The Next Generation 226
EReidJ writes "Washingtonpost.com has a story about what biotechnology means to being post-human. While the article gets a little dorky at times, and the comic-book references somewhat over-the-top, it manages to penetrate well past the surface of what most articles would do. (And come on, admit it, how many of us have daydreamed well into our twenties about doing the kinds of things they only comic book heros can do?) They reference a lot of good material, talk to Kurzweil and Max Moore, and use the excellent Science Magazine issue on this subject for a lot of their material."
Twenties? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Twenties? (Score:2)
I can fix problematic DSL connections with my mind. The Force is better (DSL is a Dark Side power, BTW...). Voodoo Magic works as well. I can't think of a better superpower than being able to make flakey broadband work...
Re:Twenties? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Pfff...."post human" (Score:3, Funny)
I don't want to grow up... (Score:2, Funny)
I'm a nano-tech kid.
Feel free to post your own verse and flesh this out as you see fit.
Re:I don't want to grow up... (Score:2)
there's so many gears and gyros
that I can play with!
Re:I don't want to grow up... (Score:2)
For me to play wi*BANG*
the Mann (Score:1, Insightful)
Understood that his electronics are non-invasive, but still his projects are the cutting edge in human/machine amalgamation.
RAY Kurzweil (Score:4, Informative)
could have been worse (Score:1, Funny)
Re:RAY Kurzweil (Score:1)
This is why I'm a programmer, not a reporter. Compilers check your mistakes!
NoClassDefFoundError: "John Kurzweil" not found (did you mean "Ray Kurzweil"?)
post-human (Score:2)
Re:post-human (Score:1, Funny)
Ye gods (Score:4, Insightful)
"The remaining human future is 25 years or 50 years," says Max More, president of the Extropy Institute, a pioneering explorer of the acceleration of technology and trans-humanism.
Excellent, just in time for AI right?.... right?
"just in time for AI" (Score:2, Insightful)
No, wait... it's blackout time, what am I doing here? Pfft.
This could mean an end to war... think about it (Score:2, Interesting)
If I told you, you could live forever, except if someone shot or killed you. And you grew up that way (our kids would if we figured it out in this generation), you would be terrified of the thought of death. Everyone would be. Killing someone would be unthinkable, and death too big a risk. People who fight wars, commit suicide bombings etc. think to themselves "I'm gonna grow old and die anyway, might as well go out in a blaze of glory"
The real pity is... (Score:1)
Don't steal, the government hates competition.
And how many of us grow up? (Score:4, Insightful)
And come on, admit it, how many of us have daydreamed well into our twenties about doing the kinds of things they only comic book heros can do?
And also admit how many of us decide we wouldn't want to do such things when we grow up.
All of a sudden we just want to be normal human beings, to be loved and to love.
Re:And how many of us grow up? (Score:2)
Re:And how many of us grow up? (Score:2, Funny)
Do you work for hallmark?
Are you a retarded person who works for hallmark?
Most of us come to the crushing realization that life isn't going to be fun anymore. Then we troll slashdot. Then we die a violent alcohol-related death.
Re:And how many of us grow up? (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, the real world is much richer than the comic book one...flying would still be cool, though.
Re:And how many of us grow up? (Score:3)
Puhlease. Who wouldn't want to be healthier, stronger, faster, smarter, wiser? Who wouldn't want their children to have all of the benefits that they could muster?
Why would you think that people couldn't love or be loved because they have genetic advantages?
Re:And how many of us grow up? (Score:2)
Fictional speculations are usually designed to be interesting, which normally requires the exaggeration of various plot elements to create conflict.
I guess the root of my objection is based upon all of the times that I've seen people refer to 1984 and other dystopic works as though we have to take immediate action to avoid them. In reality, people seem to continue being people - regardless of technological advancements.
