The easiest way to produce a superhuman intelligence turns out to be wiring human minds together into a “Hive Mind” gestalt; gestalts are considered full ‘persons’ and mere humans are considered more like something between appendages and pets, but a given gestalt’s character and personality are entirely dependent on the individual humans that make it up, and the happiness of the individual human members is the result of the happiness of the gestalt. Gestalts frequently solve disputes by swapping members, to promote empathy and share insights. Gestalts effectively function as highly cooperative corporations or family units where everyone with the gestalt cares deeply about the getsalt’s goals and brings their own unique cognitive talents to bear solving them, while unconnected individual humans are devalued for simply lacking the capacity to think with as much breadth and depth as a gestalt can.
Technological Weirdtopia:
The nanotech revolution turns out to be very, VERY wet; the most efficient system of controlled nanoassembly is to simply have your own geneformed body excrete whatever you want to produce, if you can’t just solve the problem by growing a new appendage. Sex, cannibalism and communication all merge into a single act; people win arguments by trying to eat each other, and the winner absorbs all the loser’s memories.
Cognitive Weirdtopia:
The easiest way to produce a superhuman intelligence turns out to be wiring human minds together into a “Hive Mind” gestalt; gestalts are considered full ‘persons’ and mere humans are considered more like something between appendages and pets, but a given gestalt’s character and personality are entirely dependent on the individual humans that make it up, and the happiness of the individual human members is the result of the happiness of the gestalt. Gestalts frequently solve disputes by swapping members, to promote empathy and share insights. Gestalts effectively function as highly cooperative corporations or family units where everyone with the gestalt cares deeply about the getsalt’s goals and brings their own unique cognitive talents to bear solving them, while unconnected individual humans are devalued for simply lacking the capacity to think with as much breadth and depth as a gestalt can.
Technological Weirdtopia:
The nanotech revolution turns out to be very, VERY wet; the most efficient system of controlled nanoassembly is to simply have your own geneformed body excrete whatever you want to produce, if you can’t just solve the problem by growing a new appendage. Sex, cannibalism and communication all merge into a single act; people win arguments by trying to eat each other, and the winner absorbs all the loser’s memories.
The carbosilicate amorphs do that in Schlock Mercenary.