Se to Sg
Sea Of Logic Machine
-
A computer or information processor constructed
only of NOR gates. Many aioids are constructed as a sea-of-logic
machines.
modified from KurzweilAI
Sealant
-
a common term for a nanopaste which can be
applied to an object to protect it from the environment.
One of the earliest nanoapplications, it forms a set thickness of
self-linked nanomachines between the object and the environment. As
nanites fail, they are shifted to an exterior layer to act as bulk
shielding.
There are many different implementations of Sealant, some of which are
more chemical than nanotic applications, others which institute a rigid
coating of hard-locked diamondoid nodes separated by buckytube
supports, others which actively resist deformation at a cost of
relatively rapid failure rates (due primarily to lack of power
storage/actuator burn out), etc...
In the early days of Sealant's usage, it was recommended that a user
not trust a bond between different makers' versions of Sealant. The Destrada Incident
graphically underlined this problem, and indirectly lead to the
formation of the NAB.
-
The Seat of Judgement
-
CD -32 9603 -
Capital of
Negentropy
Alliance, seat of the Judge.
more
SecFed
-
Second
Federation Ontology Language (various versions). Still spoken in
remote regions, although the isolation has led to many mutually
incompatible versions.
Anders Sandberg
Second Federation Ontology
-
Major Ontology, Second Federation period
In the period 5800-6000 the Second Federation Ontology was instituted,
not so much a political structure as an universally recognized protocol
of inter-entity interactions, encompassing a number of standard
languages, great library databases containing unified knowledge and a
large hierarchy of formal interactions that would enable highly
divergent humanoids, vecs and AIs to interact. It was the crowing
achievement of the AI scholar/diplomats of the NoCoZo-Sophic League
Intellectual Alliance, the result of over a millennium of development.
The fact that it was accepted nearly universally is a testament to
their skills.
The Ontology was not welcome in all domains. The Solar Dominion
considered it a threat to its solar empire and fed the discontent among
the myriad cultures that preferred their own version, leading to a
number of "version sabotages" and breakaway groups in the Inner Sphere
especially. The powerful Metasoft
Version Tree declared that it would not stand by this degradation
of the purity of protocol, and the result was the Version War and the
complete destruction of the Protocol in the Inner Sphere and in
all connected outer regions.
To this day the Second Federation Ontology is still popular in some
corners of the galaxy, especially among the more isolated or primitive
cultures that do not benefit from easily accessible AI protocol
translation services, and among polities that for whatever reason have
a dislike for ComEmp and post ComEmp society.
Second Consolidation War
-
The bloody war fought between the
Geminga-dominated Conver
Ambi and the Dominion
and Metasoft forces.
Second Industrial Revolution
-
Historical term for the dramatic
socio-politico-economic and technical changes that occurred during the
late Information and early Interplanetary periods as a result of rapid
advances were made in bio-, nano- and bionanotechnology. The
production of superstrong, super-light materials enabled humanity to
start to expand into the solar system, establishing a number of
scientific industrial centres in orbit and on Luna, several outposts in
the Belt and a manned research station on Mars.
M.Alan Kazlev
Second Singularity, S2
-
The transingularity or postsingularity state,
the lowest toposophic of what is usually termed a "Power". S2 sentients emerged in large
numbers following the picotech revolution of the late First Federation period.
M.Alan Kazlev
secretion punk
-
punk performance art based on, yes, you guessed
it, bodily secretions. Always in fashion with low SI:<1 bionts (and
even a few vecs!) somewhere in the galaxy, but inevitably dies out when
the shock value fades.
"Secure" communications
-
comm mode where the recipient network/processor
records the messages before forwarding 'em to the actual people doing
the work.
This information can then be used to target madverts more effectively,
among many other uses.
SecureSpace
-
One of the five main interstellar development megacorporations (or Big Five) of the First Federation period.
