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It is stated in either Game or Shadow - both, probably - that humans made the ansible based on reverse-engineered technology they found on captured Bugger ships and colony worlds. I remember one character in a chronologically early book stating something along the lines of "we don't know why it works, it just does."
That doesn't click, though. Why would the buggers have machines using the philotic connection when the Hive Queen can "speak" straight into the mind of her workers, as she does with the few worker characters in Xenocide/Children of the Mind?
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posted
I think (though I may be wrong) that just the humans knowing that ftl communication was possible helped them figure out the ansible. Somewhere in Ender's Game (or Shadow, yeah, I'm really helpful) Graff explains that humans learned gravity augmentation from formic technology left behind on Eros.
Could a queen communicate with a worker from a different hive? Why would she need to? If she did, that might have led to the creation of a "twining machine," some formic equivalent of an ansible. Though this does contradict the "wishing makes it so" metaphysics of philotes . . .
Posts: 100 | Registered: Oct 2006
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In Game Graff talks about they found it possible but doesnt say a device was captured. Later Ender proposes that the Buggers found him by following the signal. I would guess they just figured how to use the frequency the buggers used.
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maybe tinfoil is the one substance in the universe that isn't made up of philotes??? Or is that duck tape?
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Jun 2006
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Duct tape stuck to tinfoil has a philotic connection stronger than that of the father trees.
In Game, I think it's implied that even though the ships had ansible connections to each other, the individual Buggers didn't need it. Maybe the ships had automatic processes that required coordination.
I'm re-reading the Game and Shadow series' right now. This is a plothole I just caught. I don't understand it either.
Edited for clarity.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Jun 2002
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I don't get what all the confusion is about. The Hive Queens can naturally communicate with their workers or other Queens through philotic connections. Thus, they don't need machines (ansibles) to do it. Their ships did not have ansibles.
If I recall correctly, in EG Mazer explains to Ender that the first time Buggers captured a human ship they killed the crew and took their time dismantling the vessel even as recording devices transmitted everything back to Earth. The reason being, Buggers have never needed communication devices, so it never occured to them that once the "workers" on the ship were dead there could be machines still transmitting information.
Humans became aware of their ability to communicate faster than light during the second invasion, and once they saw that such a thing was possible, they figured out the underlying science (philotic twining), and made ansibles to emulate what Buggers do naturally. Humans didn't get the technology from the Buggers, just the idea, and once you know that something is at least possible inventing a way to do it becomes somewhat easier.
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well, sure, but to go from, "okay, faster than light communication is possible" to, "ok, sit at this simulation and play a game that commands dozens of starships across space" is a big leap.
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quote:Humans became aware of their ability to communicate faster than light during the second invasion, and once they saw that such a thing was possible, they figured out the underlying science (philotic twining), and made ansibles to emulate what Buggers do naturally. Humans didn't get the technology from the Buggers, just the idea, and once you know that something is at least possible inventing a way to do it becomes somewhat easier.
You're right. Ender's Game never mentions that the technology was captured from the Buggers, does it?
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