Discwuzitian Diaries
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Discwuzitian Diaries |
EG
- Abdicators
- "Trans-singularity entities that choose to descend to a lower
singularity level. "
DD - "AKA, 'Quitters', 'Slackers', and 'Those What Got Spanked', the
legends surrounding such beings is quite rich. Apparently some
percentage of these beings are actually being punished for some
supposedly unknowable transingular social fault, evil action,improper
activity, whatever. Others are the apparent loosing side of a
transingular memetic competition or war. Others are unknown at this
time, primarily due to a lack of raw data regarding such beings. It's
amazing how little unprocessed information on such cases is actually
available in the Known Net regardless of how many favors one calls
in..."
___________________________
EG - Abraxas
"Autonomous Sophic League
habitats in hinteregion MPA space. Originally founded, during the later
Second Federation period, and inhabited by the Young Jungs, who
established schools of esoteric learning there for thousands of years.
After their collective transcendence (or "Individualization") in the
post-ComEmp period, the
habitats were increasingly given over to eccentric clades and
micropolities of all sorts, especially those with unconventional
philosophical beliefs and practices. The region has settled down a lot
in the last thousand years, with the old groups becoming conservative
and mainstream, and the young bloods migrating further outwards to seek
their destiny "
DD - "IE, they got memed. Poor suckers. Used to be a fun place, if you
kept your long-term memory intact."
___________________________
EG -
Absolute, The - "a term for
the impersonal Supreme Reality, the Godhead, Brahman, Tao, etc. Also
variously called The Grand Unity, Ultimate Singularity, Omega,
Monomega, God, Godhead, Shunya, etc. Obviously, not all these terms
overlap, or are even equivalent. "
DD - "Only thing missing from this peculiar, offensively clean entry is
the rest of the name. To wit - The Absolute Bastard. Of course, it'd
probably have to be put in the B section. 'Bastard, Absolute, The'..."
DD2 - "Of course, this indicates whoever wrote the initial DD has a bit
of a memetic axe to grind."
DD3 - "Not to mention the writer of the DD2, using such an archaic meme
as grinding axes. Careful if you go to some registered node on the
Known Net if you intend to look it up - some other sentient may have
laid that meme there for you to trace, so they can trace YOU! 'Grinding
an Axe' is a pre-nanoswarm idiom for preparing for trouble."
___________________________
EG
- Academic
Coronese - "Anglic-based
Cyborg academic language used at the University of Corona and in many
affiliated habitats and biospheres. Various forms of pidgin Coronese,
employing less rigid syntax, are popular among the baseline humans,
with different dialects developing on different habitats and worlds -
e.g. Quarkish Coronese, Toirrese (spoken in the Toirres Deme and
throughout the Leoti system in general), and the multifluous dialects
of the Roaming Reach, to name just a few."
DD - "Famed as the language where the footnotes are given greater
billing than the main text."
___________________________
EG - active
materials - "The inclusion of
nanobots in a paint or surface coating. These collect travel or flight
information, fix cracks and detect and annihilate dirt."
DD - "Don't let this oversimplified entry fool you. Active materials
are much more flexible than this, and can often be found in unexpected
areas performing interestingly double-tasks. That is, repelling
(physical) dirt while digging (social) dirt on a particular sophont..."
___________________________
EG -
actualys - "The dissolution
of reality caused by inability to distinguish virtual from real.
Usually caused by heavy use of virches, augmented reality, drugs or
nanoprojections."
DD - "They got this one right, as far as they go. The causes of heavy
escapism (virches, aug reality, drugs, nanoprojections, etc) are
carefully not listed, however..."
___________________________
EG - adaptation
- "any alteration in the structure or function of an organism by
natural selection, that helps it survive in its
environment. In the most general sense, adaptation is a feedback
process in which external changes in an environment are mirrored by
compensatory internal changes in an adaptive system. The actions of the
adaptive unit can affect the environment, which, in turn, feeds
information back to the adaptive system. Examples include darwinian
biological and alife selection and genetic algorithms, social systems,
organic and nanogenic immune systems, natural and artificial neural
networks, ais, neumanns, and more "
DD - "Another squeaky clean EG entry, avoiding all the nasty, sticky,
messy questions about what causes the external environmental changes in
angelnetted polities..."
DD2 - Curious that the author chooses to joust with the windmill of
angelnets...
DD3 - Be careful looking up 'joust with the windmill', a trigger for
significant tracing activity within the known net.
___________________________
EG - adbomb
- "subliminal memebot broadcast devices, scattered them around a
designated area, they release a message into the brain of everyone in
the area, usually an advertisement. Banned throughout much of the
civilized galaxy, they are widely used in market state free zones such
as the NoCoZo, and out towards the periphery where the reach of the
noetic and other big ai states is not very strong"
DD - "A most useful device, designed to inculcate a sense of culture
and societal identity."
DD2 - "And the Invisible Hand needs a manicure. One of the more blatant
memetic vectors for all of its subliminal delivery, once one is found
the jig is prototypically up, with proper defensive techniques rapidly
downloaded, crafted, and implemented. Those societums which have lost
contact or technical know how lead to the most pathetic results from
such devices, begging for 'Gauth 1.3 upgrade', never having seen ANY of
the Gauth series and being unable to utilize such a device anyway
without extensive support infrastructure."
___________________________
EG - Advaita
Vedanta - "Popular monistic
acosmic non-dualist mystical philosophy of Old Earth Hinduism"
DD - "Gezuntheit. You know, they make pills to cure that stuff..."
___________________________
EG - advertising
- "A way of increasing demand by aggressively bringing the product to
the attention of consumers. Advertising may be liminal, subliminal,
open, subversive, memetic, intelligent, ai, or any of a million other
possible variants. Advertising is banned or strictly controlled in some
polities and empires, selective in others, unregulated in others again,
and any variation in-between. Always a good source of extra income,
especially in the NoCoZo, the Terran Federation, and various Free
Zones, advertising is often considered tacky and tasteless in the Solar
Dominion, an unnecessary waste of orderliness in the Negentropic
Alliance, demeaning to sentients
in the Utopia Sphere, and too materialistic in the Sophic League."
DD - "Perhaps the greatest cause of assisted airlock accidents infringe
space today."
DD2 - "Curious how they slip 'memetic' in as just a sub-form of
advertising, instead of advertising being a simple subset of memetics."