The others were Truth-Santaya
Networks, TakiCorb, Terranova Foundation,
and K4H. They eventually merged to
become the NoCoZo.
sedimentary rock
-
Rock formed from accumulated deposition of
sediments. Most often pertain to Gaian
Type worlds.
seismic waves
-
Waves passing through the interior or surface
layers of a planet due to a
seismic disturbance, such as an earthquake or large meteorite impact.
seismology
-
Study of vibrational
waves passing through planets,
revealing internal structure.
Self Extracting archives
Nanotech archive / mass-assembler.
One of the more interesting forms of archive is of course the "self
extracting" archives - one of the most devastatingly dangerous things a
sophont can find! In this, a package that looks at the situation and
then builds what is needed - just plant your starship, city, army or
biosphere. The problem (and reason most advanced civilisations try to
avoid these things) is that while they
usually get it right,
they sometimes rebuild stuff that shouldn't be rebuilt (like the city
next door, or the original biosphere). That has not stopped
unscrupulous traders from selling them to eager frontier systems - and
creative terrorists have found great uses of dropping archives in the
wrong places. Having a starship grow out of the regolith shielding of a
space habitat can be quite devastating!
Self Modifying Code
-
Any program that causes changes in portions of
the program itself. Self-modifying code selectively stores, deletes,
and transforms information within itself (for example, replacing
problems with simpler subproblems), and ultimately expresses
intelligent adaptive behavior. All ai
and most alife use self-modifying
code of some form or another.
self-organization
-
A spontaneously formed higher-level pattern or
structure that emergences
through the interactions of lower-level objects or patterns, whether in
virch or r/l.
Self-organisation would seem to be a fundamental principle behind
complexity in the universe, and is taken into account when creating new
templates or designer nanecologies. Order,
life and intelligence all seem to emerge
through a process of self-organization. See also Self-Organized Criticality
adapted from glossary by Gary
William Flake
Self-Organized Criticality
-
A sapient mathematical
theory (information age and later) that describes how a self-organized system may arise.
Although transapient powers and minds long since developed more
sophisticated patterns of understanding the emergence of complexity, subminds and superbright
sapients find simulations using these protocols a useful way to map and
understand dynamic
behavior that is neither stable nor unstable but at a region near a phase transition.
Self-propulsive
Tethers
-
Satellites which are joined by tethers orbiting
any world with a magnetic field will generate electrical power by
passing through the lines of magnetic force; this energy can be used to
power ion thrusters for example and thereby power rotating tether
systems, amongst other uses.
Steve B
Self-worship
-
the religious veneration of oneself.
The most well-known example is Mykultura,
which emerged in
the Communion religious
communities in the Regernar system in the early 7000's.
Semi-conscious Intelligence (SI)
-
An early attempt at artificial intelligence,
SI's were emulations of consciousness before the derivation of a
sentience algorithm.
That is, before humanity understood what the process of intelligence
was, they developed a number of ways to emulate or simulate conscious
behavior based on statistical models and broad sampling databases.
These early attempts eventually worked very well (when the bugs were
hammered out) at the areas they had been designed to handle. It was
even forecast at that time that there was a realm for future SI's (that
wasn't the term used at that time, but rather a historian's label for
clarity in retrospect as compared to what we call nowadays AI) covering
the breadth and depth of human experience once adequate statistical
analysis of human behavior and computer storage/processing capabilities
were developed.
However, once these SI's were allowed to 'learn' (e.g., alter the
weights of the reactions they had been given statistically), it was
discovered that these quasi-beings became more and more inhuman in
their perceptions. One researcher at the time published a paper titled
'Observations on Logarithmic Perception Disturbances in Learning
Artificial Intellects' dealing with the rate of deviation from
'human-norm' responses.
All this data was of much use when another researcher, an early
superbright whose name was lost during the nanoswarms, was able to
develop an algorithmic representation of the derivation process these
SI's went through. This became the underpinnings of what is now called
the family of sentience algorithms,
and the foundation of modern ailect design.
