10 Things if we invent a teleporter

Technology is wonderful,  It makes hard things easy and impossible things commonplace.  At this point we have cellphones that can take pictures at a greater resolution than the human eye can see.  We have cars that can drive themselves and people are launching drones that fly around and see the world for us.  Everything we have is fine, but it depends on us going places and doing things.  Well, eventually technology may figure out how to make a genuine teleportation device.  Once that happens we have trouble.  BIG trouble.

- Privacy?  WHAT PRIVACY? - You think you've got troubles with privacy now, imagine if people can teleport wherever they like?  Teleportation would mean that your mother could pop in any time night or day.  In fact people would be able to come and go anywhere at any time.  So your home is your castle?  Not any more.  There would be no such thing as guarding a building or keeping people from it.  If it exists.  people are teleporting there.

- Government just got a LOT bigger - With teleportation just imagine what the government could do.  Police could now actually be everywhere in an instant.  yay.  Of course they will be constrained by something like 'displacement enforcement act of 2035'  Where people that had very little understanding of the technology made rules defining behavior within the technology to the benefit of large corporations and the detriment of the regular people.  We will decide that it can only be used by government and along with that we will need huge cadre's of people to enforce the new governments attempts at making our lives livable.  Also if we get teleportation, we won't really have any use for sovereign nations anymore.  Everyone will be able to go anywhere.  There will be one world government.  The problem is, who is running it?

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Goodbye Travel - Obviously the entire travel industry is upended.  Cars, Trains, Boats, Planes, they are all out of business.  The strange thing is the first things to go will be the trucks, tankers, and trains because they mostly ship cargo.  Cargo isn't alive so it won't be a risk, but once people are comfortable with teleporting goods wherever it needs to go, then people wont be far behind.  Then the travel industry as we know it will be dead.  That's a lot of jobs gone.  Buses and cars of course will still be there, but in a different capacity.  We will still want these devices so we can drive the countryside and see the sights or go on tours of historic areas.

- Immortality...maybe - Depending on how the teleportation is effected, we will immediately have the ability to become immortal.  This is based on us using some kind of transmission of the pattern of physical matter.  Like StarTrek.  If we are using a computer to store your body's pattern and then re-create it at the destination, then every time we teleport, a computer will have a 'backup' of our bodies.  If we get off of the transporter and die because we didn't watch our step on that cliff, we can simply re-materialize our bodies from the point that we left the origination point.  We will know that we died because the time will be different and if you wanted to think about it enough, you would know exactly when you died.  Instead your friends/family will stop by the teleporter to re constitute you.  The real problem there is if you are re-materializing somewhere else, what do we do with the original version of you that we just copied to send there?  We have to disintegrate you.  So you are kind of immortal, and yet you are getting killed regularly.  My problem would be how can I know if my consciousness will move with my newly materialized body?  What if my new body gets created but it's not really me?  I know,  deep thoughts.

- Home Sweet Home - One of the great problems with travel anywhere is not only how much time and money it takes to get there, but where you sleep once you are there.  Well worry no more.  Now you can visit the Grand Canyon for a lunch outing.  Stand on the edge of the precipice and look down at the canyon then zip back home for the rest of your day.  Travel anywhere will be based from your own home.

- Disneyland just raised their prices - If you have no travel barrier to anything, you now have reduced a large barrier to visiting any place on earth.  Well that includes the happiest place on earth.  Disneyland will of course have some kind of transporter blocking technology that will allow them to charge money to visit.  but since you don't have the cost of travel or even lodging (you just teleport back home and sleep in your own bed at night), Disneyland will raise their prices quite a bit because part of the price is based on limiting how many people will be in the park on any given day.  Well if the world can suddenly show up to the Magic Kingdom, you can bet Mickey will raise the prices.

- Being a person just changed - Once we have transporters, we will no longer have any need for potty training.  The next time we transport somewhere our waste is not transported with us, and we are scanned for all known diseases and troubles.  We will have forgotten what it's like to have bowel control and we will be constantly scanned for waste that is discreetly removed from us.  Houses will no longer have bathrooms.  Gas will still be a problem, but after a few generations we won't know why we have it, but it will still be funny.

