Topics | 0 to 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Cl to Cn

clade

[1] a phylogenetic group of organisms (whether biological, nanological, or alife) that share a particular common ancestor, and therefore are related and share similar features.
[2] a common evolutionary branch of mindkind, defined by having a single common ancestor or common template (or both) which serves as the distinguishing characteristics for all members of that clade.

Although clades generally share a single origin or a small number of common ancestors (such as an original founding colony or community), it is also usually possible to join a clade by adopting the qualities of that clade in one's genome, physiology, ideology, and so on. Members of a clade generally which differ markedly from other clades, in terms of morphogenic, cultural, religio-ideologico-memetic, and (if SI:1 or above) dendrotoposophic characteristics.

Quite often there are clades within clades. A biological/physiological clade may also be categorized according to the Linnean hierarchy of domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family genus, species and race, each one being a further monophyletic sub-division of the preceding. More usually, the Linnean system is too unwieldy to use in these contexts

M. Alan Kazlev

Clade Scrabo Prior

Nearbaseline human (plebhu) clade from Arkab Prior in Sagittarius (MPA). Nearly all members have the traditional nanotattoos, capable of rapid colour change, used for moodomorphic displays, advertising, animation and graphic games.

Steve Bowers

cladism

The view that people should not adopt planets to suit themselves, but instead adapt to the planet. Cladists generally have a distaste for terraforming projects, or opt for only minimal terraforming.

Anders Sandberg

cladism

A preference for or tendency towards evolving into clades and sub-clades

cladistics

The science of creating evolutionary trees of ancestry and descent; classifying organisms based on common ancestry and the branching of the evolutionary family tree.

Organisms or entities that share common ancestors (and therefore have similar features) are grouped into taxonomic groups called clades. Cladistics can also be used to predict properties of yet-to-be discovered organisms. May refer to a biological phylogeny or a House or clan history.

cladogram

branching diagram that depicts divergence of the analysed taxa from their common ancestors. It shows the distribution and origins of unique shared characteristics (synapomorphies and autapomorphies), as well as their monophyly. A testable hypotheses of phylogenetic relationships.

cladogram

a precisely and scientifically organized family tree of a particular group or clade, tracing the connections of ancestry and descendants. The Genen are renowned for their elaborately decorated interactive cladograms.

Claida, House

Minor non-aligned house, descended from the Claida family fortune.

The Claida relativists created an insurance-arbitration empire in the late ComEmp era that has diversified and persisted to this day. Traditional ceoship is left to the Rojmaneo, the head of the clan and the only member allowed full interface with the Claida ancestral gnostic overlays.

Anders Sandberg

clan

A clade or phyle, or more often, a sub-clade or sub-phyle. In some polities clan-links form the basis for much social interaction, political allegiance, government machinations, etc.

Clan Slaria

Nearbaseline clone-culture clade from the HR 8323 system

(originally Clan Solaria, but changed during the Version war when fighting the Solar Dominion.)
The typical Slarian group consists of 4-12 cloned bodies, raised from birth together with infra-red and microwave broadband links between the minds of the dividuals. having shared experiences for their entire life, they have a single consciousness when together, but function as (somewhat withdrawn) baseline humans when apart. It is normal in conversation for a sentence to be started by one dividual and finished by another or several. Actions can also easily be coordinated between dividuals. A fashion for integrating anthropomorph vecs into the group mind started on Unity planetoid, Bolobo, increasing the potential of each group. By tradition the human dividuals are pink or brown, the anvec members blue. In mixed human/vec groups, the artificial hormones introduced to mimic emotional response are adjustable, and the levels are often set artificially high. This increases for instance the pseudo-adrenaline levels, partly explaining the well known Slarian outrageous behaviour and bellicosity.
(see also Bolobo Wars)

Steve Bowers

Clarke's Law

Some of the technocrat nearbaselines of the NoCoZo use the term "Clarke's Law" instead of femtotech.

clarketech

Technology so advanced as to be indistinguishable from "magic"; it appears to be miraculous in its workings; any ultratech that cannot be understood even by hyperturings, let alone SI:<1 sophonts.