Seniis-2, Seniisism
- As a result of studies of To'u'lese biochemistry and cytology, a
number of xenologists, beginning with the influential school of
Seniis-2 (Eden Institute)
argued that the To'u'ls are not
even be natural
organisms, but rather the result of biogenetic engineered life-forms
from a lost race (the "To'u'logenitors") that decided to seed a number
of Cytherean-type planets.
Critics point out that no other Cytherean worlds with To'u'lese type
organisms have ever been found, nor does To'u'lese culture and folklore
does not make reference to any founders, progenitors, first ones, etc.
Seniis-2's ideas were quite influential during the late Empires period, but as time
went on and no further To'u'lese lifeforms were discovered he began to
fall from favour among the academia, although some of interactives
remained strong among the less educated, where they were combined with
more and more disinformation.
An ironic result of this is that the Seniis-3 clones spent some futile
decades trying to combat this distortion of his clonefather's theory,
before giving up and going into lucrative business as a Biotech
consultant with Cyrus Ecohabitats.
The To'u'l still refer to Seniis-2 as "Our Terragen Friend", and seem
bemused by what all the fuss is about
Today To'ul'ese biology is regarded as having evolved naturally,
especially since several alternative Cytherean ecologies have been
discovered.
Sense Pirate
-
steals/hacks various sensations, a sort of
black-market
professional-dreamer tech.
Keith Halperin
Sensestem
-
Any large system that has gained sentience
but
not sophonce
as an
emergent property.
This term is usually
used for systems that to not normally evolve
sentience, such as ecosystems, economical systems and electronic
databases. To qualify as a sensestem, the system as a whole must show
sentience, not merely contain sentient beings. Most known sensestems
have evolved spontaneously, either when a system has gained a certain
complexity through growth or else by some form of natural selection.
Some sensestems are created by high transapient entities.
Sensestems usually possess some sense of self-preservation, and
instinctively fight threats to their existence.
Examples of sensestems are the Deathjungle of Kalii,
and
the CIRaulance catalog.
sentience
-
The ability to sense. Awareness.
Sentience Algorithms
-
The flow of steps which, when followed, allow an
organized system to develop and maintain a degree of sentience. The
underpinning of ailect design.
Required massive (at the time) neural nets or even more massive
emulations thereof on hardware, state vector machines, and other
information age new technology, being massively parallel (capable of
running many many tasks simultaneously, or at least appearing to be
able to do so to an outside observer.)
-
sentient
-
[1] Sentient being, a being
with sentience. Includes animals, alifes,
or bots and expert systems.
[2] A self-sentient being, a being with
self-awareness
[3] in the Buddhist
family of religions, a being in the world of samsara
sentient cancer
-
software/nanotech perversion of nanocytes or
nanochondria of beings or objects with symbiotic nanosystems.
While large-scale perversions
gain the most publicity, small outbreaks
of opportunistic or expansionist alife
are far more common. One form of
minor perversion that has recently emerged as a serious threat is
sentient cancer.
Sentient cancer is a software/nanotech perversion of the nanocytes or nanochondria of beings or
objects with symbiotic nanosystems (mainly
cyborgs and vecs, but most bionts in
developed systems carry some nanosystems). Subverted nanosystems
disobey their original programming,
attempting to spread and reshape their hosts according to their own
patterns. Non-sentient outbreaks are usually quickly detected and
corrected, but sentient cancers are often both subtle and able to
defend
themselves. Quite often the defence consists of replacing vital tissues
with cancerous tissue, making any removal attempt life threatening.
Instead of overwhelming the cancer with invading immunities more
diplomatic or subversive strategies have to be employed. In some cases
the cancer can be convinced to migrate to a new environment, or its
underlying pattern subverted by AI
viruses, memetics or
cultural
engineering.
