Geeks bearing gifts

[unixronin]

I had a sort of half-asleep dream last night in which I was selected (for some reason) to be the contact-point, or front-man, through which a lot of advanced technology was to be given to humanity¹.  And, as I lined up legal backing from the EFF and the High Frontier Foundation to try to protect against the government just grabbing everything and declaring it all top secret, I found myself thinking, "Aw, c'mon, do I have to do this now?  I don't want Bush somehow getting credit for this."

[1]  Starting out with a safe, reliable, scalable fusion power source, and a solid-state air-breathing thruster that had no moving parts and required no fuel, just power.

Comments

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

Tell them we'll take all the goodies in 2009. :D
'Cause you Know Bush will claim all the Good Stuff. Mind you if anything ends up being bad, it will be Bill Clinton's fault. Even if Hilary is already headed for the White House. Though they might try to blame it on the Future Democratic President, just to be different.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

well, first thing you could do is IMPORT the tech from "another country"... perhaps first by having an island "nation" generate the power and sell it for dirt dirt cheap. possibly to other countries, first.

then sell dumbed down "slow" versions of the thrusters as commercial upgrades, sealed, and tamperproof to fishing boats, and various things. slowly introduce the tech, like SG1/MIB, and before people QUITE realize what's going on, it's all around you.

and in the meantime, very carefully giving credit to various people and agencies such that history can't be re-written or taken credit for later, as in "there were no government loans, or assistance, the US govt takes no credit or hindrence in this affair... at any time", and in particular, step in with a big noise to save the day IF a govt/agency really bolluxes things up. out of generosity on your part ;)

oh, and refuse to sell the really good stuff to agencies, govts, and such you don't like. island nation, nice force field :)

welcome to alien depot...

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[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Heck, if I could afford to set up an island nation, sure. But if it included, say, forcefield tech, then start out by buying a big plot of land someplace, construct a house and a fab facility there, wrap a forcefield around it, and start releasing tech a little at a time. No governments, and no exclusive licenses.

"What's the forcefield for?"
"To keep you honest."

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

As for the idea of importing power from such an island nation, though, I recall from the dream one of the arguments I made as to why the government should NOT simply declare it secret was that by rolling it out in all US sectors, public, private, and commercial, the US would at a single step both obtain complete energy self-sufficiency, with no need whatsoever for foreign oil, and at the same time massively reduce both greenhouse and ozone-layer impact far beyond anything required by the Kyoto protocols.

(Fear my run-on sentence fu!)