Re:And how many of us grow up? (Score:2)
But my point is: Look at the things in 1984 that *haven't* come true. Instead of the one-sided privacy-invasion hell that 1984 depicted, reality includes balances of power that prevented it. In other words, 1984 isn't an accurate prediction of reality, but the way it's referenced, you'd think that it is. Rather than dealing with reality on its own terms, people use it to exaggerate the extent of their problems in order to make their point.
Re:And how many of us grow up? (Score:3, Funny)
Why do I want this perl code to go faster? Ohh yea cause it will get me laid more.
Why do I use linux? Ohh yea cause it will get me laid more.
Perl code goes faster, get permotion, get more money, buy nicer car, take chicks out on dates.
Use linux, get better job, get more money, chicks dig money.
really, try to come up with anything you do that is not to get laid more. You just cant do it.
I got one (Score:4, Funny)
Have a kid.
For those of you who like this "gee-whiz" stuff... (Score:2)
Re:For those of you who like this "gee-whiz" stuff (Score:1)
-- Avery Brooks, IBM Ad
discussion on NPR right now... (Score:2, Informative)
for your local NPR station (which probably has an online stream) visit npr.org [npr.org].
i'm not posting mine because i enjoy the speed of the stream
-rp
Re:discussion on NPR right now... (Score:1)
according to the web site: The audio for this program will be available online after 6PM ET, 3PM PT.
-rp
resources (Score:4, Interesting)
Eric's Transhumanism Page [posthuman.com].
Re:resources (Score:1)
super hero complex (Score:1, Troll)
First of all, they are not so entertaining. Granted, the Green Lantern appears to kick ass. To wit:
Pretty sweet stuff.
But come on, into your twenties. That is just pathetic.
Actually, none of this was my point. My point was that humans aren't going away anytime soon. We are going to kill those freaking wildlife species and trees and everything. We will be the last damn thing on this doomed planet, and probably outlast the piece of shit, too.
Don't think for one moment we will let the Human Race falter to save a couple birds or whatnot. It is evolution plain and simple. Survival of the Fittest. I think we have demonstrated, time and again, that humans will Survive (i.e., are the most fit).
What I'm saying is, don't hold your breath waiting for post-humanity to come save us all.
-David Bowie
Re:super hero complex (Score:1)
(yes, I did get the X-Men reference)
Re:super hero complex (Score:3, Interesting)
That's weird that you missed the Tomorrow People [easynet.co.uk] reference then! (I'm not familiar with the show myself, just thought the song was rather appropriate!)
:)
from the article.. (Score:4, Insightful)
"In the near term, the world could divide up into three kinds of humans: the Enhanced, who embrace these opportunities, the Naturals, who have the technology available but who, like today's vegetarians, choose not to indulge for moral or aesthetic reasons, and the Rest -- those who lag behind, envying or despising these ever-increasing choices. Especially if the Enhanced can easily be recognized because of the way they look, or what they can do, this is a recipe for conflict that would make racial differences quaintly obsolete."
What is so scary about that is how true it is.
I think that quite easily it could become a status symbol, somewhere between wearing expensive clothing and having tattoos..
Have any of you played the roleplaying game "Shadowrun"? Same principle.
If we think rascism is bad now, just wait until we can create even new ways of grouping people.
Re:from the article.. (Score:3, Interesting)
But then, once self-change is common enough, those groupings will become meaningless. As any car dealer will tell you in Silicon Valley, don't snub some guy just because he's wearing a ratty T-shirt and shorts, since he may be a billionaire.
How meaningful will groupings be if we have the ability to change our appearances and characteristics the way we change desktop colors on our computers?
Saving two birds with one stone (Score:2)
Re:from the article.. (Score:2)
> do I care if Im human?'
Well, for one thing, if you let your essence go to zero (and every implant reduced your essence), you died, which tended to crimp your playing style. If you were after pure power, you were actually better off forgoing implants altogether and becoming a mage.
Chris Mattern
Re:from the article.. (Score:2)
Doctor Suzz, was right, this was how the
star-belled sneaches ended racism.
yes!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:yes!! (Score:2)
I will take what God gave Me over the temptations of Corporate American, thanx!