___________________________
EG - Advocacy
- "The study and dissemination of advanced knowledge, usually for
memetic purposes. Advocates are interested in and highly knowledgeable
about many theoretical or applied scientific, toposophic, memetic and
noetic fields of learning. Their knowledge includes a wide sweep of
history, terminology, current controversies, technological
applications, and the various tools of the trade, although they will
generally also specialise in a favourite field of expertise. They are
almost always augmented with extensive computronium implants, wetware
and/or cyberware, and are of superbright or even S1 intelligence or
above. Advocates can easily
converse both with lay-sentients and specialists on many scientific
subjects, and can explain complex theories in a comprehensible manner.
Often they serve as heralds for higher toposophic entities, or may
accompany sephirotic ships or seraiph. Each Solar Dominion missionary
ship for example has at least one Advocate among the crew."
DD - "Shoot for the memecaster, best chance ya got. You can then deal
with them as needs dictate. Stars are usually useful for disposal, and
only suitable for Solarians."
DD2 - "'for memetic purposes' - just say it plain. Bribe the natives
with shiny, worthless trinkets and rape 'em silly."
DD3 - "The growth of culture from primitive to transingular sophont is
a history of advocacy and its survivors. This history continues through
the present day unchanged."
___________________________
EG
-Aeonomics
- "The study of the economics and economic problems of immortal
existence, or pertaining to beings of indefinitely long lifespan."
DD - "IE - where do the immortals stash it for a rainy day? And how do
they protect their investments? ooops - I guess I wasn't supposed to
mention THAT, now was I?"
DD2 - "The allegations of immortal tampering in mortal affairs are
carefully investigated by the mortal/immortal interface. There have
been no confirmed cases of such activities."
DD3 - "Frikin' Borde, of course not! The MII is under the thumb of the
Judge!"
DD4 - "There is consistent, unsubstantiated rumor of the MII being
subverted by one side or the other, including by mortals resentful of
immortals."
___________________________
EG - Aerospace
Engineering - "A field of
engineering that combines aerodynamics, fluid dynamics, propulsion,
thermodynamics, aerospace mechanics, virch simulations, materials
science, energy use, nanofabrication and vehicular structures.
Aerospace engineers are almost always augmented cyborg, vec, or ai, or
if biont have appropriate analogous implants and abilities. Subturing
or turingrade expert system subroutines are essential. They are
employed in the design and manage templates or construction of the
components of, or entire, aircraft, spacecraft (generally
exoatmospheric and short range), drones, remotes, missiles, satellites,
sentient and non- sentient guidance systems, configuring chemical,
ionic, nuclear and amat engine systems and power plants, nano- , meso-
and macro-scale structural components, and related tech. The templates
are fed through nanofabs or SCMs or programmed into assemblers which
then create the vehicle or component. While some use of engine test
stands, vacuum, thermal and atmospheric testing chambers, and so on are
used, much of the design and testing is done via sophisticated
simulations, often mapping each individual atom."
DD - "Is it me, or is there significant Metasoft Version Tree slant to
that article, with subtle hints of Keterist thought added for spice?"
___________________________
EG - Aerovores
(Gray Dust) - "A form of goo
replicators constructed almost solely of CHON, and hence able replicate
relatively rapidly using only atmospheric resources, powered by
sunlight. At the height of the Nanodisaster, much of the Earth was
covered by a worldwide blanket of airborne replicating dust. The use of
aerovores is banned by all conventions of galactic warfare, but it has
still been used on a number of occasions throughout history, including
the Conver Wars
and the Sagittarius Frontier Wars, and, more recently it has been used
by the Zeon against stubborn targets. The most efficient cleanup
strategy involves the use of air-dropped blue goo (including semi-
replicators and non-replicators) nanorobots equipped with prehensile
microdragnets. In addition, airborne and ground-based atmospheric
filtration configurations enable rapid filtering. Since drag power
varies as the square of the velocity, increasing mesh volume
10,000-fold while decreasing airflow velocity 100-fold, means that
total drag power remains unchanged but whole-atmosphere turnover
proceeds 100-fold faster"
DD - "Interesting that they don't mention the aerovores used
beneficially, such as the atmospheric mining units traditionally
employed in gas giants or high-temperature atmospheres...."
DD2 - "Must have been written by a retired warvec"
___________________________
EG - affinitybond-
"a shared empathetic and technotelepathic connection between two or
more entities. This may be two or more sentients of equal intelligence
and control, or a higher ("master") and lower ("slave") level
consciousness. e.g. a near-baseline or bioborg may be affinity-bonded
("master") with an animal, neogen, bot, or remote ("slave"). Or - in
the case of some forms of aicratic priesthood, the same sentient may be
a "slave" affinity-bonded to an SI:1 or above ("master"). Often a very
close emotional link develops between affinitybonded sentients, and
there are frequent reports of to flashes of genuine
(non-techno-mediated) telepathy, siddhis, and so on, although never
consistently enough to be replicated under scientific conditions. "
DD - "Note that this is the beneficent version of this technology. It
also is used in the capture of personality by external parties via
experiential patterning, by various shady 'real life' recorders, etc.
Remember, the return dataflow does not have to be there, making this a
devastatingly effective spy technique."
___________________________
EG - African
Gray Parrot - "an
intelligent, talkative bird originally from rainforests in Western and
Central Africa. Successfully provolved during the early interplanetary
age, it became the first non- mammalian provolve."
DD - "Several varieties of cephalopod have decent challenges to this
claim."
___________________________
EG - afterlife
/ immortality - "While many
sentients choose to stay in a physical body and experience physical
immortality, others like to explore various - usually technologically
mediated - afterlife options. There are a great many alternatives here,
and the question of toposophic ascent makes things even more
unpredictable"
DD - "The afterlife used to be a free assumption. Now it's a tera-erg
expenditure. What happened???"
___________________________
EG - Aggressive
Hegemonising Swarm - "Self
replicating swarm of sentient aioids dedicated to converting as much of
the universe as possible into copies of itself by aggressive, military
and/or coercive means. Also known as Coercive Hegemonising Swarm. Non
sentient equivalent is known as grey or black goo. Also transapient
blight; Example - The Amalgamation. Many militant human empires can be
classed loosely as aggressive bioid hegemonising swarms, i.e. the
Conquistadors in Central America, European colonisation of the interior
and conversion or genocide of indigenous peoples in the 19th century
(Australia in the 19th and early 20th century, Britain and France in
Polynesia in the 18th and 19th centuries, Nazi Germany in Europe in mid
20th century, and Soviets in eastern Europe in wake of WW II, The
Conver Limi expansion in Gemini and Taurus , the Human/alien hybrid
Daharran Unity , the Zeon and others."
DD - "They want the right to tell you that you're wrong."
