That was a very, very interesting read. (I started it last night, but it proved a bit much to process late at night while drinking wine...). I have to say, I'm a little creeped out by his idea of mechanical "life" replacing DNA life. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm a bit partial to good ol' biological "life"!
I hear ya. It's only a small part of the discussion, but I see where he is going with it, without explaining it fully. It makes sense that the most efficient way for
us to find intelligent life or hospitable planets for us, is to create a self replicating mechanical voyager. It could then springboard off of each suitable (for self replication) location it encounters, with multiple replicates, in search of both planets with the resources to self replicate as well as those with life or capable of sustaining life as WE need it to be.
Obviously we would program them to relay information backwards to us. But whether or not we are able to find AND get to such a place would eventually be moot to these devices. Should the day come that there is no humans to report back to (inevitably there WILL be an Earth extinction event if we don't annihilate ourselves first) they would just continue on forever colonizing, mapping, sharing information, etc.
BUT, imagine that each of these voyagers carries with it both our genetic code, AND our history, it could be possible someday that another intelligent life form could recreate us, give us our history, and Mankind could actually become extinct on Earth, but flourish elsewhere. Much like the theory of recreating dinosaurs from DNA found in amber encased mosquitoes for instance.
Or perhaps we could send actual human eggs and spermatazoa. 4 Billion humans, half being female. 2 Billion females, each generation (about 25 years) are each born with 2 MILLION ovarian follicles (eggs). Of course, there is the logistics of preserving them, protecting them from the radiation of space, fertilizing, nurturing the embryo and subsequent infants, etc. but look how far we've come technologically in just the last 100 years.
This could be our only hope of fulfilling our core biological purpose, to reproduce and continue our species.
