Geek Question.

[swestrup]

Had a discussion with Terry today re: the value of advanced alien technology when picking up geek chicks. So, here's a question for the geek ladies on my friends list: how favorably impressed would you be by a geek who tried to pick you up by displaying a working:

A) Star-Trek Style Replicator,
B) Star-Trek Style Teleporter,
C) Sentient Talking Computer,
D) Flying Personal Robot, or
E) Insterstellar space cruiser?

Comments

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

All of them! Though I think a teleporter would be the most useful to me personally ...

[swestrup]

Great! That was more-or-less the reaction of the Geek chick in my NaNo novel when presented with these items!

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Glad to be your guinea pig geek chick XD

[sultrysong.livejournal.com]

I'm all over the cruiser.

[terheyt.livejournal.com]

I<d be all over all of them but D. Unless C was housed in D.

[ellenk.livejournal.com]

A working ANY of those would be awesome! But in particular, a teleporter or space cruiser. Any geek who tried to pick me up with either of those would be instantly successful.

[ai731.livejournal.com]

The teleporter would win just because it would mean very cool dates. I guess I'm not enough of a geek chick to swoon over the fact of the device's existance. It being used for something fun to do together, otoh... so on that principal the space cruiser would come second and the replicator third.

[thebabynancy.livejournal.com]

replicator... never have to leave the bedroom for anything ever again. least of all - duck™ tape.


:D N

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Oooh... they're all pretty cool, I have to say. I think the teleporter would win out by a small margin, if only because I've always wanted to go to so many different places and have always wanted a teleporter. The replicator would be a close second, and C, D and E tie for third place.

[arymede.livejournal.com]

I would be damn impressed by the replicator and/or teleporter, but probably only until I could steal the designs and make my own. Unless he/she was a very nice geek with acceptable personal hygiene and social skills.

The sentient talking computer would scare the wits out of me... I'd be afraid of it taking over and running the world. Mad geeks creating evil computer overlords =/= sexy.

The flying personal robot and interstellar cruiser are impressive, but not so much as pick up lines. More as wow, that's really cool, but I fear the amount of time you have on your hands to create this.

[angorian.livejournal.com]

A,B,E are the coolest. Teleporters would be super useful, except that I can't see how they would work except by creating an exact duplicate of me, transferring my memories, and destroying the original. If there was some way of actually transferring *me*, using some time/space continuum bend or something, that would be ok, but otherwise, ick.

[swestrup]

Yeah, these teleporters really pretty much do work by the method of destructive scanning, sending the signal to the other end, and a recreation from blueprints.

Some folks are sure to find that really creepy. So far no one in my novel has had that reaction, but I'm seriously considering putting it in.

[angorian.livejournal.com]

I think it has the additional creepy feature of what happens if the signal gets interrupted? Are you stored in the machine's memory until a connection is re-established? What's it like in that case (since it's supposed to be instantaneous normally and you wouldn't notice) to be uncorporeal and just blueprints? Would you still be conscious and aware?

[swestrup]

The hero has actually gone through that very scenario. He tried to escape the destruction of the moon base he was in by jumping in what he thought was an escape chute. It turned out to be a garbage disintegrator, but it routinely stored the blueprints of anything destroyed into a rotating blueprint buffer. He was for all intents and purposes dead at this point.

The disintegrator survived the destruction of the base and he 'woke up' into what turned out to be a simulation of his body running on a supercomputer. The main teleporter had been damaged so the final state of the simulation from the supercomputer was loaded into a probe and launched to Earth. Since the probe had nowhere near enough processing power to run the simulation, the next thing he knew a month had passed and he woke up on Earth in a body created from the blueprints taken from the simulation.

So far this hasn't bothered the hero at all, since to him its seemed like a linear period of time with a few gaps during which he was unconcious. He hasn't yet realized that there are now two backups of him stored on the supercomputer (one before the run of the simulation, and one from after). He may have issues with that. We'll see when I get to that part.

[angorian.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a lot of cool ideas are explored in your story. But brings whole new meanings to Multiple Personality Disorder! Those previous states could presumably get bodies and you'd end up with many versions of him running around à la Idoru. Brings up the question of whether behaviour is deterministic or not and would those other versions of him do the same things in the same situations.

[helenkacan.livejournal.com]

Here are my picks and reasons:


B) Star-Trek Style Teleporter...the most useful device
A) Star-Trek Style Replicator...the most practical device
E) Insterstellar space cruiser...the too bulky and where do you park it already nuisance?
D) Flying Personal Robot.........the totally useless object and who cares if it can fly?
C) Sentient Talking Computer...the totally paranoia-inducing thingy; if I wanted super-intelligence, I'd d/l the technology of the Ancients from Stargate!

Have fun with your writing. It seems as if your imagination is working big-time!

Outer-spaced hugs,
Me.

[swestrup]

I'm actually really surprised that no one is interested in D). I figured something that you could order around to all the housework would be a major nifty thing. Oh well.

[azrhey.livejournal.com]

Replicator!

For...hrrmmm... SCHTUFF(tm)

Then, if affinities, we can replicate Teleporter parts and build one bit by bit.
Sentient computers suck much
No need for a personal robot when you have a bf
Space cruiser is all nice and fun but I wouldn't go anywhere that hasn't been mapped yet ( at least partially, too much emptyness, too may boring places in Zee Universe ).