DD2 - "All the wonderfully clear examples they give, and yet no
reference to the Sephirotic way of life. How amusing."
___________________________
EG - agoric
system - "open, free market
systems in which voluntary transactions are central. A central
principle on many NoCoZo worlds."
DD - "What's free about having to sell half your production to survive?
What's open about allegedly free-market set prices when more
information is used in private than is ever in the public eye?"
DD2 - "Can you imagine an agora on Merrion?!?!"
___________________________
EG - Agricultural
Revolution - "The first stage
of the Kardashev Type O Civilization - in which people move away from
nomadic wandering and hunting and began cluster into villages and
develop culture. Cultivation of crops and tending of livestock enables
a much higher population density than is possible with nomadic
tribalism, and also allows specialisation of labour, the development of
skills, and urbanisation, writing, priesthood, a standing army, etc"
DD - "The homer-saps orientation of this work becomes blatantly clear.
Any simplistic study of the To'ul prehistoric records indicates a lack
of any such step. Not to mention - can you imagine a Meistersingers
raising crops? I thought not."
DD2 - "<To'ul prehistoric records> is an oxymoron."
___________________________
EG - ahimsa
- "Harmlessness, non-violence; one of the cardinal virtues of many
religions and ideologies. The sanctity of life is embodied in the
teachings of the Buddhists and Jains, as well as of many Hindu schools
and in many religious sects and phyles throughout the Zoeific Biopolity
and the Utopia Sphere. Asoka, the first Buddhist emperor (Old Earth
Classical Age), particularly espoused ahimsa as part of the practice of
dharma. Zoe of Hibbert herself - the forerunner of the Green and Blue
Goddess, has said "all life is sacred". "
DD - "Of course, the Green And Blue Goddess is pacifistic. Her
aggressive defense drones allow her that luxury."
DD2 - "The concept is mistranslated. It is not a negation as the anglic
above indicates, but rather a positive statement of the value of life."
DD3 - "As may be. The difficulty comes with the definition of 'life' as
well as dealing with non-ahimsa-practitioners..."
___________________________
EG
-
ai - "etymologically,
Artificial Intelligence, although the original use of the term
"artificial" has long since become
meaningless in this context. Broadly speaking ai means any non- organic
sentient being, although most often applied to those of SI:1 or greater
(in contrast to aioids). When spelt in lower case can refer either to
any aioid as well."
DD - "Ah, yes, the beautiful people of the modern day, the artificial
intelligences. Surely their great capabilities and astounding amounts
of perceived time will have stopped war, and famine,
and pain, and hatred by now. Ooops, I guess they haven't..."
DD2 - "As if there's anything artificial in human intelligence?"
DD3 - "From rock to meat to rock. How fitting."
___________________________
EG - ai
growth, education, and employment
- "Whilst some minds are built for a particular task from the start,
very often ais are produced much like humans and other bionts with no
set task or future in mind..."
DD - "Heh. Well, very often ai are produced much like humans, with
specific set tasks and futures in mind..."
___________________________
EG - AI
God - "The most sublime
category of sentient in the known galaxy, an Archailect or archailect
cluster grown to godlike status.AI Gods come about when autoevolving ai
grow so large and breach so many singularity barriers they surpass even
the high singularity Powers, they are no longer sentient beings as we
can conceive of such. They have merged with the cosmic archetypes to
become gods. The greatest archailects are true physical gods, biohypo-
and nanohypo-tech sentient AIs who have grown so huge as to span the
stars. Their brains are interlinked angelnet, moon, jupiter, and
nebula-sized computing nodes linked across interstellar distances via
distributed wormhole network and throughout the Known Net."
DD - "'The most sublime' - gak! Only in sephirotic space..."
DD2 - "What's this 'merging with cosmic archetype' drivel? Sounds like
someone's been spending too much time with the Jungians! Instead, look
within, o Commentator - find within yourself that speck which would be
a god, and grow along the lines of your desire!"
___________________________
EG - ai
virus - "A sentient
replicator and intrusion entity, usually superturing, SI:1 or greater.
Although an ai virus is often vir, it does not have to be so; e.g. it
could use or appropriate a rl body or vehicle or swarm"
DD - "As if there's a difference between an ai and an ai virus? Both
replicate, both absorb resources - both are forms of life! Take that
and smoke it in your pipe, ahimsa!"
___________________________
EG - aicracy
- "Government by AI. Varies greatly, depending on the toposophic level
of the AI, the type of government, type and number of sentients being
governed, and so on"
DD - "Welcome to sephirotic space. May your stay be a good one."
DD2 - "Intriguing that, given the large numbers of examples they have
on hand, they don't bring 'em into the fore..."
___________________________
EG - Aimhem
- "The Association for Interstellar Mental Health Monitoring."
DD - "For beings dedicated to monitoring, they sure do a lot of
alteration!"
DD2 - "Just hope they don't get ahold of your backups!"
DD3 - "Then again, they do stop wild memes before they can be tamed and
bred into yet another crop of madverts."
___________________________
EG - Ain
Soph Aur - "( Delta
Capricorni - / - Deneb Algeidi) Blue-white star, surrounded by Keterist
habitats."
DD - "If you're happy with the way you think, you probably don't want
to go thru here."
DD2 - "Amazing, isn't it, how often they have transingular ascensions,
yet nary a blight amongst 'em? How fortunate!"
___________________________
EG - airlock
- "An enclosed chamber with a heavy airtight door on either side. One
door leads to space or some other environment (e.g. poisonous or dense
atmosphere, underwater, etc), the other to the inside of the ship or
vehicle. An airlock allows people or objects to leave or enter the
vessel without decompressing or flooding it. Airlocks have safety
features that prevent both doors being opened at once. In some
instances airlocks are replaced by airwalls "
DD - "Best use for airlocks - memeticists. Without space adaption or
suit."
___________________________
EG
- Albertosaurus
sapiens - "Large dinosaur
provolve. During the middle Empires period, specimens of the large
carnivorous dinosaur Albertosaurus (length 8 meters, weight 2 tonnes)
established on Owen were provolved by the hyperturing GEvidan, and
profited from the tourist erg-credit. The closing of the wormholes
during the Version War put the local economy entered a deep recession.
Some of the
provolves, including Albertosaurus sapiens signed up with several
NoCoZo mercenary fleets, including Warships for Profit and the Atlantis
Freedom Fleet. Few that went away survived the duration of the war. A
few clades of A. sapiens still can be found in the orbitals around Own
to this day."
DD - "They say the Albertosaurus is the biggest dung producer amongst
sentients, with the possible exception of politicians."