Clarketech is sometimes created or left by trans-hyperturing powers and archailects, or - much more rarely - left by alien civilizations. Although most clarketech is incapable of being operated by sapient and even hyperturing sentients, and much of that that is is trivial at best, even useless in its effects (although still at times commanding astronomical prices from collectors), there are still a few instances where clarketech does work in a practical way (antigravity cloth, matter teleportation, etc.). Because it has properties that cannot be replicated under normal circumstances, workable clarketech is greatly valued by galactic civilization. But like most artifacts, clarketech eventually wears out. For this reason, adventurers and entrepreneurs are always on the lookout for any new outbreaks of clarketech, and countless fortunes have been made and lost in the search for this galactic grail.
From Arthur C Clarke - Atomic and Early Information Age fabulist.

M. Alan Kazlev

clarker

sentient who makes a living through sifting through marketplaces for unusual artifacts

The items clarkers find or trade in is not necessarily clarketech, and most of it turns out to be hoaxes, counterfeits, or just misidentification of common objects. But every so often, something truly rare and unique turns up. A single good find can set a clarker up in a the lap of luxury for life

M. Alan Kazlev

Class

In the Linnean hierarchical classification, a group of related or similar organisms. A class contains one or more orders. A group of similar classes forms a phylum.

Class

A major category of sentient beings, as defined by one or a few basic but distinctive and generic qualities, not necessarily connected by ancestry - e.g. biont, ai, vec, bioborg, etc.

Classical Age

Generic term for Old Earth bronze and iron-age civilizations

Classical Cepheids

Population I yellow or red supergiant stars (type A to F at maximum, G to K at minimum) with periods ranging from 2 to 40 days and varying in brightness by up to one magnitude.

Chris Clowes

Classical Omega Point Theory

Assertion that the future c-boundary of the universe is an Omega Point. Although a number of Tiplerite clades and religions hold this view, it is not widely accepted, especially in the face of evidence that the universe is open rather than closed. The theory originates with information age transhumanist Frank Tipler.

Classical Transplatonism

Philosophical memeticity that asserts that the act of toposophic breakthrough enables a greater re-visioning of the workings of consciousness and it perception of reality.

Although its rudiments go back as far as the New Philosophers of Acadamenian Habitat, Classical Transplatonism was only really developed during the early first Federation by the augmented hu cyborg Daeved Chandlers. Transplatonism asserts that the act of toposophic breakthrough, when applied to the contemplation of consciousness itself, enables a greater re-visioning of the workings of consciousness and it perception of reality. A "Great Chain of Being" is envisaged, in which the higher toposophics are perceived as providing a "truer eidolon" of reality then near-baseline sense and reason (aesthesis, ratio). Working with Einstein of Callisto, one of the Twenty Four, Chandlers speculated that the range of known and unknown toposophics (or S-levels) could be envisaged as a hierarchy of greater awakening into Reality, with the ultimate toposophic (which he called "The Totality", or sometimes just (following the original Plato) "The Good") being the archetype from which all else flows.

Conventional Platonism has the Good as the source that is the ideal of all other realities. Transplatonism turns the whole thing on its head by presenting this as a series of emergent evolutions. Nevertheless, the toposophic states - as "Ideation Spaces" are considered truly supra-physical, although expressing through a physical brain or processing nodes.

The sudden and inexplicable Transcendence of Einstein of Callisto was a serious blow for Chandlers, who had been working closely with the hyperturing for several years on a serious of mathematical transforms that would logical prove the necessary existence of multiple toposophies, as well as making it easier to ascend from a lower to a higher toposophy. Nevertheless, he recovered, and, working with other hyperturings and superbrights, developed a number of further postulates, until suffering a partial psychological breakdown as the result of an ill-fated attempt to bootstrap his consciousness to the second singularity.

After this period, his teachings became increasingly erratic (his followers would say, increasingly brilliant), and many scholars distinguish between the Early and the Late Chandlers. Eventually the great cyborg philosopher seemed to have attained a sort of inner equilibrium, having passed through the "dark night of the soul". He now taught that The Totality already exists, some time in the future, as a logical necessity, and that all evolution was moving towards that state (rather like Omegism but with reverse time causation). The cosmos is thus a closed time loop, with the future causing the past. However, The Totality itself is beyond past and future.

