David DeCoteau needs to turn that into a movie immediately.
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I’ve not heard of DeCoteau before but a google search convinces me it would be a darn good match.
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Luckily the Earth is always open.
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The belief that the “US government” reverse-engineered alien technology always drives me crazy (and I even roll my eyes at sci-fi stories that involve reverse-engineering alien/future technology). I have an uncle who believes in that shit. I do enjoy being enraged by it, though, as it’s such a fun exercise in thinking about science and technology work.
For one thing, all the technologies they point to as the ones so benefiting (e.g. computer chips), are things where we only see incremental improvements based on a lot of very public, very well-documented papers and research (involving people all around the world). They claim that the alien tech allowed for mysterious leaps in technological advancement, that we just don’t see.
My main problem, however, is that Technology. Doesn’t. Work. That. Way. The whole idea of that kind of leap doesn’t make sense. We only “reverse engineer” things based on comparable understandings of physics and manufacturing techniques. If you took a modern computer chip back to the end of the 1920s, less than 100 years ago, at the point where they had quantum physics all the other basic science necessary to understand how it works, it wouldn’t help them build it. On the science side, building the chip requires a modern, finer understanding of quantum physics beyond what they had, science derived in part from the challenges and phenomena seen in the previous generations of chips. Then there’s the practical side of investigating it and replicating it. They’d lack the tools (e.g. electron microscopes) necessary to even explore the basic structure of it (and certainly not without totally destroying it); there would be no way to look at particular parts while they functioned to see how they operated. They lacked transistors, semiconductors (etc.) Even if they could somehow derive the idea of transistors or silicon-based semiconductors, it wouldn’t help much. They’d still have to figure out how to make them, with no understanding of the basic processes to make a crude IC. They’d not even have the tools (nor the tools to make the tools…) to make the equipment. Much less to make a modern IC that took generation upon generation of tool and equipment improvement and understanding of the processes. Heck, they wouldn’t even have the materials needed - only a couple places on Earth have silicon of the required purity for modern chips. Take the chips back about 200 years, all they might understand is “it uses electricity, but otherwise appears to be magic.” Further back than that, it would be pure magic. I often wonder if there’s any time in the past you could take a modern computer chip back to (say even 10 or 20 years) that would cause any sort of leap in chip development. I suspect not.
And the claim is being made about supposed alien technology that allows interstellar travel with reasonable time/energy requirements, which would violate physics as we know it. That’s not something that’s based on current science, much less technology. We’d have no basis for beginning to understand it, much less reverse-engineer it or build it.
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Sure, but they’re talking about the more obvious alien tech: Velcro, onesies for grown-ups, eggnog, that sort of thing. /s
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I’ve seen people seriously suggest that Velcro came from aliens… the product based on a natural material that people frequently interacted with, that was just waiting for someone to work out a manufacturing process to make. Adult onesies seem downright plausible as alien technology in comparison.
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Maybe this is why the F-35 still sucks.
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They have an easier time believing it involved alien technology than that it involved Lynn Conway’s work. That’s just un-possible.
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Ahem; “Did someone say Star Trek?”
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So I gather the aliens and/or gubmint n’er-do-wells are no longer mystifying the denizens of New Jersey?
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Here’s a theory; the gubmint was running a test to see how long it would take people to become desensitized to unusual phenomena.
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Oh. And here I am thinking that was purpose of the Donald Tromp Robot.
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“We have long ago advanced past your primitive need to tie shoelaces.”
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I guess those drones don’t have geofencing. New Jersey is mostly an exclusion zone.
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I wonder if the episode is making fun of the (existing) idea, or people got the idea from the episode… it wouldn’t be the first time that some bit of UFO/alien lore came from a Star Trek episode.
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If anyone is curious, this is the earliest display of Velcro I have seen
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Wasn’t velcro developed by a scientist after removing [Ed. note: ^&#^&@#] burdock stickers from his doggy? ETA: IIRC, he examined one of the bastard burdock stickers under a microscope, and was inspired.
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