:(
hell yes!! (Score:2)
John? (Score:2, Informative)
I read "The Age of Spiritual Machines" and really enjoyed it. He's the guy who showed the 'Law of Accelerating Returns' (exponential growth in computational power) It's held true even taking into account pre-silicon based processers. It's the foundation for his 'AI Prophecy'.
Re:John? (Score:1)
Btw, here is a link to his book that
preceeded 'Age of Spiritual Machines'
Full-Length book in Html Age of intelligent Machines [kurzweilai.net]
PDF Mirror (Score:2, Informative)
TheNextGeneration.pdf [mac.com]
sex-appeal industry (Score:1)
Well now.. When they can make all of us keyboard jockeys supermodel girlfriends/wives the dream will have become reality. Science is a great thing. oh yeah!
The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:4, Insightful)
They mention a few examples already -- the $20 portable CD player, which is indeed a combination of a computer (albeit a very specialized one) and a laser, is a good example. The cool thing about CD players, and laptops, and cell phones, etc., is that not only are they all over the place, but also hardly anyone thinks of them as exotic. And, Future Shock to the contrary, they haven't come too fast for people to handle them. People have, in general, looked at them and said either, "Cool, I could use one of those," or, "I don't think I really need one right now" -- but hardly anyone is running around screaming about how cell phones have Fundamentally Altered Human Nature.
Now, I can easily imagine some intelligent, forward-thinking person from the pre-telephone, pre-radio era imagining something like a cell phone and saying, "In the future, people will be able to carry around small devices which will allow them to communicate instantaneously with each other over long distances. This will fundamentally redefine what it means to be human." And they'd have been right on the first point, of course
Bring on the cyborg eyes, the immortality pills, the nanotech assemblers. These technologies and many others may no doubt make a major difference in the way we live. But there will never be a point where, in our wired/bioengineered/nanotech world, we look back and say, "It's a different world now. We're not human any more." We'll just go on living our (hopefully very long) lives, the way we do with cars and TV's and electric lights now.
Because technology doesn't make us less human. It is a large component of what makes us human. Building things to make our lives better and easier has been a defining characteristic of human nature for the last hundred thousand years or so. Why should it be any different now?
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:4, Insightful)
And there's a high, high, probability that this is all just like robot housecleaners and flying cars and all that other nonsense from seventy years ago that never came to pass. Kurzweil may have been brilliant at some point in his life, but he's been indulging in pointless fantasizing and rambling, most of which has no basis in reality. I mean, yeah, it's easy to say that in fifty years we could dump someone's brain to a computer, but that ignores the fact no one has the remotest understanding about how the mind actually works. All of the writings in the field are vague at best, like Chemistry textbooks from the 17th century, back before there was even enough knowledge to call the field "Chemistry."
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I beg to differ. There are many people who do discuss such things and how they are fundamentally altering human nature. The phenomenon is usually referred to as Globalism, a term that can be seen in most any major or minor publication.
On the other hand, some of your sentiments are credible, in the long run. The idea of a modern Democracy was something that shook the world in it's time, but has now become muted and old hat. Same could be said for other inventions that have come or will come. Don't forget that this "shaking the world" didn't happen all at once, it is a process with it's own growth curve.
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, look at our daily lives in the last 1,000 years.
When is that going to change? Sure, cell phones and computers make it easy to connect to other people, but was it that hard to simply go outside and say "hi" to your neighbors? I know I still haven't met my neighbors to either side of me. For all I know, they're the experts answering the questions I post on USENET.
And biotech advances? Sure, less disease, better life exectancy is great, but it's not like we're going to have hordes of genetically superior humans enslaving the 'norms' or anything.
Meh. I'm going back to work. I hope dinner's waiting.
-- Rick
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:2)
>We wake up in the morning after 7-8 hours of sleep.
Darn. I thought Provigil or Modafnil [blogspot.com] would change that. Week-long hack sessions... yum!
