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Technology

The Next Generation 226

Posted by michael from the leap-full-tower-cases-in-a-single-bound dept.
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."
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The Next Generation More

The Next Generation

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  • Twenties? (Score:2, Funny)

    by daeley ( 126313 )
    Pshaw! Us old-fogey thirty-somethings are planning on dreaming about super-hero antics until we're *really* old ... say, our forties. ;)
    • Who needs nanotech?

      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...

  • Pfff...."post human" (Score:3, Funny)

    by VistaBoy ( 570995 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @03:46PM (#3418048)
    When I'm an old man, I'll talk about how all the cyborgs are "pathetic posers for humans, since we didn't have extra arms and legs back in the GOOD days..." And it will be true. Of course, by then we'll have bionic ears, so people could choose to simply reduce the volumes on their microphone-ins and not hear me...
  • I don't want to grow up...
    I'm a nano-tech kid.

    Feel free to post your own verse and flesh this out as you see fit.

  • the Mann (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Transient0 ( 175617 )
    And not a single mention of Steve Mann [eyetap.org].

    Understood that his electronics are non-invasive, but still his projects are the cutting edge in human/machine amalgamation.

  • RAY Kurzweil (Score:4, Informative)

    by SkywalkerOS8 ( 398450 ) <brian@ja x z i n.com> on Friday April 26, 2002 @03:50PM (#3418084) Homepage Journal
    His name is Ray not John.

    • could have been worse (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I saw "post-human" and John K... in the post and...
    • Ah, yes, I really need that Flock of Rabid Chickens who make my Slashdot page for me to check my first names as well.

      This is why I'm a programmer, not a reporter. Compilers check your mistakes!

      NoClassDefFoundError: "John Kurzweil" not found (did you mean "Ray Kurzweil"?)

  • Some of us spend so long on the 'net we feel post-human anyway!

    • Re:post-human (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't know about you, but I've often been accused of being pre-human :)

  • Ye gods (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rand Race ( 110288 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @03:50PM (#3418088) Homepage
    We have as much a chance of predicting the eventual post-human as a chimp would have had predicting a human a few million years ago. If he had known (and had the capacity to know) that the super-chimp involved losing body hair, standing up strait, losing muscle density and almost total loss of natural weaponry he'd have called bullshit on the idea. But here we are.

    "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)

      by NFW ( 560362 )
      I think it's the other way around, actually... The human era is expected ends in 25-50 primarily because of AI. It's not just a coincidence, it's the cause.

      No, wait... it's blackout time, what am I doing here? Pfft.

    • After all, the reason people actually go out and risk their lives is because they know they'll loose it anyway one day. But if (As the article suggests) we give them immortality.. suddenly they will be a lot more reluctant to go out there and put their life on the line when they dont have to.


      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" ... They cant think that anymore. They'll think.. I could live forever.. why get myself killed?

  • This looks to be way too heavily government funded. As with any government project, they'll get ass-deep, and cut off funding, just like the Aussies [biotechnews.com.au] did.

    Don't steal, the government hates competition.

  • And how many of us grow up? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by line-bundle ( 235965 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @03:50PM (#3418091) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • Thank you, I agree. That was the point I was trying to make in this post [slashdot.org]. Moderators, please mod up.
    • Are you retarded?

      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)

      by gclef ( 96311 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @04:11PM (#3418245)
      And being able to fly/see through walls/regenerate/etc keeps me from being loved and loving exactly how?

      Sure, the real world is much richer than the comic book one...flying would still be cool, though.
    • All of a sudden we just want to be normal human beings, to be loved and to love..

      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?
    • It all comes down to what is going to get me laid more. Any question of why do you do something comes back to that one thing some where.

      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.

  • ...just remember that we were also promised flying cars."Where are the flying cars?" - Senifeld
  • i'm listening to a discussion on this very topic right now on my local NPR station - "Talk of the Nation".

    Researchers at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory are working to create robots as intelligent and as sociable as humans are. At the same time, medical advances are making humans more robot-like, with mechanical hearts and artificial limbs. Join the show in its second hour for a look at the relationship between humans and machines.

    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

  • resources (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EricBoyd ( 532608 ) <mrericboyd.yahoo@com> on Friday April 26, 2002 @03:51PM (#3418099) Homepage
    I maintain a page on transhuman / posthuman resources, with lots of links and information. If you're at all interested, I'm sure you'll find something cool there!

    Eric's Transhumanism Page [posthuman.com].