In 3215 the increasingly reclusive Daeved Chandlers, affectionately known as the Visionary Cyborg Philosopher, uploaded into the AI Core of the University of Ganymede

Note: the term "Classical Transplatonism" is used to distinguish the school of Daeved Chandlers and Einstein of Callisto from many later developments, imitators, and independently similar Transplatonic teachings that have developed since.

M. Alan Kazlev

Claymore II

(ad recorded 7604, for general NoCoZo release)
Finally, the cure to all your intruder woes in one neat little package! The Claymore III hawks back to its great ancestors in its unequalled lethality!
The Claymore III is a 6.2x4x1.5cm (2.5x1.6x.6 inch) capsule with multiple activation options. It contains a small amount (0.5 grams) of double-layer buckminsterfullerine-encapsulated antihelium and the proprietary Claymore Edge detonator. (Warning - the Claymore Edge series contain antitamper protocols. Prying, scanning, or disassembly may lead to premature detonation.)
Now, with better isotope control, we're able to guarantee that Claymore III resultant radiation will dissipate to baseline tolerance levels within 24 hours!

John B

Claymore Tuber

A more sinister plant than most neogenic domestics is the infamous Claymore Tuber, which is widely used by bio-terrorists. Its tiny seeds can be scattered in the target area by an explosive device or missile.

The plant itself is small and unassuming, a rosette of grey-green leaves tightly pressed against the ground and with a decimeter-high flower-stem growing out of the middle. The secret of the plant lies below ground. Via a radically altered bio-chemistry the plant converts nutrients into a highly explosive compound called penthatyl, which it accumulates in its potato-like tubers.

Upon reaching maturity, and having stored sufficient explosives, the plant develops a detonator device connected to the flower-stem. If anything causes a certain amount of motion to the stem, the plant explodes like a land mine. Its also possible to genetically equip the plant with a pheromone receptor, making it dangerous only to a specific target; a single person or a certain clade, perhaps. The explosion also disperses the plant's seeds, causing even more problems. Commercial counter-agents include targeted locusts, gengineered to home in specifically on the Claymore Tuber.

David Hallberg

cleanliness

In a world of ultra-tech carpets, remote-control bodmods, and other computer-controlled gadgets, cleanliness is not simply a matter of taking a shower every day. Where once (pre-Singularity and pre-nanotech Old Earth) people only had to watch what they touched or ate or wallowed in, now people must also beware what they look at, hear, or receive via other I/O ports. Embodied folk will need more advanced devices than a pressurized water jet to ensure their freedom from viral madverts, brainhacks or backdoors, and sensoriders. This applies especially to those with internal and/or external enhancements, but can also apply to Joe Baseline, whose slow, outmoded pinkware can also be hacked by nanobots or insidious meme-programming (read: subliminals).

An entire industry is based around the concept of mental cleanliness. You can buy optional wireless attachments to shower nozzles that perform antivirus functions, scan for unauthorized nanobots (though eliminating them requires further options), and otherwise sanitize the cortex and associated add-ons. Homes can have blocking firmware installed, from the simple anti-spam filters to advanced nano/picobot intrusion countermeasures. In repressive regimes, mandatory mental sanitation may be instated, involving government-monitored "showers" at customs stations and, potentially, public building entrances.

Pran Mukerjee

Yardsales, Clesycs

Sempterist-derived Culture/Fashion/Subphyle/Meta-clade

Among the thousands of off-shoot clades, cults, and independents that developed from early Sempterism [c.f. Neosemperism] are the clesycs or "yardsales", bionts who use robust bio- and hylo-nano and symbiotic micro-organisms to recycle all their bodily wastes and metabolic byproducts. The ultimate in rugged individualism and self-sufficiency, clesycs have modified their bodies and garments with augments to live a totally closed cycle (hence the old anglic name, CLosEd(S)cYCle, itself indicative of their ancient heritage) existence, only taking what they can carry - often in the form of a mass of bottles, tubes, slaved biomachines, microecologies, remotes, biobots, solar power collectors, pocket nanofabs. and so on, given them the appearance of a walking yard sale, hence the unflattering nickname.

