Pipe dreams
We might just have punted a few atoms or the odd photon less that a meter away– it’s early days – but it pays to think about teleportation well in advance.
Some futurologists, lazy ones, predict that eventually we’ll be carrying portable teleportation devices, similar to ipods. The reason I say ‘lazy’ is that they’ve just assumed that as like other technologies that have been developed, the end result will be portable, personal use.
That’s not always the case though. Unless you’re carrying a portable, personal nuke.
Then you have to consider an implication of teleportation – allowing people to zip off anywhere is going to redefine the term ’security issues’, but perhaps that can be circumvented with the use of anti-teleportation zones, like you can do with mobile phones… That should cover prisons, banks and such, but then there’s the whole issue of immigration and theater tickets.
Theater tickets… what I mean is this: Imagine there’s a really popular play in town, and everyone wants to get in… the theater has already anticipated this and has one of those anti-teleportation devices installed to prevent people from just appearing in their seats.
This doesn’t stop everyone trying to teleport as close as they can to the theater… chaos and crushing ensues.
Unless people have the good sense to book ahead… which somehow I doubt.
…even so, that won’t stop people teleporting themselves into the sides of buildings and waste deep in concrete. Just look at the mess we’ve made of ourselves using cars. The same principles apply – you’re not supposed to drive them into the sides of buildings, but it still happens.
Nope, telepotation will be similar to train travel, with large stations teleporting to other large stations and those stations will still sell the same terrible coffee and people will still be late because the teleporter was delayed or because they got up late and missed their teleportation time.
Ben on 
Ty on
Woe, is life never going to slow down from here on? The faster we go, the faster we need to go to go faster. We need, like, a revolution, man.
Hm..
First, we ensure that teleportation DOES become a personal thing, and that it grows on the same model that the internet has; decentralized and democratic. But it probably won’t, unless USB can handle the bandwidth. Therefore, we all need to go out and buy lots of USB 2.0 devices so that they up versions in a hurry (just to force us to upgrade).
Then, we use bittorrent (ah, vintage technology) to distribute ‘images’ of Porsches, chocolates and fine wine to be assembled over the teleporters. Then the economy will crumble. People will get fat and tipsy and laid-back..
We, the Flowfield fellowship (apologies to PBF), can then take over the world. If you want, we can make comic sans the official font.
On a completely unrelated note, I think we had better get down to researching teleport-spam filters.
I apologize for my long comments; it’s been days since I had any human contact. Tomorrow, I’ll be stepping out for a bit, I’ll let you know how it goes.
There’s no problem with long comments, not here anyway…
I think you’re on to something there, about the potential for teleport spam… I mean you could literally put products and salesmen in someones house using a teleporter… a brave new world of agressive advertising.
That and I love the idea of using bittorrent as an antiquated engine.
It seems, Adampie, that I have stopped recieving e-mails when there is a new comment on the comics I have commented on. And, because I have THE lamest memory on the planet, I keep forgetting to check for updates as I usually remember upon recieving an e-mail about a previous post.
But ah well more likely than not it is my laptop deciding the next way to make my life one millionth harder. not big enough a problem to throw a fuss, but small enough to aggravate.
Well, anyway, I was just going to apologize for not having posted very often recently, partially due to above reason, school work, and various other lame reasons. I will try harder.
Also, dunno if anyone is interested, but I got a graphics tablet last week, so my comic is one step closer to getting onto the web.
Does anyone know which hosting site would be best to use? I could try get onto DrunkDuck, I can’t get as good as Keenspot but I can use ComicGenesis, or does someone know a better site? TCAAST is getting bored of only being read by me
i’m not experienced in that myself, but my sister uses smackjeeves and deviantart. good luck in creating a webcomic, a tablet’s an awesome tool (i envy you)
ComicGenesis works for me, but I’ll be leaving there soon… it seems like I’ve been saying that forever, now. Also, graphics tablets are what is good in life… at least after you learn how to use one properly.
Laptops will try to bring you down any way they know… although that usually just means making your legs unbearably hot on train journeys.