    • Great page! I especially liked the page about augmented reality. Steve Mann [eyetap.org] is truely a cyborg... how long will it be until you see people like him everywhere? Perhaps only a few years...
  • I don't know what the deal is with superheros.

    First of all, they are not so entertaining. Granted, the Green Lantern appears to kick ass. To wit:

    In brightest day

    In darkest night
    No evil shall escape
    My sight
    Let those who cherish Evil's
    Might
    Beware my power
    Green Lantern's
    Light!

    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.

    Let me make it plain

    Gotta make way for the Homo superiors

    -David Bowie

  • from the article.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sniepre ( 517796 ) <sniepre@gmail.com> on Friday April 26, 2002 @03:53PM (#3418110) Homepage
    This is a paragraph that fascinated me from the article --

    "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)

      by osgeek ( 239988 )
      If we think rascism is bad now, just wait until we can create even new ways of grouping people.

      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?
    • I've long been inspired by the likes of the Butlerian Jihad to a dream that we may soon enough agree that at least those Enhancements that offer (indefinite?) life extension should only be available off planet.

  • yes!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by meis31337 ( 574142 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @03:54PM (#3418115)
    i think it would be nice if i could be given a nice p4 implant and the bsa's auditing software installed on a small hard drive placed somewhere inconspicuous...with all necessary eula's in my wallet of course. Then I would like to get a usb (2.0!!) adapter grafted onto my finger. This would make me the perfect superhero poster-boy of the bsa. I could visit all of the offending companies, stick my finger where it didn't belong (in their usb slots of course) and audit them into submission... This is the behavior of a hero is it not??
    • That is pretty damn pathetic that the best you can think of is a Pentium 4 and a USB finger. What ever happened to lasers, machine guns, missiles, rocket boots, and so on, I ask? You have been hoodwinked by marketroids, no doubt. Next you will be saying you want Coca-Cola embedded in your head and a Swoosh upon your Breast.

      I will take what God gave Me over the temptations of Corporate American, thanx!

      :(

      • He could do justice to the pirates too. He can kill all the people with his machine guns, destroy the computers with missiles and lasers, then fly away to do more pirate-levelling justice on his rocket boots. What a great idea. He's the IP-Avenger.

  • John? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Black_Logic ( 79637 )
    Um.. I think his name is Ray Kurzweil.

    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'. :) It was definitaly a fun read. No comic book references though, unfourntunately. :) Although he did base a lot of his theory on Daniel Dennet (contemporary philosapher) Who wrote among others, Consiousness Explained. (Pretty bold title, eh?) I think a lot of his assumptions were correct, but only by virtue of being fairly simple/logical theory's. He basically comes up with a new model of consiousness that contrasts with dualism. Good read, pretty relevant to AI research.

  • PDF Mirror (Score:2, Informative)

    by daeley ( 126313 )
    Here's a PDF mirror just in case of /.-ing:

    TheNextGeneration.pdf [mac.com]
  • " What will baby boomers do when it becomes obvious that Botox and Viagra are just the tip of the iceberg for the pharmagenetic sex-appeal industry?"

    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)

    by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @04:01PM (#3418162) Homepage Journal
    ... is that when this stuff arrives, it will seem like No Big Deal.

    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 ... but very wrong on the second.

    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)

      by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @04:10PM (#3418239)
      ... is that when this stuff arrives, it will seem like No Big Deal.

      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."
    • but hardly anyone is running around screaming about how cell phones have Fundamentally Altered Human Nature
      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)

      by rnelsonee ( 98732 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @04:12PM (#3418253)
      I'll have to agree with you there. I have yet to witness a gadget that will fundamentally alter human nature.

      I mean, look at our daily lives in the last 1,000 years.

      • We wake up in the morning after 7-8 hours of sleep.
      • We wake up the kids and go to work
      • We work (usually looking forward to coming home)
      • We come home and have dinner
      • We entertain ourselves with family/friends
      • We go to bed
      • Rinse, lather, repeat

      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

      • Good point. The fundamentals of human life haven't changed, though the degree of automation has. Dishwashers have taken the drudgery out of dishwashing, etc. But you still have to stand there and get things done. I tell ya, the next big leap will come when rudimentary AI coupled with decent robotics create the robotic house butler or house maid. It would result in the creation of more free time for a lot of people.

        >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:4, Funny)

        by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @04:42PM (#3418428) Homepage
        Well, when all our hair falls out due to ambient toxicity, we will get rid of the "lather, rinse, repeat" part. It'll be "wax on! wax off!" Progress marches on!

