Homo Superior. Besides whenever I see one of those genius 8 year olds they usually total dorks. I wouldn't follow them. You need intelligent adults with vision and the wisdom of Solomon to lead us to a Type 1. We don't need to worry about how we will get to a type 2, 3 becasue the super machine or transhuman consciousnesses will know a whole lot better than we how to best get there. At that point we mere notural homo inferiors that are still left around will basically (I hope) be like treasured, spoiled pets and we will be allowed to do anything we want so long as it doesn't harm other intelligent beings. In some sense those of us who have not yet merged with computers will be able to walk amoung the gods which we have created and which take care of us. This is MY ideal future - my Utopia.

Dont worry about the super kids though. It sounds like you have been reading Ender's Game though

 

[Solrojo]

What's the Ender's Game?

 

[JLawrenceIV]

One of the most famous and well respected modern scifi novels written by Orsen Scott Card. A man I once had the pleasure to meet.

 

[rtharbaugh1]

Hi all. I have read Ender's Game, as well as other of Card's SF works, and was very fond of them for a while. It has been a while...seems like another lifetime now. But Card struck me as highly innovative. The idea of an ansible...a communications device that is coinstantaneous anywhere in a universe...I don't think I have heard of that as a member of the old alchemist goals, but it would be a worthy addition. Let's see, I recall the alchemists were looking for a grail that could not be dissolved, and a universal solvent, presumably to be kept in the grail, and a camera obscura, which is a sort of looking glass (maybe they looked into the surface of the universal solvent in the grail?) which could be tuned to see anything anywhere anytime. What else? Oh, the Philosopher's stone, that turns what it touches to gold, and was it the same or a different stone that was said to be the cure of all illness? Well I don't exactly remember but it was something like that, and of course the elixer of immortality from the fountain of youth. These all seem still to be worthy goals, but perhaps not worthy enough to risk any further mercury poisening.

What has Card written recently? Just wondering out loud. You don't have to be my google slave, although there are times when I wish I had a team of them. Not that I could pay anything, but I have always highly regarded the skill of those who do things for the pleasure of having done it.

Anyway I am giving Kaku's Hyperspace a first good read. I actually havn't read any science fiction in some time. But sometimes I feel that it would be good to write some.

thanks for being here.

Richard

 

[selfAdjoint]

The ansible (intantanious communicator across galactic distances) was "invented" by one of the old time sf authors, I've been racking my brain for his name and am coming up empty. Several other authors then adopted it, with the name, for their stories. Ursula le Guinn was one who used it extensively.

The ansible enables the sf author to give a kind of late 19th century feel to space opera, when they had the telegraph to give them "instant" communication but it still took months to get to the other side of the planet.