【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 how much this dive, these deep dives, was like a space mission. you know, where it was highly technical, and it required enormous planning. you get in this capsule, you go down to this dark hostile environment where there is no hope of rescue if you canamp。39。t get back by yourself. and i thought like, amp。quot。wow. iamp。39。m like, living in a science fiction movie. this is really cool.amp。quot。
　　and so, i really got bitten by the bug of deepocean exploration. of course, the curiosity, the science ponent of it it was everything. it was adventure, it was curiosity, it was imagination. and it was an experience that hollywood couldnamp。39。t give me. because, you know, i could imagine a creature and we could create a visual effect for it. but i couldnamp。39。t imagine what i was seeing out that window. as we did some of our subsequent expeditions, i was seeing creatures at hydrothermal vents and sometimes things that i had never seen before, sometimes things that no one had seen before, that actually were not described by science at the time that we saw them and imaged them.
　　so, i was pletely smitten by this, and had to do more. and so, i actually made a kind of curious decision. after the success of amp。quot。titanic,amp。quot。 i said, amp。quot。ok, iamp。39。m going to park my day job as a hollywood movie maker, and iamp。39。m going to go be a fulltime explorer for a while.amp。quot。 and so, we started planning theseexpeditions. and we wound up going to the bismark, and exploring it with robotic vehicles. we went back to the titanic wreck. we took little bots that we had created that spooled a fiber optic. and the idea was to go in and do an interior survey of that ship, which had never been done. nobody had ever looked inside the wreck. they didnamp。39。t have the means to do it, so we created technology to do it.
　　so, you know, here i am now, on the deck of titanic, sitting in a submersible, and looking out at planks that look much like this, where i knew that the band had played. and iamp。39。m flying a little robotic vehiclethrough the corridor of the ship. when i say, amp。quot。iamp。39。m operating it,amp。quot。 but my mind is in the vehicle. i felt like i was physically present inside the shipwreck of titanic. and it was the most surreal kind of deja vu experience iamp。39。ve ever had, because i would know before i turned a corner what was going to be there before the lights of the vehicle actually revealed it, because i had walked the set for months when we were making the movie. and the set was based as an exact replica on the blueprints of the ship.
　　so, it was this absolutely remarkable experience. and it really made me realize that the telepresence experience that you actually can have these robotic avatars, then your consciousness is injected into the vehicle, into this other form of existence. it was really, really quite profound. and it may be a little bit of a glimpse as to what might be happening some decades out as we start to have cyborg bodies for exploration or for other means in many sort of posthuman futures that i can imagine, as a science fiction fan.
　　so, having done these expeditions, and really beginning to appreciate what was down there, such as at the deep ocean vents where we had these amazing, amazing animals theyamp。39。re basically aliens right here on earth. they live in an environment of chemosynthesis. they donamp。39。t survive on sunlightbasedsystem the way we do. and so, youamp。39。re seeing animals that are living next to a 500degreecentigradewater plumes. you think they canamp。39。t possibly exist.
　　at the same time i was getting very interested in space science as well again, itamp。39。s the science fiction influence, as a kid. and i wound up getting involved with the space munity, really involved with nasa, sitting on the nasa advisory