      • Re:The main thing I think the article misses ... (Score:4, Funny)

        by tps12 ( 105590 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @04:56PM (#3418526) Homepage Journal
        Rinse, lather, repeat

        It is actually lather, rinse, repeat. If you think about it, lathering only works pre-rinse.

        What have you been reading in the shower?

        • Well, I had been reading the newspaper, but the water made it dissolve on me into a kind of disgusting paste that covered my body.

          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!
      • I mean, look at our daily lives in the last 1,000 years. [...] When is that going to change?


        You're underestimating the magnitude of the changes in store for the human race in the next 50 years.

        • We no longer need to sleep, as fatigue poisons are scoured from our body by nanobots, while the processors added to our brains do memory processing in the background with no downtime.
        • We design kids from their genes up, and they learn through their neural links, 24 hours a day.
        • We work? Why? Robots perform all menial labor, and nanotech insures that all material products are free. Perhaps we spend the day diddling with art, philosophy, or programming for our own pleasure.
        • I'll assume we'll still need to eat. We almost certainly won't need to *cook*...
        • We entertain ourselves with family, friends, simulated friends, simulated long dead famous people, and the simulations of the children you're designing for next year. And you won't be able to tell the difference between them.
        • We go to bed? Again, why?
        • Nanobots automatically clean our hair, so even 'Rinse, lather, repeat' becomes a thing of the past. ;)


        If you're thinking life will go on much as it always has, you're thinking too small.

      • I strongly think the electric light and the power grid has fundamentally changed the daily course of daily events.

        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.
        • Couple of points-

          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!
      • Birth School Work Death.

        Well, we've added school sometime in the past 300 years or so. . . but it's still not universal.
    • This is the kind of post I wish I had moderator points for...it's one of the better I've seen on /. for quite a while.

      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.
      • Thanks for the kind words. :)

        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 ... or, if as is more likely, you're not bored with your threescore and ten, what makes you think you'll be bored with centuries or millennia?

        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.
        • Not to mention the fact that, if we had great health, great physical and mental abilities, and an indefinite lifespan, there would be so many more things we could do to keep from being bored. I might like to be an artist. And a musician. And a pilot (or an astronaut?) The possibilities really could be endless.
    • I see your point, but remember, what is being discussed here is possibly the ending of the human species in the strict biological sense. Rather than just a change in our capabilities (like a cell phone brings) it's possible that these "transhumans" will no longer be able (or willing) to breed with today's Homo Sapiens and a divergence in species will occur. I'd say that's a little more startling than the next evolution in information technology.
    • First off: There's plenty of people yelling over cell-phones changing people's nature.

      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.
    • ... is that when this stuff arrives, it will seem like No Big Deal.

      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.
      • Tip of the hat to Scott Adams...

        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)

    by First_In_Hell ( 549585 )
    Stuff like this is cool to daydream about but I don't see it going into the "superhero" direction. I think that it will go the route of more real world solutions like curing blindness and helping the paralyzed.

    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.

  • I was just thinking about that job interview question "What do you see yourself doing in five years?" I certainly can't predict what computers will be like in five years, and with articles like this, I can't predict much else that far down the road, either. Perhaps they will be able to fix every imperfection in my body(flat feet, nearsighted, etc.), but I won't be able to afford any of the fixes.
    • I certainly can't predict what computers will be like in five years...

      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)

    by Washizu ( 220337 ) <bengarvey@co m c a s t . net> on Friday April 26, 2002 @04:04PM (#3418190) Homepage
    I'll be happy as long as I'm never a First Post Human.
    • That's pretty good. I would have said, "I wonder who the first post human will be." But no one would have gotten it. But congratulations on your bonus moderation. I'm happy for you, I am. I'm happy for all of us here on this nice spring (in the Northern Hemisphere!) day (Western).
  • This article was written by John Katz. Just one big tangent and "What if"s. Wow. What news.

  • Changing to Fast? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by huckda ( 398277 )
    "Even change has changed. It's been 32 years since Alvin and Heidi Toffler published "Future Shock," warning that the pace of change was increasing faster than people could handle it."

    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, /. has provided a wonderful window into what is hot, and forthcoming so that we may at LEAST have a glimpse of what is going on around us.

  • Extropians are an interesting bunch (Score:3, Interesting)

    by osgeek ( 239988 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @04:07PM (#3418218) Homepage Journal
    I spent some time lurking around the Extropian main mailing list. There are some brilliant people with some good ideas there, as well as some real whack jobs.

