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A civilization that explores the universe needs to control time. The microbots can set their community clock speed or individual clock speeds to suit the circumstances. In Chapter 9, "Watching the Baby," the microbots speed up their clocks to deal with being thrown on the floor. On long voyages between star systems, they could slow down their clocks to make the voyage pass more quickly.

A civilization that explores the universe needs a purpose. The microbot's purpose is the study of natural history. This study is complicated enough to drive the cultural and individual evolution of the microbots; it is a task worthy of their abilities. They have had 160,000,000 years of interesting study on earth alone -- well worth the long journey to get here. How is life classified and recorded by our human natural historians? How do you think the microbots classify and record life? Though living long, the microbots don't have "eternal life" and are still very concerned, as are humans, about what happens when their time runs out. Why would someone who lives tens of billions of years be concerned about eternity?

Could Virtual Laura and Laura-bot be Christians? Laura is a Christian and would probably agree with the statement, "The center of Christianity is love of God and neighbor, not intelligence or information." Since Laura is a Christian, Virtual Laura, being a copy of Laura, would also consider herself to be a Christian. Laura-bot, having Virtual Laura as a core persona, might well claim to be a Christian also (Chapter 19: She asks, "Why did you move my bible?"). Can virtual life forms and/or robots be Christians? The same question can, of course, be asked about any other religion, not just Christianity.

Is there some relationship between the aliens and the Gnostics? Matthew toys with this idea, but his friends and Laura don't agree with him. The ancient Gnostics (100 to 300 CE) seemed to have had a sense that creation must be more complex than prevailing views of their time. Their elaborate visions can be morphed on to some of modern cosmology, but the transformation is strained. The microbots are a society dedicated to shared, symmetric information and are not at all elitist or secretive among themselves. Does modern cosmology have some correspondence to Gnostic cosmology? Would the ancient Gnostics sympathize with the mission of the microbots?

Are the microbots good guys or bad guys? On the plus side, they have been around for 160,000,000 years without causing any trouble. Had it not been for a poorly conceived DOD project, the aliens might have remained in the closet for a few million years more. On the minus side, the microbots have been adding humans to their natural history collections for tens of thousands of years. They've never asked permission of the humans they copied -- a slight ethical lapse. Some readers of The Observers judge the microbots harshly for their awkward intervention in human affairs (Chapter 19). The microbots end up "farming" humans as core personae for new microbots, and, moreover, humans seem to be willing to cooperate. The microbot and human societies become symbiotic. Human culture is completely changed to a clan system that is a mix of biological humans, virtual humans (biologically deceased), and microbots with human core personae. Many contemporary humans would view this restructuring of society as awful, even demonic. What do you think?

Did the microbots mess with the bible? Do you suppose the microbots did insert Mark 13:31 (Matthew 24:35, Luke 21:33) into the bible (Chapter 19)? This assertion of the triumph of information over the physical world seems contradictory to the preceding material in Mark 13 - just like what the aliens might have put there. So much for non-interference if so! How do biblical scholars determine whether material has been inserted into the bible from other sources? Apply such techniques to Mark 13:31. What do you think?

How does digital eternal life differ from that promised by Christianity and other religions? In Chapter 2, the microbots promise Matthew a form of eternal life, "After your biological existence is over, virtual Matthew will be able to become you at any stage of your life. He will also have his own worlds to experience long after you are dead." Matthew finds this form of eternal life a bit disappointing, to say the least! Some readers have suggested that the disappointment is because virtual Matthew has no soul (whatever this means). How would the eternal life promised by religion differ from virtual (or digital) eternal life? This issue recurs throughout the rest of the book.

How close to perfection are current computers? Suppose you had a one- kilogram computer and claimed that it could compute at a rate of X bits per second. How big does X have to be for me to say that you are a liar because your claim violates the laws of physics? The answer is that X=10^51 (1 with 51 zeros following it) would violate the laws of physics, but X=10^50 would not (Seth Lloyd, MIT). What is the corresponding result for computer memory? How fast are current computers? How is computer memory measured and evaluated? The microbots use an amazing (to us) amount of computational power to run their society, but their accomplishments are surely well within the range of what is possible.