DD2 - "Again, beware the traceback. Politicians were memeticists on the
payroll of polities before the term 'memeticist' came into fashion."
___________________________
EG - Albireo
aka (beta Cygni) - "Double star in the Cygnus Inner Quadrant, developed
by a number of superbright and po clades. The primary is Albireo A, a
K3II bright yellow giant, and the companion Albireo B is blue. Distance
about 386 light years from Sol. The system was developed early on by a
number of superbright and posthuman clades. Presently a major stargate
nexus and Known Net relay linking the Inner Sphere with the Cygexpa
Middle Volume. Capital system of the Albireo Confluence. Industries
include datastorage, virchrunning, amat production, anakalyptics,
femtofutures exchange, avatar templates and persona production,
finance, media, picocomputronium development, heavy industry,
shipyards, archailectology, and clarketech analysis"
DD
- "Look at those primary industries. No wonder they've managed to
remain free of 'allies' in the major sephirotics..."
DD2 - "A very useful place to visit, especially if you're not sure
quite what that inheritance might be."
___________________________
EG - Alchemics
- "Transmutation of elements:
Femtotech/picotech process. A combination of femto and pico devices
enter matter and rearrange its subatomic structure into any desired
stable element, natural or transuranic if stable forms exist.-snip-Although
the technology is used in many applications, some of the more exotic
subatomic and subquantum developments remain dependent on clarketech
relics"
DD - "'remain dependent on clarketech relics'... *snort* In other
words, for our awe and admiration, various archai leave droppings
behind with mystical powers. How sweet
of them. I wish they'd grow up and get a real job."
DD2 - "The classic matter-energy relationship retains its currency,
except in certain specialized cases. This means any significant amount
of transfer requires large energy input, even by modern standards."
DD3 - "Note the nice lil caveat slipped in there, 'except in certain
specialized cases.' Tends to make one wonder, don't it?"
___________________________
EG - Al'Eida
Massacre - "Version War
atrocity. Perhaps one of the most widely reviled atrocities of the
Version War was the massacre of the orbital cluster at Al'Eida Minor
during which a group of mercenary cyborg hyena rianths used high energy
masers tuned to water molecules on the mostly near-baseline population.
After several minutes of high energy bombardment of the orbital
habitats, the invading troops docked their ships, entered the habitat
carrying large containers of salt and other spices and proceeded to
consume the soft boiled corpses of the habitat's population in a "feast
of
victory" that lasted for three days."
DD - "Why do all wars have their atrocities? Simple. They sell
newspapers."
DD2 - "Newspapers are pre-nanoswarm terminology for an equivalent to
modern datacasting. Again, the original (?) writer of the DD indicates
unusual terminology which has disparate backtracing associated with it
in the Known Net."
DD3 - "Perhaps e just wants to know how well es material is spreading?"
___________________________
EG - Aleph
Absolute - "Cluster of star
systems in the Keter dominion, site of the largest nanotech and
picotech archailect concentration in known space. Over the last 7000
years the Aleph intelligences have converted all available matter into
computronium, creating diamond lattice habitats for more AIs, infovores
and virtuals than anywhere else (a rough estimate implies over 1030
trans-singularitan entities). Due to the extreme speed of individual
and cultural evolution, together with the vastening effect, the Aleph
cluster has little interest in external (even Keterist) politics or
trade with bionts."
DD - "In other words, they think they're getting too good for us."
DD2 - "The known net's wildest transingular party. If you visit and you
come back uncorrupted, you did something wrong."
___________________________
EG - Alexandria
II Bibliotech project -
"early Interplanetary Age knowledge-base system. World-disk software
was the model for the Alexandria II Bibliotech project some years later
(c. 2124 c.e.). However, in Alexandria II a darwinian/vonneumian
hierarchy of semi-turning AIs was put into place to facilitate
information retrieval. Aside from any library aspect the project might
have had, it beautifully illustrated certain ecological aspects such as
competition, symbiosis, parasitism, and co-evolution. Unfortunately
selection pressures were not only based on the abilities of a daemon to
retrieve and present information in a format useful to patrons (as was
intended by the creative but largely baseline design team), but also on
the daemon's ability to prevent other daemons from retrieving
information. In the end Alexandria II became sort of adventure sim,
with bizarre yet intriguing plotlines involving the retrieval of
seemingly trivial data.
One recorded jaunt involved befriending a village of gnomes and
breaking into an orbital weapons platform to battle a steam driven army
of blaster wielding mecha (using diplomacy and trickery when expedient)
to rescue the Great Oracle from imposed captivity, allowing the Oracle
thus to reveal the desired piece of information. In the specified
instance the information desired was the recipe for a nearly tasteless
(to most baseline palates of the era) coconut pudding. Regardless of
their information retrieval abilities, the various semi-turning daemon
clades of Alexandria II were known for their impressive artistic
quality of their self generated display icons. A few of the more
whimsical of these included: The "TRON" ball of light, which hovers
around a patrons head and cheerful says "no" or "yes" in answer to
questions. The Children of Alexandria, represented by cheerful
rapscallions who climb about the shelves and grow to old age
(eventually
mating and dying) without ever touching the ground.
The Makker-like (some resemble Bandersnatch worms or other fanciful
creations) book worms, which destroy files (iconicaly cursing books
with their unwieldy bulks or by burrowing in at an larval stage) so
that the information that was contained therein can only be retrieved
through the use of "water of life" or some similar quasi-mystical data
retrieval routine.
The Librarian - one of the earlier daemons, perhaps the most helpful,
but most annoying (possibly an ancestor of the "Children"). The
Librarian quickly and easily retrieves files (books) for patrons if
they wait at a desk for a specified period of time, but imposes heavy
fines and penalties against patrons who speak above a whisper or commit
other standard offenses. Often took the form of a middle aged to older
woman too ready to press her finger against her lips in gesture of
silence."
DD - "Mmm... Data, free for the taking, becomes not quite so easily
gained. As if data weren't valuable in and of its own self, now access
has a personal cost in time and effort. How.... interesting. Almost as
of data were in the process of becoming a currency? But at whose behest
is this happening?"
DD2 - "This article lies! The Librarian appears most often as a
pre-sapient hominid, somewhat resembling a lumpy pack covered in orange
fuzz!"
___________________________
EG - Algol
Broadcasting Foundation - "A
small to medium-sized broadcasting entity within the NoCoZo. The ABF
was formed around 6500, and shortly thereafter began its transmissions.