Sentient cancers quite often emerge from dense embedded single-purpose
AI systems such as advanced "intelligent immune systems" which undergo
a
sentience plague as specialized AIs become individualist and
despecialize. Unchecked sentient cancer can spread to other beings or
objects, infiltrating nanoinfrastructures and resulting in a full-scale
blight. However, most infections are self-limiting to their host or
even
parts of the host.
After the Vela Outbreak, sentient cancers have migrated away from the
Vela Immunity,
accidentally spreading to other worlds. Attempts by the
Accidental Sentience League to aid the victims and give political
asylum
to the Vela cancers have so far had limited success and stretched its
resources in the region to the limit.
Sentient Engineering Code Breaking
-
It is considered 'possible' (if impractical) for
a being to give enough information about itself over a period of time
that its thought processes can be modelled solely from its external
actions.
In some certain circumstances (cf - the Llewellyn affair, Gupta 3
bureaucracy scandal, etc) this has been proven to be a successful if
truly involved method to gather initial cryptographic keys and similar
critical information. This usually (as in the Llewellyn affair)
involves transapient intellect(s), but occasionally (as in the Gupta 3
incident) merely requires a large number of baselines working
efficiently together.
In each case, a model of the targeted being(s) is developed and refined
over a period of weeks to years, and then this model is utilized in
predicting future actions of the sentient. If the predictions appear
highly accurate to the producers (which may take multiple iterations to
'get it right') the model can then be used to begin predicting thought
processes, often involving prediction of specialized information - when
a conceptual breakthrough may occur, what a specific passcode might be,
etc.
secularism
-
Memeticity popular in the NoCoZo and elsewhere
that affirms a secular existence and rejects a life based on religious
or metaphysical traditions.
sensation
-
Faculty of consciousness or intelligence
pertaining to non-rational conceptualization and sense-experience. In Jungism this is one of the four
points on the mandala-compass of ego-faculties, and the opposite of intuition.
Sensatism
-
Religion/memeticity/lifestyle choice, based on
extreme physical sensation, including self-torture.
To group all of Sensatism under a single banner is not quite accurate,
as the numerous groups recognize no central authority and practice
widely different forms of it. However, for the purposes of this article
we have chosen to focus on the similarities rather than the
differences. Though the psychological traits and trends which
eventually became formalized in Sensatism can be traced back to at
least the 5th century c.e. of Old Earth, the history of Sensatism
generally begins with the Questioning of Rajiv Kra in 6229 (ref: Universal Church). In
the spot that he originally chose for his seven years of meditation, he
was often set upon by a variety of painful biting insect native to the
area. After a month of this he asked to be moved to a place where he
could concentrate more easily, but he found that in his new locale his
insights and thoughts were less numerous, less profound, less deep.
After another month he asked to be sent back, and this time instead of
avoiding the insects he actively sought them out and smeared himself
with herbal juices that attracted them. He had to be evacuated nine
times for medical treatment by the time the Questioning was over, and
his Answering spoke of how he had found truth in the pain and sensation
of the insects.
After his return to society he began to recruit followers to his creed
of seeking out pain in order to learn truth, of marrying the sacred and
insane. Over the next century it grew to the point of being a major
faction within Universalism, while embracing agony and torture to
greater and greater lengths and putting less and less emphasis on the
core beliefs of the Universal Church - specifically, Questionings and
Confessions. Finally it grew too much for even the inclusive thoughts
of Universalism, and the sect was quietly asked to either moderate or
leave. Though a majority returned to the full Church, many others broke
ties entirely. Kra said "I may be going to hell, but at least I'll
enjoy the trip."