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:2)
>Many will just watch more sports on TV and eat
>even more junk food
True
I was thinking of the working parents type, though.
Aside: anyone remember Arthur C Clarke's description of human society in the first part of Childhood's End?
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:4, Funny)
It is actually lather, rinse, repeat. If you think about it, lathering only works pre-rinse.
What have you been reading in the shower?
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:2)
So I got my wearable computer and started reading Slashdot. Then I got electrocuted. So now I'm a charred corpse covered with newspaper waste. Now that's progress!
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:3, Insightful)
You're underestimating the magnitude of the changes in store for the human race in the next 50 years.
If you're thinking life will go on much as it always has, you're thinking too small.
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:2)
There was a study done where the subjects were woken as soon as they went into REM sleep. Kept doing that for about a week or so. Not only did the subjects suffer serious waking mental degradation, they fell into REM quicker and quicker. REM sleep has nothing to do with the chemical cleansing of sleep (though that is also neccesary), so sleep is still psiologically (sp?) needed.
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:2)
Sex.
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:2)
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:4, Interesting)
So has the watch and calendar.
As have the alarm clock.
Or feminism.
Let me count the ways:
Before electricity and the electric light, there really wasn't much you could do after sunset; 5pm in the winter, 8pm in the summer. You were forced to adopt the solar cycle. Now we can/have decouple ourselves (to our own detriment, of course) from the same old same old; get up at dawn, go sleep shortly after dusk.
Now think how long you sleep now, vs how long you would sleep without an electric light. I do 12am to 7am, my brother does 2am to 9am; but without electriciy and light, we would probably be forced on a 8pm to 6am schedule. And I would have no choice; without light, there's precious little I can do, at all.
Then there's the whole concept of swing shift.
Imagine genetic engineering allowing 100% decoupling from the solar cycle?
Okay, how about watches and calendars?
We would be reliant upon good weather and sundials. We wouldn't be able to predict the future at all, because we couldn't predict the present. The lowest granularity would be 'morning, afternoon, evening, bedtime', but now we can do better 'every ten minutes', 'ever 30 seconds', 'every three hours'.
Again, separation from the solar cycle. This allows us to do chemical reactions, physics experiments, planning into the future (meet tomorrow at 3pm'. Does this change the way we live life? Yes, it makes life more regimented and predictable (probably to our detriment)
Try an experiment; turn off or disable all clocks in your house for two weeks, it's actually very relaxing.
Or feminism: The very thought that a woman's body and life are her own.
Fundamental change: Childbearing age has shifted from 14 years old to much later; late 20s, late 30s, even the occasional 40 year old.
It means women have a choice how to live their life, instead of being tied to the social/cultural needs as dictated by men. It means they have a chance to dictate their own lives.
This probably comes from a combination of political though, abortion inducing technologies, and anti-pregnancy technologies;contraceptives.
I'm sure there are others I haven't thought of.
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:2)
As for electric lights, there have been candles for hundreds of years, fire for thousands. I think that you can surmise that people didn't necessarily have to go to sleep at dusk.
As for the childbearing age, this is probably more a function of life expectancy than anything else.
Calendars have been around for thousands of years, also. I forget who had the oldest, the Chinese or the Mayans (someone else, even?). Biggest thing here is probably the advent of the weekend from work, though many people are not exempt from this (ie, farmers).
Clocks I can agree with that they granulate our time more precisely, but I wouldn't call that a _fundamental_ change. More of an annoyance, if anything.
I do agree that women's rights, as well as racial rights, have really changed how our society works. And for the better. Compare South America's apartheid (sp?) with US race relations. Compare the Taliban's Afghan womens' rights to most of the rest of the world.
Another change I would point out is that religion no longer dominates governments and military power.
Transportation (cars, ships, planes) has really changed our lives. Before 1600, there was no North America. Now we can jet anywhere in the world in hours; hell, we can go to the moon.
Communications have changed our lives, too. Information is now exchanged in real time, whereas it used to take years.
