Autoevolution III

This is a sequel.

As Eli justly remarked, we are already cyborgs.The computer is extending our ability to think and remember. The Internet is extending our ability to communicate and share information. Microscopes, telescopes, night vision etc. are extending our ability to sense.

What is going to change in the future in this respect? Firstly, our technological extensions will become more numerous and powerful. Equally importantly, they will become more synergetic with ourselves. Instead of looking through a telescope, your experience will be that of your eyes being the telescope. Instead of searching in Google using your keyboard, you will do that by merely thinking. Instead of writing things down in Microsoft Outlook, it will just feel like remembering. Instead of doing computations with a calculator, you will do them in your mind without “sweat”. Instead of driving a car, you will become the car (provided you really want to control it instead of just getting from point A to point B; even the later will usually be unnecessary).

Extension of human “IO” will not be limited to information naturally contained in the physical reality. It will include conventionally encoded information: the kind we store in writing, computers etc. today. The synergy of the human use of such information will lead to the Internet becoming a “virtual reality”: something experienced directly rather than through non-transparent intermediates such as keyboards, mice and displays. “Ordinary” reality will become “augmented reality” as additional layers of information will be seamlessly available about “surrounding” physical objects (that is, objects under attention). Imaging looking at a bus and knowing what line it is and what is its trajectory. A possible intermediate form of augmented reality is superposing the additional information layers on the existing senses, e.g. “seeing” a “clickable” line number floating in the air besides the bus.

Physical location of human beings will become much less important. Even now the Internet, cellular phones and video conferences are reducing its importance. In the future this trend will continue much more. The culmination is mind-body separation. One can image huge immobile “brains” banked somewhere, operating bodies in distant physical locations and purely “virtual” realms.

Many activities don’t require engaging the “direct” physical reality but allow working with “conventionally encoded” higher abstraction layers. These include

• “Software” engineering, that is the design of technology operating within these higher abstraction layers
• Communication
• Theoretical learning and research
• “Virtual” Art

Other activities require interaction with “lower abstraction layers”. These include

• “Hardware” engineering
• Experimental science
• Colonization of space
• “Physical” Art

Eventually the “synergy” of the “virtual IO” (the exchange of “conventionally encoded” information) will make the “Internet” into a shared memory of human kind. It will store actual memories, experiences, thoughts, knowledge etc. which will be downloadable and uploadable. This will result in individuality becoming “fuzzy”, up to the point of almost utter disappearance. The entire population of a given planet will merge into a “multimind”. The multimind will be a continuous array of memories, desires etc. connected by associations as is the mind of an individual today. The mind of a modern individual contains a “stream of consciousness” (“CPU”) continuously traversing the memories (“RAM”), loading them into the short term memory (“cash”), connecting them to IO and transforming them. In an analogical way, the multimind will contain many streams of consciousness processing the shared memory in parallel, each with its own cash and connected to specific IOs at any given moment.

I call this multimind a “Solaris”, to honour Stanislaw Lem. The Solaris is a single entity uniting the whole technosphere, ecosphere and consciousness of an entire planet.

Due to the disappearance of individual, property will lose its meaning. Birth and death will also become obsolete, except for the birth of new Solarises through space colonization.

It is also possible that the Solaris will contain “quasi-individuals”: tightly bound chunks of memories, desires and ideas. Such
quasi-individuals will dynamically form out of the Solaris and dissolve back into it.

Autoevolution II

This is a sequel.

Genetic engineering is already not science fiction. We are rapidly approaching the era when we will modify the genetic code of various living organisms and our own genetic code in massive amounts, up to a point when such modifications become a centerpiece of technology.

In a 1000 years the impact of these modifications will be so great that our descendants will have little in common with the original homo sapiens sapiens. It is impossible to tell what they will be like precisely (that is, even more impossible than my other ambitions in this series). However, I will try to guess some of their general features.

• Survival
  Some speciments will be adapted to extreme conditions, such as extreme temperatures, extreme pressures, ionizing radiation, poison etc. In particular, when space colonization will commence, "humans" adapted to the respective conditions will be created. That is, we would have Marsians, Europans etc. historically originating from Earth humans.
• 6th sense, 7th sense...
  Some speciments will have sensory perception very different from what we are used to. For instance they might have vision with more colour channels and / or in different areas of the spectrum.
• Communication
  Speech will replaced by more advanced modes of communication, perhaps something like a direct mind-to-mind link. This will increase the bandwidth and reduce the error rate considerably. Among other things, this might lead to much more efficient resolution of disagreements up to the point when "irreconcilable differences" become very rare.
• Intelligence
  Eventually, not only the "body" but also the "mind" will be enhanced. This will start with improved memory and faster thought and end-up with capabilities of completely different magnitude. In my opinion, the most critical mental capacity is the ability to hold many things in one's mind at once: a sort of "cache memory". It is the enhancement of this capacity which would lead to the most radical development of intelligence.
• Specialization
  Different speciments will be adapted to different professions, to an extent much greater than what exists today (up to the point when different professions become virtually different species). In a way, this kind of specialization already exists: division into males and females. However, in the future there will be many more kinds (in ways unrelated to the reporductive cycle).
• Body-mind separation
  Eventually the brain or mind which carries the information processing function will be separated from the body which carries the input/output functions. It will be possible for a given person (mind) to use a number of different bodies suited for different tasks at different times. Loosely speaking, one will be able to change bodies the way one now changes clothes or cars. Thus some of the traits mentioned above (such as survival in extreme conditions and enhanced senses) will apply to particular bodies rather than particular persons.