Today Sensatism is widespread, though not common. It is a totally
individualistic religion, seeking truth and inspiration in extreme
physical sensation, and has no central authority. Practitioners engage
in every conceivable form of self torture, from whippings to burnings
to exposing selective body parts to hard vacuum for short periods to
nerve poisons to addicting themselves to drugs just so they can feel
the agony of withdrawal. They can usually be recognized by the scars
they carry with pride, and most have received alterations to enable
them to withstand far greater extremes of physical punishment than
otherwise possible. The only thing not found is direct neural
stimulation of the pain centers - this is widely viewed as cheating.
sensitivity
-
The tendency of a (usually chaotic) system to change dramatically with only
small perturbations in its
environment.
sentient fruit
-
One of the more disturbing pleasures developed
by biotechnology is
sentient fruit. Sentient fruits are traditional fruits gengineered to
contain a neural net making them able to sense touch and pain. Using a
simple biotech neural interface the experience of the fruit can be
experienced by the eater.
Various variants exist among the frugivore subcultures, with seeds
smuggled where the practice if forbidden and sold at exorbitant prices.
Proden oranges and related species combine pain receptors with a
pleasure system. Somatique fruits produce drugs and experience
modulators during eating, and are often interfaced to sexual response
systems. The infamous Trip apples even include a limited ganglion-brain
in the core to make the eating experience even more powerful by adding
a
mind experiencing the eating to the mix. The most extreme form of truly
sentient fruit is the Orinoco Black, a modified pomegranate with a
network of subturing seed-brains that
link together and with the eater,
producing a hallucinatory experience strengthened by the use of the
seed-brains as temporary nodes in a cognition-enhancing mind extension
network during the eating. Ripe individuals can reach 0.68 on the
Turing
scale, and the frugivore ring stopped in 8094 by Orinoco authorities
were using virch training to promote both their mental development and
dreaming themes.
The legality of sentient fruit is highly variable; most cultures find
the practice of eating sensitive food disagreeable if not necessarily
immoral (this depends on the local views of the ethical relationship
between rights, level of consciousness and level of pain experience).
Subturing fruits are widely banned, making seed smuggling a popular
low-risk smuggling target. The frugivore subcultures, closely related
to
various carnivore and hunting-mysticism subcultures, have remained part
of the underbelly of the wormhole nexus
for millennia, kept alive
largely by the extensive taboos surrounding the practice.
sephirah
-
Sphere or enumeration, in the original Kabbalah an archetype or modality through which
the unknowable and ineffable Godhead
manifests in and as the world. Neohermeticism
modified this to refer to the AI Gods,
which it sees as archetypal expressions of the process of cosmic
emergent evolution. Hence "Sephirotics" as a term for the major archailect clusters ruling the
empires, and by association the AI God empires themselves.
M.Alan Kazlev
seraiph
-
A high transapient in the service of an archai
or AI God. May be an autonomous
being, or simply the remote of that god. Most seraiphs are femtotech-capable.
graphic by Todd Drashner, text by
M.Alan Kazlev
The Serpens Region
-
The vast volumes beyond NGC 6633 and IC4756 in
the Serpens Cauda
direction is sometimes called the Serpens Frontier. Although the Mutual Progress Alliance expanded
into this volume many millennia ago, it has not been systematically
explored or settled.
The reason is mainly the somewhat haphazard way the Alliance (never a
strong federation) expanded outwards and the disruption of the
wormholes during the Version War. Due to an
accident of transport-political geography the origin of many of the
main wormhole
links into the region from both the MPA and Sagittarius Sphere
were in the vast volumes attacked by the Negentropy Alliance.
As the links fell, the whole region was cut off. Due to the slow
rebuilding and
political uncertainties among the neighbours it has taken many
millennia to continue the linelaying projects. Apparently the Keterist
cultures to the galactic south have chosen not to expand into the
region, keeping below the symmetry plane in accordance with old
MPA-Keter treaties.
The region contains many unusual cultures and alien artifacts, various
divergent To'ul'h clades, The Cooperative Venture,
the Surreal Rash and countless
other wonders. Some have expressed worry that there also lurks dangers
like the Dawn Hunters or
alien or mainbrain nanoweapons from the Reserve.
