I am glad we STILL haven't invented teleportation.
This post definitely has nothing to do with the fact that I am frustrated
with the constant delays in the Dutch public transport, and that I have had
enough time to write TWO blog posts while waiting for my train. I
like being vague about whether I am serious in this blog, but I would like
to make it clear that I am completely serious in this paragraph.
Even though I struggle with the lack of transport to my city, I am glad
we have not invented teleportation just yet. I'm no scientist (which is
ironic because I am a data scientist), so I have no interest in the how.
I am pretty sure some drunk physicist with their lab coat who have
fallen asleep by a desk full of books will wake up at 3am and scream
"Eureka!" one day, then design a first prototype before the eviction
notice due to repeating noise complaints reach him thanks to the slow
bureaucracy in this country.
I am also not interested in the what, who, where, when or why. I think there
are things beyond these questions we need to address before we invent this
thing. We have a horrible habit of inventing things first and
then debating on the laws regarding the said thing. Let's
preemptively make the laws for teleportation and get that discussion over
with. I don't want to hear the headlines telling us that my country does not
have the teleportation technology because the lawmaking process is delaying
everything.
I spent half a year to find a house while most of my friends had already
moved after a month or two. Why? I was very stubborn and I
really opposed the idea of having a roommate. Then I spent an entire
year happy for owning my very own front door. (Not to brag but I also own
the inside of the house, not just the door.) This could change drastically
once you put the teleportation in the equation.
Everywhere around the world would be within reach, in the matter of
seconds maybe. Cool. You could travel from the country Georgia to the
United States's united state Georgia in the blink of an eye faster than
any George in the history could. Amazing. But what prevents any George
from teleporting inside your living room? Do we casually agree that all
eight billion of us are roommates and give an oath that we will respect
each other's private space?
I don't want a stranger George to enjoy my house's facilities for free and
without my consent when I am doing all housework alone over here. There are
days I feel too lazy to clean up my dishes and now that anyone can just hop
into my kitchen, I would live with the stress of someone noticing the pile
of plates and embarrassing me publicly. Yes, publicly in my own house. At
this point, would I be considered the only tenant here?
The fact that someone might be listening to my horrible singing in the
shower while I think I am alone in the house would scare me so much. I
suppose this is not a concern specific to teleportation as my phone
probably has listened to me for years already. Google might have
collected enough data to make a text-to-speech bot from my voice so
maybe they don't even need to listen to me in shower to hear my singing
anyways. I suddenly feel watched.
Alright. Let's put the narcissism aside and stop entertaining the fact that
a tech giant such as Google would spend any time and resources just to
imitate a person who is as insignificant as myself. Even if they steal my
bank account with that kind of technology, the money in the bank would not
even pay for the electricity bill they spent to hack me.
Speaking of banks, how would they secure the money anymore? Would
anything be considered as a vault when everyone has physical
access to anything? Would we truly go for a digital currency if that
were to happen? And since you can go steal anything anyways, would money
be worth anything at all?
I guess not. Teleportation simply makes locations and positions irrelevant.
Every place could be here. Everything too would be here.
Assuming there is enough supply still, money and monetary value would lose
all of its meaning. Everything would be hypothetically free. Maybe we would
guard the valuables in close proximity and stop any person who
teleported in, from taking the items with them.
I am not convinced that in a world like this, farmers and other
manufacturers would actually continue production. Someone is going to
come steal the goods, or they themselves will just go steal someone
else's. That sounds like an entire economical collapse all of a sudden.
A risk not worth taking. For the sake of this blog post, I will keep
assuming there will still be production in the sense we are used to.
My other assumption would be that the technology is publicly available.
Considering the dangers, I highly doubt it would open to public. At
least, not for free or without inspection similar to how we get into the
planes. I don't like that the government would have access to something so
powerful such as this though. It's not like they can take everything I own
if they really wanted to already, but the imminency of it happening would
keep me awake at night.
I also feel like there would be some backlash from the lobbies related
to transportation. They would basically run out of customers. I
initially thought you still need public transport to get to the
teleportation machine, but what stops some personnel from teleporting to
your place with the machine then teleporting you to the destination?
That could be a very bizarre job to be honest. In the end, only those
personnel and some retro public transport lines would remain.
Some people do actually like road trips. If I understood anything from
the current economical system, someone would capitalize on it quick.
I said I am not interested in the how; but seriously, how? Where does the
air go in the place you've just teleported to? What if you teleport into a
wall? Into another person? In the same exact place that you started
teleporting? To somewhere with no electricity? How is this machine
calibrated so perfectly? How do we supply the energy required to run this
machine so many times per day? Where are you during teleportation? Are you
some molecules travelling at light speed? Do you die and get reconstructed
on the other side? (This time the other side also being on Earth.) That
would surely hurt. If your copy is created at the destination, is that still
you?
As mentioned, too many remains unresolved. Lawmakers and clearly scientist
need to consider quite a lot of things before this can really
happen. Unless we have a scheme to address all the issues I listed, maybe it
is good that we did not invent teleportation just yet. Or did we?
antiphona on 22 June 2023
"For every action there is a reaction" - sounds like we need to invest in portals before inventing teleportation!
zaydiscool777 on 06 September 2024
bro had 5 seconds of attention span