Replicator Tech Breaks (Or At Least Greatly Complicates) Sci-Fi Storytelling

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Riddick
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Replicator Tech Breaks (Or At Least Greatly Complicates) Sci-Fi Storytelling

Post by Riddick » 09-03-2020 11:15 PM

As transporters de-materialize a person and in the process reduce them to information detailing their subatomic pattern, conceptually what’s to stop humans from digitizing themselves?

Instead of reassembling you out of actual matter, why not have the holodeck reassemble you as virtual matter? You could then be immortal, impervious to illness, yet lacking none of the benefits of corporeal existence.

If ever desired, you could simply be re-materialized out of actual matter, or as a “hard light” hologram. It should be as easy to transport between a virtual environment and reality (ala TRON) as between two real space locations.

Now we get to the heart of the matter. If you have warp drives, advanced AI and molecular, atomic or subatomic assemblers, why build massive, manned star ships? You could instead build a much smaller, more resource efficient unmanned vessel with large format replicators.

Colonists would never have to endure manned spaceflight. The journey would be effectively instantaneous from their perspective. What’s more, these vessels would have everything necessary to make copies of themselves.

Star ship battles also ought to play out very differently in a world with replicators. It should be entirely feasible for a ship’s computer to repair any damage inflicted upon during battle, in real time.

Taking replicator tech implications to their logical conclusions, the future would be one with few or no humans in it, as we currently define human. But a 'self-replicating robots systematically colonizing space' story isn't very relatable.

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