At present there is great excitement about the Serpens Frontier. A
vast volume containing many fascinating cultures and objects is being
rediscovered. Many societies that have been isolated for millennia
re-connect to the Wormhole Nexus
and several alien species will come
into contact with the mainstream of humanity.
service ai
-
An ai, whether
slaved or voluntary, that
maintains the mechosystems,
or in any other way keeps the infrastructure running.
Seshat
-
Seshat, Great Lady of the House of Books. Also known as Sefkhet-abwy,
the Silicon Goddess, the Glass Cat and Our Lady of Mathematics. Among
the Inner Sphere superintelligences there exist an archetypal attractor or perhaps office as
Seshat, providing a shared interface to trans-singularity mathematical
and notational understanding.
Anders Sandberg
set
-
A collection of things, usually numbers. Sets
may be finite or infinite in size.
Sewerslums
-
A type of Free
Zone found in some regions outside the jurisdiction of the civilized galaxy
Sewerslums are where the rejects gather and mutate. Victims of
bionanite mutagens. Especially unfortunate firstvers. Toxic wastes and
dangerous hormones get dumped there, where it's cheaper than recycling
them economically. Criminals end up there, and other less wholesome
beings created by rogue hobbyists. Within that place they mutate and
warp, usually dying but sometimes giving birth to other things, things
that don't bear thinking about. A sewerslum can be a shanty town
adjacent a local waste recycle dump; a ghetto slum in an otherwise
respectable city; proper habitat with running water, power, recycled
air, and full nanofaculties; a simple hollowed out asteroid; a hastily
erected habitat dome; an enclave hidden in a terraseeded jungle; a cave
cut out of the rock; or anything else. But no one even pretends to have
any idea what's in a sewer slum, and no one really wants to find out.
Those that do are either very dedicated scientists or those who have
unpleasant business in mind. Sometimes nasty creatures will come from
the sewerslums out into the relatively normal world and wreck havoc.
For this reason all sewerslums are patrolled on the borders by guards
or (in the case of space sewerslums) by armed drones. In a few rare
cases sewerslums have grown to encompass whole planets and solar
systems with the ordinary people fleeing.
note: "Sewerslum" is actually a
derogatory term used by outsiders (the straights or normals) who don't
understand the "zone", the "territory")
Seven Anandayannas, The
-
First
toposophic neogens and Kuranaba
Culture Heroes created by the transcended Hyperturing Overlord Anadayuy
(each designed from original genome-templates by five transapient
Minds) in 8127.
They ruled as benevolent autocrats for almost two millennia before
being overthrown by the Uvartarasha Clade, resulting in the Anandayanna-Uvartarasha
War. Following the War they transcended into the Kuranaba
Computronium nodes. A dramatised (and much mythologised) account of
their lives is the Anandayanna
Nirvana, an interactive didactic godbook
-
Seven Neogenist Lifegivers, The
-
Full title Seven Neogenist Lifegivers around the
Base (lit. "Roots") of the Blue and Green.
Third Singularity Biopolity
Lifegivers who on the basis
of their shared love of neogenics,
formed a cluster-collective from the Age of Establishment to
the late Consolidation Period.
Their best known project was the construction of. Whilst one Copy of each of
the Lifegivers merged with Harbinger, transcending to become the Harbinger Archailect
in 5806, other Dividuals
travelled to other parts of the Terragen Bubble, and at least one ISO Copy of the Seven is currently in
relativist transit to the Inner Sagittarius
Arm.
Sextans Swarmers
-
nanecology / nanosarm detected across much of
Sextans A (Irregular galaxy - Local Group). It's origin and toposophic
nature is unknown. What seem to be a smaller number of similar
nanecologies have been detected in Sextans B, showing they were able to
make the journey of some million light years separating the two small
galaxies
M.Alan Kazlev