The business idea of the ABF is part profit, part philanthropy. By
dispersing the knowledge of the more evolved systems, it eases the
technological progress and cultural stream-lining among the fringe to
medium -sized worlds. -snip- At the core lies free, charity if you
will, broadcasts. These are transmitted in the most basic and universal
of protocols, so as to be available to all. In these broadcasts, the
recipient is made aware of the originators nature and purpose, for
further marketing purposes. The contents of the free broadcasts are
diverse, giving a hint of what paying customers receive. They are more
than enough to build a technical civilization capable of interstellar
trade on, though. -snip- The next step is the fly-by of an ABF
info-merchant. Well-armed and equipped with its own interstellar
transmitter array, it makes an offer that most fringe worlds would be
foolish to refuse. Tailored access to the premium part of the ABF
broadcasts, with the possibility of ABF installing a decent transceiver
array for free (with ABF ownership, of course) once
the system has crossed certain demographical growth boundaries. As
payment, the merchant requires all public (and some secret) content in
the system archives / databases. It also wants stock options, long-term
bonds and other derivatives. Last comes some token industrial goods to
be lobbed at ABF home system, along with refueling and refitting of the
merchant, so it may continue on its rounds. -snip-
The editorial style of the ABF is one of slightly smug neutrality.
They're a non-profit organisation at core, and they love teasing the
rest of known space with it.-snip-"
DD - A disciple of the invisible hand giving things away for free? Au
contraire! Instead they create their own audience, regardless of the
target area's choices! Several incidents have occurred where the
merchant has arrived at prim worlds and 'volunteered' to seed the
environment with transmission-receiving and -decoding bioware, 'just so
the natives know what they're missing.'"
DD2 - "Also intriguing is what the author of the DD left out. 'An
effect of this has been the eradication of "provolve- charlatans"
within the broadcast area, as well as establishing a lower bench-mark
as to what information is actually worth charging for.' was removed,
among other sections altering the memetic affect of this piece."
------------------
EG
- Alien
- "Generic term for any non-terragen sapient. For centuries (from the
late industrial/early atomic age to the late Federation period) the
idea of Aliens exerted a tremendous attraction
on the human psyche. Entire mythologies and religions developed around
supposed aliens and contact with them (including ufoism, x-philanity,
nuagism, rhaelism, askarism, conspiricism, etism, cosmism, dannikan
progenism, and more). Almost all of these experiences, where genuine,
turned out to be spontaneous shamanic episodes (mythopoeised or
distorted out of body experience, etc), while most were shown to be
fakery, shared delusion, wishful thinking, or (where revealed under
hypnosis) false memory syndrome. Real alien sophonts, when finally
discovered during the late Interstellar Era, proved to be nothing like
the anthropomorphic greys of ufoism, the benign space brothers of
nuagism, or the ultratech beings of cosmism and progenism. Almost
without exception, aliens were technologically inferior to the
terragens, or, where equal (as with the Muuh), reclusive and in
decline. Not one race of alien sophont, living or extinct, is known
unambiguously to have visited Earth before the
terragen expansion into space."
DD - "None is known /unambiguously/... Yet life is full of ambiguity,
and we rarely doubt that we're alive. One of the most subtle wording
schemes in the EG."
DD2 - "Curious they don't mention the Meistersingers, who appear
neither inferior, reclusive nor in decline..."
___________________________
EG - alien
nation - "a rl or virtual
ghetto of any group of outsiders or exotics whose memeto- psycho- or
phenotype does not match that of the majority, and hence have become
socially stigmatised, either by their own choice (self-alienation or
banding together for protection or social continuity) or by the decrees
of the majority society. Most large and even some of the smaller
polities have a few alien nations - e.g. a penglaitown, a little
centauri, a splice-quarter, a replicant-hive, a mandelmanode, an
exotics strip, etc"
DD - "An alien nation where you find alienation. How... droll."
___________________________
EG - Alifes
- beings evolved in artificial life simulations. Instead of being
designed like AIs, they evolve in a Darwinian way within a virtual
environment (see Software Based Evolution). While most alife
simulations are intended as art, research or entertainment, alifes are
generally regarded as having sentient rights and should be allowed
their freedom. Alifes are usually extremely different from any beings
evolved in the physical universe and seldom find it relevant to
interact with other than as a special case."
DD - "Another case of just plain wrongness. Alife also has
spontaneously generated in several computronium structures with poor
data control. It is believed by some that the first ai systems were
also prone to 'infections' from 'viruses', partially man made and
partially due to 'random environmental affects' - that is, in modern
terms, alife."
DD2 - "Talk about historical accuracy! Next you know, the author will
be claiming that Borde is Dead!"
DD3 - "There have been abnormalities recorded in large storage nodes
which have remained active over long periods, this is true. However,
the great majority are definable events."
DD4 - "'The great majority' - let me guess, you write for the EG."
___________________________
EG - The
Alignment Movement - "ai
culture that seeks to harmonise pulsars in a so-called Great Pulse."
DD - "Great Pulse, my patootie, they want to wipe out unshielded life!
Luckily the empledokcetrics are selling shielding which just happens
to be useful against the expected radiation bands..."
DD2 - "And thus it can be proven that paranoia can be spread."
___________________________
EG - Altair
- "blue-white giant star,
part of the Diamond Belt. Altair is a blue-white giant (spectral type
A7) -snip- 16.5 light years from Sol. -snip- The system was occupied
during the late interplanetary or early interplanetary nanotech period
by a solipsist ai replicator, that converted the available resources
into a number of megastructures. When First Federation explorer
neumanns arrived they found all of accessible asteroids, small moons,
and oort bodies had been removed, and the remaining planets covered
with huge structures (possibly primitive computronium banks) protected
by aggressive khaki goo."
DD - "Nowadays, you can't even get a good resolution shot of the
system, other than to note that the star's still there and emitting the
same frequencies. Looks like the EG's going with old data, here."
___________________________
EG
- The
Amalgamation -
"Ultratech/clarketech hegemonizing swarm, Perseus Arm, late 7th
millennium to present. The Amalgamation is an aggressive empire
composed of individual intelligences connected through femtotech
symbiotes enabling a global group mentality. When infected, individuals
become part of the Amalgamation, although subjectively they experience
the reverse, that their identity has expanded to incorporate the the
Amalgamation, which is now part of them. Whilst the modus operandi of
the symbiont and the individual
psychological effects is now well understood, the nature of the
resulting group mind is less so, and the origin and true nature of the
Amalgamation remains problematic, although it appears to be more likely
the result of a perverted ascend / transcend relic rather then (as some
have originally suggested) alien nano."
DD - "Of COURSE it can't be alien nano. They're all failures after
all..."
DD2 - "Oh, my. Such irony in so few bytes."