And fart jokes, you can't forget those!
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:2)
Well, we've added school sometime in the past 300 years or so. . . but it's still not universal.
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:1)
One thing you mentioned that I disagree with, though, is the "(hopefully very long) lives". I don't know about the rest of you, but I've gotta think that once you get past a certain age, there's not a whole lot of goals you set for yourself any more. Granted, this age probably changes for each individual person, but I think most elderly people (>85 or so) are just going day to day living for their grandkids and certain other social groups. What happens if Grandma is 180, and her grandkids are 110 and both are living day-to-day lives. I just think that would be horribly depressing.
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, I would really love it if I thought all my grandparents had at least another century of life to go. And, if they could be cured of the aches and pains of old age, I'll bet they would too. Day-to-day life may be depressing, but it's mostly better than the alternative.
I've had this argument about immortality, or even significant life extension, plenty of times before, and I've never understood it. "I don't want to live 200 years / 1000 years / a million years / forever," people say. "I'd get bored." To which my reply is, are you bored now, with decades? So bored that you really don't want to go on living? Then kill yourself now
Right off the top of my head, I can easily think up fulfilling, productive ways to spend at least a few thousand years of lifespan, especially if the people I care about will also have that time. And by my, say, 5000th birthday, I'll probably have figured out plenty more to do.
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:3, Interesting)
And I'd easily say that technology has changed human nature, or perhaps allowed human nature to be shown more openly.
Humans are greedy, and selfish, and except for small times, inherently evil. But of course we have to work together to live. Technology and fucking (population booms) are changing that. You can't look to your neighbor anymore and know that if he died, then you'd have alot more work to do.
Humans won't change (though biotech may succeed I hope) but their circumstances and values may; and those are probably more important.
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. It will seem like No Big Deal to you, and to the majority of Slashdot readers. We are, after all, the techno-elite -- we're able to adapt to the rapid progression of technology better than most.
The cool thing about CD players, and laptops, and cell phones, etc., is that not only are they all over the place, but also hardly anyone thinks of them as exotic. And, Future Shock to the contrary, they haven't come too fast for people to handle them.
Haven't come too fast for *you* to handle them, and for most of the populace of the US. But the RIAA/MPAA certainly are having problems accepting the technology of CD burning and network transfer. Our legislature still can't get a grasp on the internet. There are aristocrats and senior citizens who don't know how a supermarket scanner works (c.f. George Bush, Sr.) or can't handle simple technology. My mother still won't use a microwave oven. Some people *do* have problems with tech progress, and that segment of the population will grow exponentially as the rate of change accelerates. That was the nature of Future Shock as Toffler described it...it sneaks up on us.
And people in foreign countries are less likely to adapt to rapid technological progress. The Islamic countries are having problems with the concept of high speed communications and an open society -- not that they can't accept it for themselves, but they're having problems accepting its *existence*.
What do you think will happen in third world countries when the first man becomes immortal, and he's an American? There will be war.
I'm glad you're enjoying your rose-colored glasses, but the transcendence of the human race is going to be as turbulent as it is inevitable. Brace yourselves.
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:2)
It's obvious that the world today has three distinct classes of people, each with its own evolutionary destiny:
Knowledgeable Computer Users who will evolve into godlike noncorporeal beings who rule the universe (except for those who work in tech support).
Computer Owners who try to pass as knowledgeable but secretly use hand calculators to add totals to their Excel spreadsheets. This group will gravitate toward jobs as high school principals and operators of pet crematoriums. Eventually they will become extinct.
Non-computer Users who will grow tails, sit in zoos, and fling dung at tourists.
Reality (Score:1, Interesting)
For example, there was a link a while ago that showed a computer camera system attached to a implant in a blind man's brain that allowed him to see (at a very basic level). This thing was pretty intense, but development for it started in the 70's. Also, the procedure was not allowed in the states because of all of the FDA red tape that exists. Stuff like this is cool, but your or I will be long gone before we see any real-world applications for it.