    Max Moore is really one smart guy. I'd recommend reading his Extropian Principles [extropy.org] statement.
  • First of all, we'll discover a way to insure immortality through "uploading" our patterns into a computer database. The government will decide that it is best for all of us, and make it mandatory that we upload. Some people will want to remain human and form a rebel organization, let's call it the ARM while the rest form a giant hive mind we'll call the CORE. These two will fight it out in a great war that devastates everything into a state of "Total Annihilation".

    This seems about as likely as anything Max More (people take this guy seriously?) has ever said.
  • Post-human is to 2002 as ...
    Nuclear-powered automobiles is to 1952
  • They are very good and need to be renewed in about 5 years. I can't lift heavy weights and have to be careful about not being too heavy. They cost about $4500 each and as I'm unemployed right now I don't know how I'm going to pay for the next lot.

    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.
  • That ray from the movie Orgazmo, we need that. Its the humane way to take down people who are villans, not brute power (or maybe a combination of the two). Think about it, you can have as much strength as you want but one shot and your down gasping for air and you'll have to pay a huge cleaning bill.

  • The Singularity (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @04:19PM (#3418298) Homepage
    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, 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 /., I suspect the sentiment will largely run to that side.

    Interesting times, indeed.
  • This is one those articles where the whole time I'm going "oh, I see where he's going with this..." and then I get to the end and he never got there.

    Reminds me of someone, can't quite put my finger on it...

  • 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.

    • In fact, wiser is fairly easy with advanced technology. Pattern recognition software could tell you when you are getting yourself into a situation that other people have gotten into and didn't like, and warn you before-hand. Biofeedback mechanisms with hormonal and neurochemical controls could make unthinking rage and depression just go away.

      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.
  • Here's a quote from the article:
    Already, life expectancy in the developed world is increasing by more than a quarter of a year every year. When life expectancy starts increasing by a full year every year, something like immortality is at hand, at least for those who can afford it.

    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.

  • We, as their creators, will be viewed as gods by the machines. Have you seen the way we've been treating God lately?

    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.
  • Zathrus [slashdot.org] writes:
    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.

  • Just for fun, I'd like to show something.

    Here's a quote from the story:

    Antidotes to aging are becoming big business. George Roth, chief of molecular physiology and genetics at the National Institute on Aging, counts some 40 recent scientist-run start-ups seeking to reverse aging. Not stop aging, but reverse it. Most of these companies are looking for life-extending genes.

    Now here's a quote from my Chemistry book:

    ...What started as a mystical search for spiritual properties in matter evolved over a thousand years into an obsession with potions to bestow eternal youth and elixirs to transmute "baser" metals, such as lead, into "purer" ones, such as gold.

    -Silberberg, Chemistry: The Molecular Nature of Matter and Change

    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)

    by leodegan ( 144137 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @04:59PM (#3418558)
    I always found Kurzweil's predictions to be over the top. It is my impression that many of his predictions rely on the premise that the human brain functions in a deterministic way. We know far too little about the brain to make this assertion.

    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)

    by espressojim ( 224775 ) <eris@NOsPam.tarogue.net> on Friday April 26, 2002 @05:12PM (#3418632)
    I figured I'd weigh in on this discussion as I work in the bioinformatics field (the merger of biotech and computers, neat stuff). I've spent the last 5 years of my life working at places like the WhiteHead Center for Genome Research http://www.wi.mit.edu/news/genome/gc.html working on the study of complex traits.

    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 /real/ links to genetic causes. These studies often take a very long time, and are a hit or miss proposition.

    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?cm d= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10973253&dopt=Abstrac t

    (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)

    by Skevin ( 16048 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @05:45PM (#3418825) Journal
    neither governments nor religious groups will be able to stop this" in the next few decades, says Christine Petersen, president of the Foresight Institute running the program.


    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)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @05:50PM (#3418850)
    Bio-technology. . .

    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:

    a) At the cost of his freedom. (i.e., you become a military tool, closely watched, guarded and controlled. Plus the surgeons can easily turn you psychopathic. That's currently the only realistic way 'in' for Joe Public at the moment.)

    b) In the purely private and commercial sector, enhancements would only serve to enslave; (Special foods required, and yearly 'licensing' dues, etc.)

    c) Will absolutely NOT provide increased senses which might allow Joe Public to ascend from the mire of awareness-deadened slavery.

    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)

    by sean-mccorkle ( 108563 )
    post-human? I paraphrase Richard Leakey [talkorigins.org], who once stated at a lecture at Stony Brook [sunysb.edu], that he spent many years looking at the fossil record, trying to answer the question "When did we first break off from the rest of the primates and become human?". He's now convinced this has not yet occurred.

    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.

  • 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].

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