- Space Travel - Local travel has changed, but long term space travel changes as well. The mechanics are of course different depending on what kind of technology we use, if it's transmitted travel, we just have to get probes out to places we want to visit that will be able to get our signal and then we pop over there.  If it's thrown teleportation where no actual receiver is necessary but we just show up in a place we might be able to get to far away places without worrying about much more than where we materialize.  Kind of like hyperspace I guess.

- Everybody gets everything - Well I discussed before that we can move anything anywhere.  That's great.  Once again, if we are using the atoms around us to recreate matter that was transmitted from somewhere else, what's to stop us from just making copies of things we want?  Nothing.  At that point there will be NO scarcity and no need.  The more interesting thing happens with things like cooking.  Lets say that you have found the best Doughnut in the world.  You scan it for transport before you try it and after eating it you find it's the best one you have ever tasted.  You want your brother across the world to get a taste of this doughnut, so you beam it over to him.  Now that there is a pattern of a hot doughnut, it's immediately available to everyone in the world that would like to teleport your doughnut to them.  They just pick it and eat the doughnut.  then they rate it.  A year later, nobody is making any new donuts and the top 5 donuts as rated by the world are the only ones being copied.  All recipes for all food will find their superlatives in teleportation.  We will only ever have the best of all hot foot and it will never need to be cooked because the heat gets teleported too.  Of course people will always want to tinker with the recipes adding a dash of this and a shot of that, but they will be able to do that virtually and just print the result to try it.  All the restaurants will close and we will all be eating the exact SAME package of Oreos.  Oh yeah, packaging goes away too, since that's made for shipping and advertising since everything would be free at that point not much point in advertising more than word of mouth and we've already discussed shipping.  You won't save any leftovers for later either because what's the point?  You'll just dump it and get fresh food whenever you like it.  Since you need molecules to create new things from our teleporters all of our waste material will suddenly have new use.  Our landfills will be empty because we are using the garbage molecules to make new stuff.

- Teleport Trolls -  When the internet came into being we thought it would be the ultimate in information sharing for the betterment of mankind.  We would all join hands and sing Kum by yah and watch as the world emerges from it's cold war chrysalis and forms into a new free butterfly.  Then we saw the Internet trolls come and rip the wings off of that butterfly.  They just like causing trouble online with unwelcome comments and stupid fights. Not because it benefits them but because it messes things up and they like that.  Well add teleporters to the mix and I think we can see what happens next.  Most downsides to everything involve people.









There it is,  I hope you liked it.  Thanks for reading.  See ya later.

10 Things the dead might be doing.

Lets assume for a moment, like many of us do, that there is in fact an afterlife.  This afterlife has been explained to us by various religions and beliefs, and each religions version of the afterlife have 2 things in common.  1.  You are alive after you die, just somewhere else.  2.  The afterlife has only ever been verified by people that haven't died yet and are telling you about it.  Now the 2nd one seems a bit snarky, but that's not my intent.  My intent is to say that my ideas about what's going on in the next life is every bit as valid as anyone else's.  If you want to call me on it, you'll have to do it on the other side where you can say 'See Mark I KNEW you were wrong'.  But until then, these ideas all have different takes on what it means to exist in a next life and may have some basis in other belief systems.  In your mind preface each one with a 'Maybe'

- Swapping dead stories - There you are.  Dead.  Along with all the other dead people.  There are lots of them.  I mean really lots of them.  So what do people do?  Talk about common experiences.  The only common experience you will likely have on the other side is the fact that you died before you got there.  Most people will have cancer.  There might be some confusion when some mention consumption and others feel tuberculosis is a more apt description.  Choking and starving alternatively will have pretty high populations.  The really unique deaths will involve plane crashes, electrocutions, nearly perfect sky diving and a little too thrilling thrill rides.