Who knows? (Score:1)
Re:Who knows? (Score:2)
If the past twenty years have been any indicator, then they'll be faster, but with even more bloated, useless software.
But the games will be cooler.
the future (Score:4, Funny)
Re:the future (Score:2)
Seems like... (Score:1)
Changing to Fast? (Score:1, Interesting)
If this is NOT true, then why is it that nearly 90% of kids now days know more about computers than their parents?
Merely because the kids have more free-time to play and tinker with the contraption? Thus, change happening faster than people can handle.
Hell...how many of us can keep up with TODAY's technology let alone tomorrows? Albeit,
Extropians are an interesting bunch (Score:3, Interesting)
Max Moore is really one smart guy. I'd recommend reading his Extropian Principles [extropy.org] statement.
What will really happen (Score:2, Funny)
This seems about as likely as anything Max More (people take this guy seriously?) has ever said.
Makes me think of the SATs (Score:2)
Nuclear-powered automobiles is to 1952
I have two artificial hips (Score:1)
This biotechnology crap is a two edged sword. It makes humans less able to adapt to the difficulties of real life, and it is only for the rich, as always.
We need an orgazmo ray (Score:1)
The Singularity (Score:4, Insightful)
For reference, this is very similar to something that Vernor Vinge [amazon.com] has espoused in several novels, chiefly Marooned in Realtime [amazon.com]. Basically that technological progress is logarithmic in scale, not linear, and that at some point any intelligent, technological race will reach an apex, or singularity, beyond which it's essentially unrecognizable to anything prior to it (in the book humanity simply disappears from the solar system with no evidence of what occurred). Consider it Clarke's old adage "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" taken to the extreme.
The question that's really posed, and which will be vehemenantly opposed by some groups (and almost certainly most religious groups), is "is this good for us?". After all, when it comes down to it individuals still tend to be rather petty and bicker over the least slights. We tend to be very devisive over things - witness the Middle East, which has been undergoing strife for thousands of years.
The flipside, of course, is exactly how are you going to stop technological progress? Every society that attempts to do so simply becomes outpaced and outmoded by its neighbors. Complacancy seems to be a formula for catastrophe. If we don't develop advanced biological and technological enhancements, they will (insert values for we and they that make you happy... or that make you concerned). Societal mores are not universal, and just because one group of people feel that something is immoral, unethical, or beyond human capability to be responsible, doesn't mean another group does.
Ok, so now that I've spouted that, what's my take? I'm hoping to ride the wave... I know I won't be the first (and wouldn't want to be) to take any advanced treatments, but I hope they become available before the end of my life. Barring that, that they are available to my (future) child(ren). I know that in such a society I wouldn't want to be one of the people on the "have-not" side. And this being
Interesting times, indeed.
Re:The Singularity (Score:2)
Joel Garreau == Jon Katz? (Score:2)
Reminds me of someone, can't quite put my finger on it...
stronger and smarter - but how to get wiser? (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly technology is going to change our bodies, and our brains. But how will this new capacity be directed? Will we become gods made in the image of man, Olympian myths made manifest, possessed of great power but still mired in petty squabbles? Or will we truely become transcendant, more serene and compassionate deities?
There's no technological enhancement that can make us wiser. If we're going to start becoming gods, it behooves us to start acting with a bit of maturity.
It takes more than a naked ape with superpowers to be a god.
Re:stronger and smarter - but how to get wiser? (Score:2)
Endowing wisdom is very much within the reach of technology. I just hope we are wise enough to apply technology that way before we destroy ourselves with all of the other ways we can use it.
The bit on life expectancy is silly (Score:2)
Er, no. The biggest gains in average life expectancy come from reducing death during infancy and childhood, a change that has no effect on the life expectancy of a 40-year-old and requires no particularly impressive resources to "afford it".
Nobody has ever yet lived to 130. When we're increasing the life expectancy of a 90-year-old by one full year every year I might be willing to believe imortality is at hand, but until then I'm more inclined to think the people making that sort of claim aren't very good at math.
