Ven/Introduction

"About me? Goodness, where to start. My name is Ven. Hm? Ven who? Oh, just Ven, please. Lettsee. I enjoy tinkering. Engineering. My brain is always looking at things in different ways, looking for neat things to do with them, ways to solve problems or just new things that people didn't think were possible before. I enjoy all the tools that are so useful for that sort of thing - science, mathematics, gadgets. I like the big picture fields, too. Economics, political science, sociology. Fields that ask questions about how we live, and how we might be able to live better."

"I want to live in a culture where technology makes conflict basically irrelevant, because scarcity of physical things and of knowledge is as antiquated a concept as horse drawn carriages or standard 16 hour work days for children in unsafe factories. I want everyone to be able to have a machine that builds anything they can think of, and access to all the things that everyone else has ever thought to make with theirs."

"I want people to be able to modify themselves in any way they like. Cure disease, aging, or injury, change sex to match their mood, tweak their memories to erase trauma, experience altered states of consciousness on a whim, share memories or imagination with others, record their minds to external storage, experience artificial senses, and far more than we could ever imagine being possible today."

"I want us to spread amongst the stars, inhabiting worlds we construct in far space and the even stranger places in the far umbra. The Tellurian is so vast that we can never fill it up with our creativity, but it can be a wonderful journey while we give it our best shot."

"I want you and I to use our remarkable gifts to bring these things and more about. Because we can, and because we have a kind of moral duty to use that capability to bring a bright and exceptional future about for everyone."

"What do you say?"