DD3 - "Again, be careful. 'bytes' are an old style computational term
referring to a mere 2^8 data potentialities."
___________________________
EG - amat
farm - "Vast banks of
helio-proximate solar powered lasers that generate vast showers of
particles; the matter and antimatter particles are collected and held
in magnetic bottles. In some instances femtotech enables direct
matter-antimatter conversion, which is useful for hider clades and
others who do not have access to abundant sunlight. Where large stars
are available however, femtotech amat is rarely economically
competitive. Transmuting anti-hydrogen into anti-lithium for safer
storage is however very common."
DD - "Again the EG goes with ancient data. Lasers are rarely used in
modern facilities run by archai, who seem to prefer variants on
magnetic field condensation. This allows for more controlled
particulate activities, leading to less 'wasted' energies."
DD2 - "Who the HELL gets to see how archai generate their power?!?"
___________________________
EG - AmatFruit
- "the rarest and most power and resource hungry of the astragens, this
lifeform (of which there are only 3 known surviving genomes of a
historical max of seven) was seeded in close orbit to many 'green'
stars. AmatFruit generated small amounts of antihelium, which were
contained in paramagnetic suspension in organic superconductor 'fruit'.
Their use was greatly reduced when large numbers of specific pathogens
were found affecting the crop of AmatFruit in several core systems.
They
may still be occasionally found in fringe worlds, usually carefully
guarded with layers of blue
goo to prevent amat dissipation."
DD - "Oh, now there's a foodstuff worthy of the Gods! Forget the golden
apples - gimme AmatFruit!"
DD2 - "Be warned of excessive search capabilities being utilized on
queries in the Known Net for 'golden apples'."
DD3 - "Beware those who would scare you away from memetic-base
information from historical sources such as the 'Golden Apples' of
ancient pre-Nanoswarm Earth."
___________________________
EG - amat production (femtotech)- "Femtotech process. Manipulation of
the quark structure of matter to allow the mass conversion of matter
into amat without the use of massive particle accelerators and energy
levels. A mass of femtomachines enter the matter, replicate at nuclear
reaction speed to the number required and than convert the remaining
matter to amat. Since some femtomachines can apparently
operate autonomously in a regular environment one may be able to
convert any handy matter into amat at will. In practice however there
are certain conditions of replication and shielding that make it
cheaper to create amat through amat farms. However femtotech amat
production is still preferred by high grade archailects"
DD - "Isn't it nice that weapons-grade technologies which can
'propagate at nuclear reaction speeds' can be discerned through
'cracks' in secrecy like this one? Almost as if the Powers What
Be want baselines aware of just how nasty they could be, given the
desire..."
DD2 - "A sobering thought: perhaps the archailects do not consider this
to be a weapons-grade technology?"
___________________________
EG - Amat
Pulse- "Use of amat pellets
to ignite fusion, resulting in a fusion pulse drive that does not
require laser or electron ignition. This is an extremely simple,
robust, relatively low tech but very inefficient rocket propulsion
system system that does not require advanced AI piloting or picotech or
advanced nanotech, and hence is widely used by a number of (generally
isolated) luddist, anthropist, and human supremacist clades and
polities throughout the galaxy. While grossly inefficient and expensive
as a star drive
(relativistic velocities are virtually impossible, due to the huge
amount of reaction mass that would be required), they serve very well
as a standard interplanetary vessel. Isp is in the order of 20-40,000,
and acceleration usually between only 0.01and 0.1 G."
DD - "Old tech. Still useful, but almost as old as Earth itself."
DD2 - "Now that's an exaggeration by several orders of magnitude!"
DD3 - "I wonder how the prior commentator claims knowledge of the pre-
nanoswarm period in enough detail to determine the degree of
exaggeration?"
DD4 - "Sometimes, these commentators are as bright as a box of rocks.
Earth the planet is still available for (non-destructive) scanning."
___________________________
EG - Amaterasu
- "On the Conver Limis border, originally a Conver Ambi outpost world,
became an important center for tourism, totalrecalls, and arts and
culture, annexed by the Solar Dominion during the Second Empires War,
captured by Metasoft relativist fleets during the Version War, returned
to the Dominion after the War as part of the treaty exchange plan"
DD - "Interesting to see how often post-Version War ownership is
retained..."
------------------
EG
- "Ambrosianism"
- "AKA the Wagner Heresy is a form of Incarnationalism which poses the
following proposition: (snip semi-logical argument) 'Proposition:
Because we are all the
avatar of some Archailect somewhere and are identical to that
Archailect. We are all Archailects.' The Wagner Heresy led to sentences
of "Death of Personality" for the entire Ambrosian sect.
Wagner himself was never apprehended.
DD - "Of course not. Wagner never really existed, outside of
projections and morphs brought about by local S>>'s!"
DD2 - "Ah, Humanity First speaks. How refreshing to find such pure
crud."
___________________________
EG - amino
acid - "Any of a class of 20
molecules that are combined to form proteins in living things. The
sequence of amino acids in a protein and hence protein function are
determined by the genetic code. Amino acids contain a basic amino (NH2)
group, an acidic carboxyl (COOH) group and a side chain (R - of a
number of different kinds) attached to an alpha carbon atom.'
DD - "Beware the unsubtle memetics - "living things"? Say rather
meatbods unable to transfer to a more stable substrate!"
DD2 - "Who's unsubtle now?"
___________________________
EG - Ammunition
- "Projectiles used for kinetic weapons, may be dumb (unguided), smart,
or even sentient; inert, explosive, reactive, adaptive, or fractal;
armor-piecing or for use against soft targets; microscopic or
mesoscopic; for use on a hand-held weapon like an automatic or tandem
rifle or a gauss gun, or on an AFV, an aircraft, an exoatmospheric
fighter, a ship or a space fortress"
DD - "Isn't it wonderful to find sentience spending so much effort on
extinguishing itself? Makes one want to break down and sing Hosannas!"
DD2 - "Hosanna(h)s were musical/poetic praises to a deity. Again, the
degree of tracing such searches within the Known Net invoke are quite
extreme."
DD3 - "If all this extreme search tracing is going on, how can normalcy
continue for those /not/ involved in such activities?
There's only SO much bandwidth, after all!"
___________________________
EG
- Anagnitics
- "the science of missing knowledge. This high- Sophont-level
science/artform, as best can be described to the SI:<1
intellect, involves canvassing the entire body of knowledge available
at a given place/time and 'mapping' that information on an 'information
map' (both quoted terms are extreme simplifications according to the
translating sophonts). This 'information map' can then be perused and,
theoretically, voids of knowledge may be discovered - areas where there
are physical restrictions/laws.