Glad you remembered to check in though
I’ll have a look at the comment notification system tonight and see what’s going on… Is anyone else having trouble with this?
Oh, and if you need any help at all getting your comic online, feel free to give me a shout. A different version of The Flowfield Unity has appeared on virtually all of the hosting sites…
Oh, god laptops.
Actually it was AutoCAD, but blaim the pc.
Tear my hair out.
Disjointed?
yes.
Okay then, count this as a shout :p
Yeah, I’m really stuck when it comes to making TCAAST an internetual thing, if that’s a word. I can scan the comics onto the computer, i can spend what seems like hourse inking them via the tablet (which, as you said Joseph, is only a good tool when you learn how to use it properly) but unfortunatly, I’m absolutly rubbish when it comes to actually getting them anywhere. I don’t understand most of the host sites, they’re all very confuzzling. Plus, it seems I’m three years too young for some of them :p.
So yeah, any help would be greatly appreciated Adam. ta.
Damn, that replied to the wrong comment. It was supposed to reply to Adam’s, not Ben’s. Uups.
OK, it seems to me that you can do the tricky part…
I’ll have a quick look at some of the different sites and I’ll see what we can do…
Awesomeness.
As I may’ve said previously, tis my challenge for ‘08 to get TCAAST on teh interwebynet, and as the months’re shifting pretty fast, I’d best get a move on.
Lemme know if you find any sites you reckon ‘d be good fer me. I’m not good at all the technical stuff, mind.
thanks!
x
i think she’s talking about the thing you hook up to the computer and draw on
Ah! Make sure to let us know where ever TCAAST end up, when you find a home for it. Don’t want to have lonely comics, no do we?
Regarding cars.
We haven’t evolved much in the last 100 000 years or so, but we are easily able to cope with travelling at supersonic speeds, handle mass data, etc.
I think we will cope reasonably well with teleportation.
Likely we will go thru a period where we have to have some one walk in front of the car (so to speak), but soon we will have open limit autobahns.
And of course for the brave, the rich,
the lonely and the perv, even better
than the internet, don’t forget the grail:
Teleportation Sex
Followed by Telemolestation!!
MWAHAHA!!!
Look out kiddies!
Wait… didn’t they do that in Logan’s Run?
Reminds me of the preface to Bester’s The Stars My Destination, with the history of jaunting.
*slightly ashamed*
Still haven’t read it, though I’ve heard about it before.
The Vintage edition looks like a fine book… maybe I’ll Amazon it.
Haha! It’s the one that made me like Bester: I probably never would have given it a try if it hadn’t been for that Intro to Sci-Fi class I took in college (best class ever!). Since then, I’ve devoured all the Bester I can find at the used book shops — he’s great!
Even with teleportation, people will arrive at the theater at the same time they did before, they will just leave later. There will be the ones 30 minutes before, 15 minutes before, and the annoying people that arrive at the last minute, like the ones I tend to date.
Even though I’m in love with the physics, I tend to think we as humans are slow to take on new transportation ideas and I’m sure we’re centuries from getting a living creature through space in one piece. Like those flash back star trek episodes when they get that technology from the vulcans and people come back all gross. Or maybe I’m just being a pessimist. Someone needs to prove me wrong.
I don’t look forward to teleportation. Half the fun to anything is the journey to get to it.
I like the concept of teleportation, within reason. I quote Asimov’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day. “It’s all right for Canton.”
on the plus side teleportation could mean the end to liposuction, you could just leave those atoms behind.
on a cooler level it could also spell the end of cancer etc, just reassemble yourself minus the newly acquired diseased cells.
and leave them floating in the air? im seeing some problems in this, adam. this comic reminds me of the time my friend and i thought we could save the energy/fossil fuel crisis with this wicked plan we came up with. one by one the flaws revealed themselves, and each one had more disastrous/hilarious theoretical results than the last.
The best fictional treatment of ubiquitous personal teleportation I’ve found is Larry Niven’s transfer booths, especially his series of transfer booth short stories that are NOT set in Known Space. Very interesting, and he explores most of these issues.