Gravity Control by Laser

[footfootfoot]

A friend of mine pointed out to me that most of the technology we rely on daily are "hand-me-downs" from the military. Things like GPS, night vision, various optics, electronics, etc. are all born in the military.

That may be changing somewhat, as super large corporations are now much stronger, economically, than the government, but on the other hand, most of those corps are in some way related to the military.

I think one of the key things to think about is "What is at the destination?" FTL travel in and of itself may be cool, but after a while "driving around the parking lot" will lose its appeal. Where will one go, what will be there and why would one go back?

Another question I have is what effects will the experience of FTL have on a person's perceptions of reality? How will it change someone's sense of time and of their place in the universe. How will it change someone's sense of "self" or their concept of their spatial relationship.

I know from my own experiences of flying in small aircraft and hot air balloons, that my sense of time passing, my sense of my location and relationship to moving through the area I live changed greatly. Not just from acquiring a new vantage point, but being able to traverse distance at a different pace.

Similar to doing a long distance bike ride, covering a hundred or so miles over ten hours and then getting in a car and driving back over the same route alters your perception of the distance covered. One thing is the faster you move the less you experience of any individual spot; the less you see, smell, hear, etc. You lose detail but gain a better sense of totality. I expect with FTL travel you'd lose so much detail that you'd be approaching complete loss of detail, if there were a true inverse relationship between loss of detail and acquisition of totality (the total picture: Seeing the forest for the trees) then what an FTL traveler would perceive would be perhaps paradigm changing and life altering. Perhaps even putting it on a par with a Kensho experience.