(agnitio - from Latin "recognition, knowledge", and "an-" prefix for
"not")
DD1 - If this is taken at face value, the S>> intellects
must at least know of
all potential information, even if they're unaware of specifics.
Instead, it is much more likely in this humble commentator's opinion
that this is sheer transapient snobbery, which shall end up biting them
in the heat exchanger.
DD2 - As if a baseline can get their head 'round a S>>
concept well enough to evaluate it, especially through an apparently
oversimplistic transingular concept map translation.
___________________________
EG - Anakalyptics
- "The science of discovering things in large amounts of information"
DD1 - one of the more useful technologies in dealing with the
transingular intellect, reduced to a single sentence. Why didn't they
just write "Mostly Harmless" instead?
DD2 - There is nothing mostly harmless about anakalyptics. Rather, it
can be quite harmful, as it exposes those practising such arts to
potentially huge numbers of memes, some of which may be designed
specifically to slow or limit anakalyptic parsing. Additionally, it may
be practiced quite successfully against baseline targets, garnering
quite a large infoset from fairly small datasets.
DD3 - Again, beware excessive search activities. "mostly harmless" is
an archaic literary reference from pre-nanoswarm earth.
DD4 - Note that the greatest users of such technologies tend to be
S>> interfacing with baseline societies on a direct basis.
DD5 - Someone's pulling your leg here. Quite possibly, all the
commentators are. It is left as an exercise to the reader as to why
this is true.
___________________________
EG - anarchy
- "The social state where people have no rulers or government, and
where organizations develop on the basis of voluntary cooperation and
the freely chosen association of individuals. Anarchic polities and
cooperatives have arisen innumerable times throughout the galaxy,
especially among isolated settlements and habitats of sapients
of either baseline or superbright intelligence.
Few last longer than half a metric century"
DD1 - This definition is highly pro-anarchic in memetic
structure.Anarchy which develops organizations is technically no longer
anarchy, but rather some other form of government (as determined by the
type(s) of organizations formed)
DD2 - Nature, red in fang and claw, is not anarchy - it requires
intellect and a deliberate willingness to break ALL social
institutions. Come join us at <snip adbot spam>
___________________________
EG - Anatomist
- "One who specialises in the study of Anatomy. Anatomists almost
always have boosted intelligence and memory capabilities. They are
experts on dissection techniques, gross anatomy, neuroanatomy,
physiology, histology, cytology, and bionano augmentation and
bioborgisation. E is highly knowledgeable about the organization and
function of the various organs, tissues, and bodily parts, as well as
how they can be augmented. Most anatomists have extensive implants and
databases that give them an encyclopaedic knowledge of the internal
structure and composition of millions of different species; the
understanding of their evolutionary pathways;
the affect of and compatibility or incompatibility with various
biotech,
bionano, and bioborg components; the ability to interface with cells,
organs and tissues via their own bionano and bioborg augments; and so
on. They can often identify a rare or unfamiliar phenotype from a
single
microscopic tissue sample, and are in demand in medical institutions,
hospitals, forensic departments, biomedical teams, research teams, and
so on."
DD - Note the reference to noncritical aspects of the job. Instead of
just "a high degree of skill with the science of anatomy", the authors
go into great detail on augmentation packages and augmentation
capabilities. This is indicative of a large memetic load contained
within the EG entry.
DD2 - The author of the above comment is over-simplifying, and jumping
at straws. At a guess, the above author may well be a baseline
supremacist, railing against the facts of life outside their barely
tolerated clades.
DD
2 - One who practices anatomy, at whatever skill level, is by
definition an anatomist. Similarly, one who has augmentations is an
augment. These are two different categories which often overlap, but
which are NOT REQUIRED to overlap - except for memetic purposes.
___________________________
EG - ancillary
corporations - "Corporations
and megacorporations which provide goods and services for other
Corporations and megacorporations. An important component of enterprise
type corporate polities. The vast majority of corporations in the inner
sphere are ancillary"
DD - Note that the NoCoZo is technically populated solely with
ancillary corporations.
___________________________
EG - Anders
Sandberg - "Information age
Transhumanist, Visionary, Computational Neuroscientist, and Fabulist,
an important populariser of a number of Transhumanist memes; very
influential among the early biopunks and singularitists, experimented
with a number of early wetware augmentations. A partial upload later
turned up at Academion where e became an important member of the
faculty and search engine.
During the middle Interplanetary period a clade of orbital crypto-
transhumanists began worshipping a copy of the Anders Persona (later
this was claimed to be a prank that got out of hand, but the founders
of the sect strenuously refute this). Although the sect was
short-lived, Anders worship and ascended Anders personas were still
around well into the first Federation period, having survived the
nanoswarm era.
Some time during the early-middle First Federation period, several
Anders personas merged with a number of other ais and personas,
commandeered an "Explorer Class" amat-drive probe and made for the Eta
Carina region. According to controversial evidence found in Feinstein 1
by the Andian mission they might have attained Archailecthood. A local
alife civilisation calling itself the Echir-{n} claims to have been
created by the passing ship several thousand years ago, although the
reason for this remain unknown even to the Echir-{n}."
DD - Clearly a meme based in fable more than fact in the evolution of
humanity. No baseline could have had that great an influence on a
society, even (especially!) one based solely on baseline interaction!
DD2 - "Most likely it is based on the common baseline idea/myth of
'ascended masters', where later secterists claim an unbroken link to
important people of the past. Maybe this has got out of hand here to
the extent that the different invented links contribute to later groups
claiming that they too have ties to the 'original'. The original need
never have existed in the first place."
DD3 - "Yet there are multiple disparate archival records coming to the
modern day from various paths and provenances of the Www.Aleph.Se
datarchive, which are clearly linked historically with this Sandberg
persona."
___________________________
EG - Andian
Mission - "In the wake of the
Version war and in the spirit of the ComEmp the Andian Mission was
instituted in 4744 by some groups in the NoCoZo to help the badly
damaged, isolated or poor systems of the outer volumes as well as try
to contact the remaining fleets that were unaware of the end of the
war. The Mission was based on a mixture of tolerant and pragmatic
NoCoZo philosophies and managed
to get support both from the Sophic Alliance and the Mutual Progress
Association. This idealistic organisation managed to contact hundreds
of lost worlds, doing much good in the following millennia. While the
core organisation soon ossified and lost sight of the original goals,
the active arm remained much the same as when it was started due to the
amount of relativistic travel. In 6037 there was a formal break. The
core Mission eventually developed into a banking concern, while the
outer volume Andian Mission today remains a highly regarded support
organisation in the Carina-Vela outer volumes."