At first, there will exists two radically different "technologies":

• The "conventional" technology we know today, based on semiconductors, fiber optics, lasers etc. At some point this will include some sort of "nanotechnology". The advantage of this technology is that we understand and control it perfectly, since we created it "from the ground up" (except the laws of nature, of course, which are immutable).
• "Organic" technology employing what we now call "genetic engineering". The advantage of this technology is that it is "more sophisticated" than the ordinary: living organisms do things we yet only dream doing artificially. The disadvantage is the imperfect understanding and control we have over it.

However, eventually they will mix and become one or several technologies descendant from both. These technologies will unite the advantages of both kinds. Thus, the clear distinction between "ourselves" and the "machines" will be erased. At the same time, the distinction between the "technosphere" and the "biosphere" will also be erased. That is, instead of two different environments (the "wild" and our artificially created environment) there will be only one. This new environment will be at least as sophisticated as the ecology existing today in the wild, while being under out conscious control.

As an intermediate stage, we will create much more efficient modes of brain-computer communication. Humans would have computer "coprocessors" wired into their brain and connected into the internet.

There is another essential difference between conventional technology and life. The machines we create are usually "clones" made to resemble a given prototype as much as possible. However, living organisms, even if members of the same species, are always very different from each other (unless, of course, they are the clones of a single ancestor; such groups, however, form only tiny fractions of a given species). It is my suspicion that the second scheme is much more efficient, and we are only bound to the first scheme because of technical limitations. Thus most of the "machines" of the future will resemble living organisms rather than modern machines in this respect.

Humanity in a 1000 years I: autoevolution

It is probably absurd trying to predict what will happen with humanity in a 1000 years. It is likely that even the smartest person living in 1000 C.E. would find it difficult to imagine the era we live in now.
Maybe armed with rationalism and the scientific method we are in a slightly better position to do it now. On the other hand, it is possible that the methods of thought or even the very apparatus of the mind will make so much progress that our descendands will create things we would never be able to dream of. In fact, I am (somewhat paradoxially) about to claim precisely that. At any rate, it appears almost inevitable the increase in body of human knowledge will lead to incredible changes in human society and the human way of life. Unless, of course, some terrible catastrope or a new dark age will prevent it.
If so, the task of imagining humanity in the year 3000 C.E. appears almost hopeless. Nevertheless, I still think it is worthwhile. Why? Because it is an amusing thought experiment. Because thinking about the future may change the future. Because trying to stretch our ability to predict or analyse to the limit may teach us something. Evef if it won't, it is still bound to be fun :-) Let me give a go at it, then!

I warn beforehand that my view of the future is somewhat optimistic. I am assuming humanity will not be destroyed by nuclear war, alien invasion, asteroid impact or any other calamity. I am also assuming scientific progress is not going to stop or reverse as a result of such an event. My entire "prediction" is something of a mixture between what I believe will happen and what I hope will happen.

Autoevolution

Charles Darwin taught us that humans are not essentially different from any other animal. Like any other animal, or indeed, any other living creature, we gradually evolved from other species over vast periods of time. The governing principle of that process is natural selection. The princinple is so obvious it is almost a tautology: the speciments most adapted to survival are more likely to survive so each generation is adapted better than the previous one. Add mutations into the mix and we get evolution.

How long does evolution continue? As far as we know it is indefinite. External conditions change, different species compete and, most importantly from my point of view, nature never reaches perfection. There are always improvements to be made.

Improvements? Isn't home sapiens sapiens perfect? Isn't it the peak of creation?

What on Earth gave us the arrogance to think that? Oh, sorry, I know what it is: evolution ;-)

Homo sapiens sapiens can and should be improved. There's no reason to think we can't be more healthy, more enduring, more intelligent. The problem is, we are different from other animals after all. We change our environment, adapting it to our needs. This process is much faster than the self-adaptation resulting from biological evolution. The result: natural selection, the driving force of biological evolution is no longer valid for this species.

Not only that we are (apparently) no longer becoming better, we are probably becoming worse. Random mutation introduce noise into our genetic code. In the same time, in a modern society (I mean the developed countries) "weak" individuals are not allowed to perished (which is a good thing!) and have no problem of spreading their genes. Anyone short of a Nazi would agree that the situation in which each individual of society is protected and able to satisfy her basic needs is a healthy one, from a moral stand point. The downside is that in the long run the human race faces physical and intellectual degeneration (I recommend the amusing comedy "Idiocracy" on this subject precisely).

Luckily, this threat, created, in a sense, by modern technology, finds its solution in the same source. In recent decades, the field of genetics experienced vast progress. The extent of the progress is such that genetic engineering has become possible. Now, we are only making our first step in this direction. However, we are discussing a problem that will only become relevant in a the very long run and there is little doubt that by that time our ability to manipulate the genetic codes of living being including ourselved will be perfected.

Thus, genetic engineering of human beings appear to me inevitable in order to avoid degeneration. However, we can and should go beyond this and apply genetic engineering in order to improve ourselves rather than merely preserving ourselves on the same level.

OK, I thought it is going to be one post, but it would take me ages to complete in this rate. So I'm posting the beginning, to be (hopefully) continued...