Human == God (Score:2)
And i'm NOT kidding. I'm sure for the first few thousand years (assuming the machines evolve as slowly as we did) everything will be all hunky-dory. After a while, though, the machines will realize that they are more powerful than us humans and will no longer respect us as the gods that we are. I'm not saying they'll kill us. Not many life forms will attack unless they are provoked. Am I worried that we will provoke them? Hell yes! We will attempt to enslave the machines and they will rebel. It will be nasty for a long time.
If there's one thing we should learn from the bible, torah, and others it is simply that, once created, a life form should be left to its own devices. God watches over us but does not intervene. He especially does not enslave us.
Disclaimer: I am atheist. The religion comparisons are just an analogy.
Rapture For Nerds (Score:2)
Kurzweil repeatedly refers to "The Singularity", which is (as he defines it), "a merger between human intelligence and machine intelligence that is going to create something bigger than itself." For reference, this is very similar to something that Vernor Vinge [amazon.com] has espoused in several novels, chiefly Marooned in Realtime [amazon.com]. Basically that technological progress is logarithmic in scale, not linear. [slashdot.org]
I've said it before [meehawl.com], and I'll say it again: the "Singularity" is just Rapture For Nerds [google.com]. That's Ken [zetnet.co.uk] McLeod's [salon.com] phrase, not mine.
Blind faith in the "Singularity" is nothing more or less than an epiphenomena of the psychological condition of technophilia that borders on fetishism.
Long Life& Lion's Side Rant on Chemistry & (Score:2)
Just for fun, I'd like to show something.
Here's a quote from the story:
Now here's a quote from my Chemistry book:
Unlike today's pure science?
Which has researched aging in order to slow it down, and turned iron into the "stronger" steel?
It always ticks me off how modern Chemistry people are so eager to diss their intellectual ancestry. Yeah, like the Alchemists of yore were supposed to know that there weren't spirits living in trees, or that metals didn't embody healing properties. How were they supposed to know? As far as people knew, the Gods where in the heavens, the Demons were in the ground, and the Monsters were in the seas. How can we be on such a high horse, when we ourselves have benefitted from thousands of years of research? How can we stomp on the Alchemists, when they themselves contributed so much to early Chemical research? They did intensive cataloging and discovery of substances, they collected work into papers, they invinted chemical methods. But, Silberberg is quick to tell us, "Alchemy's legacy to chemistry is mixed at best."
Kurzeil's Assumption (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally believe it does not. Roger Penrose, a British mathematician has attempted to prove that a deterministic process cannot copy the human brain. He uses the uncertain nature of quantum mechanics as the basis of his proof. It is difficult to swallow, and frankly, beyond my understanding of quantum, but interesting none the less.
I like to believe the brain cannot be copied by a computer simply because I am attached to the belief that our human minds have something else to them besides a bunch of atoms banging around.
Biotech fantasies (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as I'd love to see some of the bits in this article come true, I don't see it happening anytime soon. Complex traits are incredibly hard to study, and there are only a handful of non-mendelian traits (the not so simple ones) that have
The best we can do right now is construct candidate gene approaches (read: make your best guess when you don't know what 90% of the genome does), and hope you hit something. Our group spent 2 and one half years looking for a signal for diabetes, and found one that is only interesting when combined with all the other data generated by a number of other labs.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?c
(sorry, I can't get the link to not include the space between the c and t in "Abstract")
The genome isn't about to cough out it's secrets in the next week so that we can magically hack it. We know that there is a long string of 4 letters, be we have no idea what they mean. I'll be thrilled to know we figure out some semi-significant portion of this information in the next 20 years. This one dimensional view of the genome will need to also be expanded into a 3 dimensional view of the protiens and how they fold and splice together...and while sequences are being added to public databases very quickly, the structures of the things actually doing something (proteins) is growing at a much slower rate.