- Trying to remember what it was like to be hungry - Lots of belief systems have you living in an immortal state in the next life.  If you are immortal, it means you aren't going to die naturally.  Pretty simple.  But if we look at a lot of the things in life that affect us, they affect us BECAUSE we are mortal.  We get hungry because our brain tells us that we need energy in order to survive and the only way we get that energy is through consumption of calories.  If you don't you will die.  Well If you are not going to die.  Eventually your brain will skip the whole hunger thing since it doesn't serve much of a purpose.  Once you don't have hunger, you don't really have a reason to like food.  So maybe that's how you can tell the freshly dead on the other side is by the fact that they are eating and they crave food.  The long timers like Winston Churchill and Socrates just chuckle and say 'I can't even remember what it was like to want food'.

- Waiting in line for the next ride - What is reincarnation?  Well it's your consciousness coming back to occupy a new shell.  Every one is a specific life and when you are done, you are judged on what you did and you either go up or down on your next roll, but you do get a next roll.  Well you are going to have to wait for your next best incarnation so you sit around and talk about your last life in your non corporeal form waiting for your next host to become available.  I'm kind of hoping for a house-cat on the next round, they seem to have it made.

- Singing in a vacuum - At one point the thought of the next life was to praise a supreme being.  The only thing you knew about the next life was the visitors that came from there to here.  Well they were singing angels accompanied by a band of angels.  We assume they are immortal.  As I mentioned before, if you are immortal you don't need a lot of things that you would need otherwise.  Like air.  What's the point?  You don't breathe it's ok.  you just don't breathe.  But if you don't breathe you can't sing?  So maybe there is air in the next life so you can sing.  Alternatively you are singing in a vacuum and the supreme being just appreciates the effort.  After having heard several less than heavenly choruses it strikes me that airless is probably the safer option.

- Watching us - There is precious little description about the day to day activities of the deceased.  So little in fact that it makes me wonder if there is anything to do there at all.  Surely you would like entertainment like we like it here within our mortal coil.  Well, maybe there just isn't much to do.  When you are immortal, concepts like DEAD LINES are laughable if not ironic.  So maybe it's more entertaining to watch us struggle through the throes of mortality.  Our petty arguments, our silly grabs for temporary power.  We really are quite a show.

- Living their own lives - alternatively, maybe there is just a life very similar to ours.  So similar in fact that they are too busy living it to spend a lot of time ruminating about the prior one.  They are just caught up in the day to day existence of wherever they are.  They have next world things to worry about.  Probably exploration of some sort.

- Trying to figure out how to keep things private - a common description of the afterlife is a time when 'all truth shall be made evident'  evident or obvious.  no secrets.  at all.  so your brain and your thoughts are instantly open for everyone to see or hear.  That's got to be particularly annoying.  It would probably be a lot like everyone running for president at the same time.  Everyone being simultaneously ashamed and offended.

- Wondering about THEIR next life - Ok, so what if the next life is exactly that.  A next life.  Different planet, different format, maybe everyone is cat people because that's how it shook out.  You die, you get there and you realize that everyone there is consumed with what happens in THEIR afterlife.  Nothing at all has changed, except you traded one existence for another, but you have many of the same worries because you are very mortal again, just different.

- Hoping they got a high score - So in some versions of theology we are in our own discreet existences.  That really follows nicely to the thought that we are just in an elaborate video game.  It's so advanced that it has granular detail for anything you look at.  You live your life and then you die and that's when you see a score.  You never really died because you were never really alive, you were just the avatar for your controller.  It does explain why you do things you never thought you would do.  It's because the person controlling you is searching for hidden power ups.

- Looking forward to Dead holidays - Maybe the dead are hanging around doing whatever they do and they see that memorial day is coming around.  They debate with each other about if anyone will be visiting their grave and should they go check.  it's kind of a drag but they figure if you've gone to the effort they should probably show up.  But then things get kind of hectic and there are plenty of projects to work on so who really needs to visit the last place you left your body?  Well, they can't HEAR you anyway no matter how much you yell, so really why bother.  Besides, you can visit ANY time you like, you don't have to fight through the crowds of the other dead that are there.  Once you have been dead long enough you don't have to worry about it.  That's a relief.  On the other hand, Mexico is doing that day of the dead thing, that seems like a LOT more fun.

There it is.  and I'm publishing this one early because I've been late plenty lately.