The microbots are intelligent, self-reproducing machines. Such machines are a real possibility in our future (probably not too distant future). Remember Moore's Law - computers are getting faster and smaller at a very rapid rate. This means that intelligent robots need not be like those created by Hollywood movies. They will likely be very small - like the microbots. Are the microbots about the right size to fulfill their mission?

Is our universe a simulation? If you are looking at a scene and cover your eyes, your personal representation of the scene is gone. Each individual is simulating the world on his or her personal computer (brain). Is it possible that our entire observable universe is a simulation being run on some sort of computer and we are virtual creatures? Interestingly, no one has proved such a simulation impossible. Recent results in cosmology (accelerating rate of expansion of the universe) probably make it harder, not easier, to prove that our universe is not a simulation. Why? The microbots use simulation and virtual reality to study natural history. It would seem that their task is easier than simulating an entire universe. Is that so?

What current research relates to sentient virtual reality and digital immortality? As a start, check out Scientific American, March, 2007, A Digital Life. This article, by Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell, discusses the critical step of the capture, archival, and retrieval of personal experiences. The microbots would use such a process in the initial stages of making a virtual copy of a person or other organism. They would then map out how these experiences are actually recorded by the neural structure of the brain and simulate this mapping with their own algorithms. The "digital life" data would be used to train their algorithms to duplicate the person being copied. Being natural historians, they would do this for all living creatures that they wished to include in their library of sentient virtual beings. Jim Gemmell's CARPE Research Area website has links to some very interesting ongoing research and discussion.

Does The Observers help us interpret UFO's and Alien Visitations? I've never followed the UFO literature in any serious way and UFO stories did not figure into my writing. One UFO story that is particularly interesting when interpreted from the point of view of The Observers has been brought to my attention, that of Udo Wartena.

ECONOMICS

How would the CMSS singularity transform economic transactions? How would the CMSS singularity impact the working of economic markets? People entering into unsustainable mortgage arrangements, such as those resulting in the home mortgage crises of 2008, would be warned by their CMSS sensors in advance. The telemarketers pushing unfair or dishonest student or home loans might find few customers. Note that, under the microbots' plan, it is individuals, not institutions, that are provided with symmetric information. How would such information, provided to individuals, change financial, entertainment, agricultural, communication, defense, health, and other modern oligopolies? Would the average quality of goods available improve or get worse? Would no low quality goods be offered? Would this be the end of Wal-Mart?

Does the agent with the most information always benefit? A market where one party in an exchange has more information than the other does not work efficiently. Surprisingly, the person or institution with more information will not necessarily benefit from the situation. For example, sellers often have more information than do buyers about the quality of the goods being exchanged. A buyer who would prefer, and be willing to pay more for, a higher quality good would be unwilling to do so if they have no means of distinguishing between high and low quality goods. If sellers have no means of offering believable information about quality then mostly low quality goods will be sold. Large numbers of both buyers, willing to pay for quality, and sellers, willing to offer high quality goods, will be harmed. How would this situation change during the CMSS singularity? Remember, the microbots provide information to individuals when they feel this information is necessary to prevent "harm" to those they are protecting. Note that it isn’t always the case that sellers have more information than do buyers. Insurance is an important instance where the asymmetry is reversed. Buyers of insurance typically have more information than do sellers concerning the likelihood that benefit payments will be forthcoming on a given policy.

Would the CMSS singularity eliminate externalities of transactions? Another cause of market inefficiency is the failure of exchange prices to reflect the full cost, or benefit, of the transaction taking place. When, for example, we use fossil fuels to generate energy we do not pay a price that reflects the true cost of our actions. The cost of the air pollution we generate and the global warming we contribute to result in a negative externality. There are also positive externalities, such as vaccinating people against polio or smallpox for a small charge. Those who don't get the vaccination benefit from a decreased exposure to the disease (a positive externality of the vaccination transaction). How would the low cost symmetric information of the CMSS singularity affect the ability of society to correct for these externalities? Would government have to play an important role in this solution during the CMSS singularity?