Sunday, December 19, 2010

42

A small warning before you read this post. This particular post is the result of reading way too many Sci-Fi books and watching even more movies from the same genre. But it is about a notion that I like to entertain from time to time. So if you disagree with what's about to follow (and I am pretty sure you might), just remember, it's just one man's idea of what could be.


The movie TRON and its long awaited sequel TRON Legacy entertain a fun concept. That the ubiquitous computer houses a digital world of its own, where programs are walking talking replicas of their human creators, living in fantastic digital domiciles and travelling along grids of computer hardware.There is, in essence, a whole other form of life existing in a space no larger than a nano-centimeter (maybe even less!)


Now, what if this concept was extended to our own world. Confused? Let's say just like the human-looking programs in the TRON universe, we too are nano-scopic life-forms to another class of higher beings or creatures.


Before you completely dismiss the idea on the basis of scientific possibility and all sorts of laws and theories, consider this. 500 years ago, we were certain that the earth was at the center of the universe, 50 years ago, we were absolutely certain that the atom was the smallest particle in existence and just a few years ago we thought the Pluto was a planet. Our concept of reality and our idea of the world around us keep evolving as we evolve as a species. So, isn't it just possible that our minds probably cannot accept such radical notions simply because we cannot comprehend the enormity involved.


Douglas Adams, in his Sci-Fi comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy hints at this concept when he states that our entire planet is (rather was, since the planet is disintegrated within the text of the first few pages!) in fact a giant computational matrix with the inhabitants, us, serving as integral organic computational components. If you ignore the part where he mentions that a race of super-intelligent mice had commissioned the massive-computer, the concept isn't all BS.


Throughout modern history there have been numerous concepts and theories proposed by scholars and thinkers regarding the reality of our existence. Many believe that our world may in fact be part of a simulation being run in a world far greater in scale and exponentially more technologically advanced than our very own. What if this was in fact true?


I can already hear the majority (read as ALL of you!) writing this post off as a madman's rambling. To you I say, just stop thinking in terms of rationality and step beyond our "limited" knowledge of the universe (or multiverse, whichever concept you subscribe to) and think about what is being told here. Isn't there just a teeny-tiny possibility of this actually being true?


For those of you scratching your human heads over the title of this post, here's the background - 42

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