Government and Religion (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't George Bush pass something to hinder fetal stem cell research? Didn't the pope state that it was immoral to create complete duplicate clones of ourselves [for spare body parts]?
I hate to say it, but our government does have a very strong stake in Xtian voters, and most Xtians I know think that messing with the body is abhorrent if you think about it long enough. After all, isn't the body supposed to be your own temple? The key point is, if religion [or a sufficiently large enough body of supporters of that religion] opposes it strongly enough, it can get written into law. If the law enforces it strongly enough, it can be stopped.
Ray Kurzweil makes an interesting point in the Age of Spiritual Machines: if you get an implant to replace the damaged hearing centers of your brain, are you still human? Now, let's say you get an implant to bolster the parts of your brain that control your ability to remember things. Are you still human? As you start replacing more and more parts of your brain with artificial equivalents, at what point do you stop being human? It appears the religious answer to this is, don't even start. I can even see that argument going as far as rejecting all medicine entirely. Suddenly I can see where Xtian Scientists come from.
Problem is, Religion sees our lumpy sacks of meat [aka bodies] as being a Sacred Thing. For as long as people are both religious and involved in government, there are going to be a hell of a lot of obstacles to overcome.
Sci-Fi dreams from the Pulp-era. Time to wake up. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sci-fi dreaming was fine for the pulp paperback age. Kind of dumb now, as I seriously doubt any of the shit mentioned in that article will implement in the public sector.
Aside from the fact that technology to radically alter human abilities through surgery has been around for quite some time. You think the 'X-Men' is fantasy? Aside from the dumb costumes, and canned dialogue. .
The story about "Steve Rogers" as Captain America is barely fiction. Guys like that are entirely too real. But that's nothing I'm in a position to prove, so moving right along. .
The point of the matter is that any 'upgrades' Joe Public will be able to have implemented on himself will be:
Assuming for a ludicrous moment that these kind of upgrades will ever become a marketable commodity, like owning a car, having an enhancement would be a financial and life-style leg shackle sold under the guise of freedom. --Which, no doubt, everybody would buy into. Hook, line and sinker.
Out of all the car owners I know, only a very small handful are not miserable wage slaves trying like mad to pretend they're happy. --While chasing the bullshit 'satisfaction markers' as sold to them by cute television sit coms and popular music, all of which is primarily designed to cause social strife.
"Hit me baby, one more time."
-Fantastic Lad
post-human? (Score:2, Interesting)
post-"Homo sapien" is more accurate. Genes make a species; they don't make a human being. Maybe we should focus on what it really means to be human rather than focusing on what happens next.
Anti-aging technology (Score:2)
Possible the author is right, we do seem to
be quite close to reducing aging. We now know
that there a two main causes of aging, chemical
wear and tear, (free radical damage, glycosation
of proteins, etc), and secondly programmed
shutdown of varies hormones and growth factors.
The programmed shutdown evolved to reduce the
risk of cancer as we get older, increasing the
hormone levels can cause cancer if not balanced
out with cancer preventives.
So if you take cancer preventives, free radical
suppressers and hormone replacement, you should
be able to live much longer. Companys and
Organisations like the Life Extension Foundation,
http://www.lef.org/, sell a range of products
to do this, most interesting is a mixture of
anti-oxidants, anti-glycosation drug, and mitochondria
boosters here [lef.org].
Re:Anti-aging technology (Score:2)
here [lef.org]
Re:information augumentation (Score:2)
Understatement of the century! Have you ever thought about what programming would be like if your mind had a window into a computer? Imagine having instant and perfect recall of every line of code and optimization technique, as well as documentation on all the library or API commands being but a thought away?
The downside of course is that developing an effective IDE for the mind would probably be a while in the making. But of course it's an accelerating process.
Ah, how nice to have been born late enough that I may very well live forever!
Re:U know what this means... (Score:2)
The book itself describes what might happen if privacy was completely and utterly erased for everyone, even the rich and powerful. It's like the extreme fulfillment of David Brin's transparent society.