Now Just Hold On A Cotton Picking Minute There, Pardner!

~I ran across The Transcendent City on BLDGBLOG. It is described as "an autonomous artificial machine that extends across the earth adapting to the natural eco-systems it encounters while deriving its energy from the renewable resources available at each particular site. The systems desire is to maintain homeostasis within itself whilst maintaining homeostasis within the greater system, Gaia. Its processes are engineered on the molecular scale by nano technologies controlled by molecular computers that monitor and analyse the environment." Whoa!!

I commented; “I strongly recommend Mr Hardy read Greg Bear's "Blood Music". Unleashing such an untested entity - and how could one test this except upon a world? - on the surface of the only world upon which we presently live is, in a word, insanity. "Suicidal" is another word that comes to mind.

If we wish to play with concepts like this one, which could in fact be worthwhile in the long run, then they have to be taken off world. Start off with a closed mini-world like a biome, then, if the results seem favorable, try them out on Mars...and wait. When one Plays God, one must have the Patience of a Divine Being.”

Sure, it's real pretty an' chit, but I mean really, wtf are these guys smoking? Pure distilled Hubris?