Did You Know?

Using related predefined interest tags for your posts, increases exposure to an interested audience.

Sovereign Sky - Excerpt 2 - Specialization is for Insects

stanlarimerPosted for Everyone to comment on, 6 years ago5 min read

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

— Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

DISCLAIMER - This draft short story excerpt is a work of Science Fiction designed to communicate insights about the actual "Real World" in which we live. Any similarities to the places, people, and events of that world are either a coincidence or a deliberate attempt to ridicule specific elements of that world that ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Excerpt 2 - Specialization is for Insects

Marty: Hey Doc. I just finished reading through your technical paper and I've got some questions.

Doc Brown: Which paper Marty?

Marty: Um, Doc's Fictional Guide to the Brown EOS (BEOS)...

Doc Brown: Oh, yeah, sorry I didn't have time to bind it and put in the footnotes and references yet.

Marty: That's OK Doc. Uh, I've never heard of a scientific paper with the word "Fictional" in the title.

Doc Brown: Well Marty, we'll be auto-deploying that document into millions of parallel universes to stimulate the collection of comments and FUD to help the probe recognize which one is ours. Most of them have scheming authorities paid to use anything I say that disagrees with their master's view of the universe to throw me in the slammer. If I go posting a real technical document they'll find a typo somewhere and I'll be wanted in every fork of the universe. That could amount to millions of instances! Marty, I just don't think I could take that kind of rejection!

Marty: But Doc, the Libyans are after you in our home universe over a matter of 80 megabucks worth of plutonium. Surely, some federally fabricated fibs can't compete with that...

Doc Brown: You've got no Idea, Marty! They take something innocent you say, find a way to interpret it technically as a felonious False Statement and then twist all their other byzantine laws to amplify that into a case of fraud, money laundering, terrorism, genocide, treason and serial jaywalking! Next thing you know you're looking at three consecutive life sentences! You just don't dare make a factual statement of any kind in most of the universes we'll be exploring. But a work of fiction? Hard to make a false statement when the fictional universe is what you say it is!

-- Encyclopedia Galactica

Marty: If you say so Doc. But in this universe I guess we have to go along with whatever our All Knowing Author says. While it may be fictional in our real universe I've got to assume its real in our fictional universe...

Doc Brown: Precisely Marty! You're getting the hang of this!

Marty: Whatever Doc. Anyhow, your current edition of Doc's Fictional Guide to the Brown EOS (BEOS) seems to be saying that you'll be launching a...

Doc Brown: "Releasing", Marty, someone else will have to do the launching from somewhere free and safe. It could be a different jurisdiction in each universe so we just have to put the code out there and let geek nature take its course. We won't have to lift a finger. Just make it open source! You know there's someone in every universe who want's to be The One who launched the Next Big Thing!

Marty: ... ok, releasing a clone of the EOS Main Chain to serve as a companion side chain for BitShares. I get that part, but why are you making all those changes that specialize it into niche like "Jurisdictionally Agile Blockchains". I've got no idea what that means, and I'm pretty sure no one else will either. Would't it be better to launch a chain that is everything to everybody? Specialization is for insects!

Doc Brown: Marty, you've got to start thinking N-dimensionally! Each of these universes already has an EOS Main Chain, well, except for those where Dan Larimer gets hit by a bus or something.

People in these universes aren't going to start using BEOS unless it does something profoundly different from the Main Chain. So we're going to offer them a highly specialized chain that selects which jurisdiction each block is signed in and in which each smart contract is allowed to execute. In addition to having high-speed interconnectivity that doesn't use the internet, each node will be specialized for ultra high performance and located in pre-selected jurisdictions like Utah, Malta, the Caribbean Ocean or International Space...

Marty: Space! Doc, we can't even get your time machine working, how are we gonna put stuff in space?

Doc Brown: Come out to the lab, Marty, I've got something new to show you!