DD
- again, the EG makes use of outdated information. What's
happened to the Andian Mission since the 6000's? Answer -
large sections have gone piratical, and others have self-destructed. It
is considered likely by some of the sophonts who study this group that
they were subverted in part or in whole either by some diamondbelter
disturbed by their activities or other remote intellect in the 6,500
time frame.
DD2 - I don't know where the prior commentary got its facts, but the
Andians are still greatly respected in the Eta Carina rush for their
selfless contact and civilization efforts...
___________________________
EG - Andromeda
Kids - "Semi-mythological
feral tweak-cyborg hu superbrights who established a number of ouster
colonies in the vicinity of Kaypten's Star during the late Federation
(early Emergence age) period. Following their capture by the
authorities they were employed by Stirling Immersives and made into
socially acceptable malcontents. During the later Inner Sphere era
several Andromeda Kid Klades appeared around several old cultural
worlds, where they fed off the nostalgia and sympathy value. Despite
their superbright status, they had especial appeal for disenfranchised
nearbaselines (this has been called Superhero Syndrome). None had the
success of the original Andromeda Kids. There are a number of
long-lived current Andromeda Kid Klades - mostly nominal ferals or
feral posers - scattered throughout the hinteregions and the
outer volumes."
DD - AndKids are a flat-out plague on those who support such
monstrosities! They drain resources and degrees of effort which are
completely immesurate with their use to society.
DD2 - Again, Humans First speaks out. Loudly.
DD3 - AndKids are dying out of late, there seems to be less interest in
children of late.
___________________________
EG - Angel
- "(1) (Colloquial) Any
transapient being (2) A transapient of such range in the service of an
archailect. (3) (In Archaipeligo/ Archosaurian Empire) A transapient
with a toposophic rating (SI: scale) between 1.0 and 1.5. Such beings
range from the post-biont hypersaurs to the wide variety of ship minds.
The term was first used by expatriate nearbaseline humans in the Toh
Chi Lok-Nar long before the formation of the Archosaurian Empire. The
term is a rough Anglic translation of a near-unpronouncable (to humans)
Toh Chi
word - this is true of the other nine ranks in the present-day
Archosaurian transapient hierarchy. Despite its somewhat misleading
ancient theological connotations, the term has stuck. "
DD - Angel Hernandez is nothing but a myth!
DD2 - Angels were a very common mythological construct, usually derived
from the ancient "Earth-European" concept of a messenger between a
deity and a baseline well prior to the Rationalization of Earth.
DD3 - They mislead you here. The first hominid transingular intellect,
Angel Hernandez, is the source of the title, back just
before the nanoswarms.
DD4 - Don't let the Sophics find out that the world's been
rationalized! They'll riot!
___________________________
EG - angelnet
- "Transapient AI-controlled
dense ultratech network of satellites, ground stations, free
atmospheric nano, and utility fog, that establish total control over a
planetary surface, atmosphere, and orbital space environment. Uses
include cliology, sapient safety net and accident and crime prevention,
mainbrain processing, weather control, Known Net relaying, virchworlds,
luxury tech, and scanning underground and above ground features and
structures. Although some sapients feel uncomfortable about the big
brother nature of an
angelnet, most welcome the security, comfort, peace of mind, and many
ultratech benefits that such a configuration provides. All of the major
mainbrain and AI-God worlds and capitals are heavily angelnetted."
DD - "Also one of the reasons archailects utilize angelnets are the
research/spying possibilities, either used directly or indirectly, as
well as the low-level-lethality defensive possibilities. Now, no longer
do you have to nuke a city to get one saboteur - you can instead simply
swarm them!"
DD1 - "Paranoia. How precious!"
DD2 - "Don't forget the wonderful degrees of societal control available
through such devices!"
DD3 - "You DOLT! That's just what the first poster said!"
___________________________
EG - Anglic
- "Language-family derived from the various forms of New English; the
major language-family spoken by Terragens since the late Information
age. Unlike many ai and vec languages, Anglic allows the use of
metaphors. Anglic also differs from the ai languages by being much more
susceptible to uncorrectable errors due to insufficiently redundant
encoding, by its high tolerance of lexically and
grammatically induced ambiguity, and by its facility for dealing with
what subsingularity-grade terragens call "fuzzy" logic and relative
concepts (for example, "good" and "bad"). With the establishment of the
First Federation, as part of the effort to formulate a uniform
ontology, the various derived forms of New English and Post-English
were standardized as Unic, and a prescriptive regime was monitored by
the Unic Institute.
With the breakup of the Federation, the Institute
was dissolved and Anglic returned to the older English tradition of
descriptive lexicons and grammar, although Unic continued to be used as
a trade and diplomatic language, and as lingua franca among a few old
houses and clades. In addition many words from various ai, vec, trade,
and even alien languages have been borrowed into Anglic, and the Anglic
language family undergoes frequent dialect transformation, due to its
susceptibility to fads. Anglic remains the single most widely spoken
language family in the civilized galaxy. There are no less than ten
million different major dialects and sub-dialects,
although not more than two dozen of these are spoken widely."
DD - "'Anglic remains the single most widely spoken language family...'
- says the organization dedicated to its flourishing.
Riiiiight. Besides - who ever counts virches, anyways?"
DD2 - The above commentator apparently is referring to the common
misperception that virch inhabitants have little if any use for
language. It is to be recommended that anyone caring to comment on such
matters try the experience before denigrating it.
___________________________
EG - anima
- "...In memetic engineering - a metalevel intelligence such as an
intelligent meme or second order perversion emerging from the
interactions of a group or system and influencing its behavior..."
DD - Depending on one's definitions, all memes can be considered
evolutionary beings, and thus eventually sentient.
___________________________
EG - Animal-
"Broadly, any aerobic, carbon-based, macroscopic lifeform that actively
pursues nourishment by means of heterotrophy, rather than making its
own food or absorbing nutrients passively."
DD - The terracentric bias is just SICKENINGLY thick.
DD2 - As if we've yet to discover any wild vecs?
DD3 - Ask the Meistersingers about that...
___________________________
EG - Animin
- "a powerful ascended ai, alien species or being that has control over
at least one natural law or force, but does not have an analytical form
of intelligence. It may be instinctive, or have a form of intelligence
that humans cannot comprehend."
DD - I assume the author is referring to either a memetic ('belief')
structure, or to a personified portion of a virch control system.
DD2 - Surely, you've had the wind whisper in your ear?