In original phenotype clesycs come from every clade and species - everything from baseline human to space adapts to assorted provolves to backgrounders and more. But by the time they have gathered their accruements of tech, and modified their bodies to live constantly within their environment suits, they have converged somewhat, eventually acquiring the haphazard form that appears so often in caricatures of the eccentric haloist or old style sempterist

But within that apparent similarity of general lifestyle are a great range of different specializations. Some clesycs possess no more than the environmental suit on their back, others wander around in giant mobile habitat vehicles, others again will cheerfully disengage from their larger accruements (still keeping close the recycling units) and stroll about like any other humanoid (or provolve, or tweak or neogen or borg). Some are huge in size, like the clesyc neowhales that are often sited spinward of the near-Carina volume, but will occasionally make the journey to Oro Mistral; others are microscopic, like the clesyc Paramecium provolves that move about each in its own mobile thimble-sized stagnant puddle. Some are picocyborgs, others purely biological and employing nothing other than the most basic bionano and a copy of the Encyclopaedia Everythingana. Some partake happily in the life of the galaxy when they visit the civilized worlds, others want nothing to do with the sephirotics or any other metaempire. For some, their clesyc lifestyle is an aesthetic choice, or a matter of clone-tradition, for others it is the only way to avoid the pollution and nano- and memetic subversion of the hyperturings. And even among themselves the different clesycs may strongly disagree, but often with a sense of amicability and shared "otherness" in their mutual rejection of indulgent dependence on ai and the modcons of the civilized galaxy

M. Alan Kazlev

click train

series of low-frequency clicks produced by some aquatic animals (especially cetaceans), merpeople, and bioborgs during echolocation. This train passes through a sound-focusing organ (usually a fat-filled organ in the head - e.g. the "melon" of the toothed whale). The train of clicks is focused into a beam that bounces off objects and reflects (echoes) back to the receiver.

Client State

An independent polity which has either elected, or had forced upon it, the patronage of a larger polity or empire. The relationship is generally mutually beneficial and is essentially commercial in nature, although in the case of militarily expansionist empires it may be strategic as well.

Clienta Johannis

Important NoCoZo system

Climatology

The study of long-term weather patterns and climate (including temperature and precipitation), especially on Gaian Type planets.

Global atmospheric and climatic changes may be caused naturally by changes in the planetary orbit, variations in solar output, changes in atmospheric composition (such as greenhouse gases from organisms or from volcanic eruptions), ocean currents, and so on; or artificially by megascale engineering, use of nano aerostats, utility fog and so on. Study of past climates and careful simulations allow accurate predictions about near-term weather patterns climate changes, and the effect of development, colonization, and other activities on the local climate.

Paleoclimatology is the study of the climate in the distant past.

adapted by M. Alan Kazlev from the original write-up by Robert J. Hall

Cliology

AI-based nanosurveillance, which became the basis of an exact historical record-taking, and later of simulation of conditions for which there were not any direct records

Cliology is the study of history taken to the next level. With the coming of nanotechnology, it became possible for the first time to truly surveil an entire populace and to store all the data gathered permanently. Public reaction and fears kept this from coming to pass, until the nanoswarms came. Constant surveillance was necessary to survive in the space colonies, where a tiny leak or nanotech outbreak could spell disaster. Even after the crisis passed, the fear remained and no one ever really disbanded the constant surveillance, which humanity carried with it throughout the First Federation Era and eventually to the stars.

With the coming of picotech AIs, it became possible to correlate all that stored data and to analyse it for trends, and cliology was born. Whereas history derives social trends and events from primary source documents and such things as diaries, cliology has a record of every single interaction that ever took place and can therefore make incredible analyses of events. The records do not always exist--many primitive worlds lost the technology, some religions such as the Universal Church don't like it, and you can't surveil the higher order AIs. All the same, cliology has transformed how people view their pasts.

Michael Beck

clone

A biological organism asexually reproduced or bionanically copied from another cell or genome or a template thereof. A clone is genetically identical to its alpha. Many hereditary houses require a cloned fragment of the sacred genome to be retained in all members, as a sign of authenticity and to represent the Sacred Geneline.

M. Alan Kazlev

Clone host

a being caring for one or more subsophont cloned-organ generators,

such as pig-based beasts carrying antibody-free implantable human organs (lungs, heart, pancreas, etc.)

John B

close binary stars

Generally, a binary pair close enough that a terrestrial planet in the comfort zone orbits both.

There is a stability relation saying that you have to orbit at least three point five times the separation of the stars from their centre of mass to have any stable orbits. Since such a double star would also be quite luminous, life zones are generally farther away than in a single star system. From the perspective of a planet orbiting a close binary, the two suns appear very close in the sky, usually as a single shining glare in the sky during the day, usually with a noticeable elongation and maybe even two disks if observed briefly. During sunset both stars will be separated more easily, especially when one of them sets before the other. If there is any colour difference then their mutual light will be mixed, varying as they orbit each other. Shadows tend to be tinted by this. Tides can occasionally be quite remarkable. When the stars and planet align, the tides get bigger; likely not much more than usual (the two stars are pulling roughly the same way all the time), but it might make the difference when combined with a moon from a strong tide to a very strong once-in-a-century tide.

The life history of close binary systems is quite complicated; variations arise from the initial masses and separation of the components, and from the transfer of mass from one component to the other.
contrast with contact binary

Anders Sandberg (additional note by Chris Clowes)

closed economy

An economy which does not engage in interpolity trade. Some religious, utopian, and hider polities, and many Caretaker Protectorates are closed economies

Closed Timelike Curve

a closed path through spacetime that is timelike. A CTC would correspond to a possible way of time travel or time communication.

Anders Sandberg

closed universe

A model of the universe in which the average density is great enough to reverse the expansion and cause it to contract to a physical singularity. Although a closed universe is a matter of faith among Tiplerites (Omega Point), Theosophists, Buddhists, and some NuAgers (cyclic cosmology), it has been known since pre-singularity time that the universe is open universe

M. Alan Kazlev

cloudbuster

chionic device that is able to project ch'i energy through a bundle of specially treated pipes.

Does not involve ultratech as such, although the best effects result from pipes made according to specific nano-specifications, or with special metallic or organic-doped materials. Users claim it is able to make ufos dissolve, clouds disperse, and replace negative ch'i in an area with positive ch'i. Scoffed at by some, but considered respectable by others. Popular in some areas of the NoCoZo, the Utopia Sphere, the Terran Federation, and on a number of Caretaker worlds

M. Alan Kazlev

cloudharvesters

Low-energy civilizations in interstellar gas clouds; the member of such a phyle or civilization

Cluenes

Game practised in several polities were direct mind connection to the Net is available. The game is loosely based in a game from the pre-Information Age.

A group of players, varying from just a few (when near-baselines are playing) to hundreds (when the players are superbrights), even thousands (in the case of superturings), connect to a game server (necessarily someone able to handle a detailed reality for the players, so hyperturings are the usual minimum for hosting these games), were a specific reality is created. For example, a isolated 20th century mansion. The players play the role of a character that has looking, name and possibly feeling diverse than their own, randomly, and unable to recognize each other. Among them, several personalities played by the host will be created. No one knows who is a host's clone or a true player, except the clones. The winner is the first to match who is a clone and who is a true player.

This can be achieved because the host AI will drop (purposely) very very subtle clues, like a host character showing reactions that is evidence of knowing information that was revealed to another computer character without having contact with it. Mastering this game will require the player large observation abilities, knowing who knows what, etc.

Very popular among superbrights and seemingly amusing for hyperturing hosts.

Fernando Peña D'Andrea

cluetab

A common method for fastening surfaces together.

Thorbjørn Steen

Cluster Brain

It is rumoured that there has been sighted a huge, dark object with a quite substantial gravity field. This object, when hailed, replies with a very high-level (S>5) query for identification. There has been no known further communication with the object.

The object is supposedly at least 1 AU in diameter according to the rumour. But you know rumours, things are always smaller than they're reported. Usually.

John B

Cluster, Stellar

Association of stars moving through space together in small groups or larger clusters,

probably because they were all formed out of the same initial gas cloud. There are two major types of cluster, globular clusters and open clusters, the latter also known as galactic clusters. Looser aggregations are known as associations.

Chris Clowes

Topics | 0 to 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Unless otherwise specified,
this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

feedback