He wrote that nearly half of all prime working-age male labor-force dropouts—approximately seven million men—take pain medication daily—paid for mostly by Medicaid. These men don’t use their free time helping around the home or volunteering in their communities. Instead they spend up to 2,000 hours a year watching their electronic devices—TV, DVDs, Internet, smartphones, etc. That is their full-time job. We can imagine Harari’s future: millions of un-working men in the prime of life, out of work and unemployable, sitting stoned in front of screens. What does this say about the future of Democracy?
I wrote this essay in July, 2005. How does it fit our world of 2017?
Quotes from scientists:
Those of us alive today, over the course of our lifetimes, will morph ourselves into machines. We are trying to build robots that have properties of living systems….In just 20 years the boundary between fantasy and reality will be rent asunder. Rodney Allen Brooks (Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT and author of Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us.)
…If we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn’t we? Gregory Stock (director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at the School of Medicine of the University of California)
Biological species almost never survive encounters with superior species. Hans Moravec (Carnegie Mellon University)
The emergence in the early twenty-first century of a new form of intelligence on Earth that can compete with, and ultimately significantly exceed, human intelligence will be a development of greater import than any of the events that have shaped human history. Ray Kurzweil (inventor and author of Spiritual Machines)
Are they mad scientists or prophets?
You decide.
Genetics, robotics, and nanotechnology fed by the exponentially increasing power and speed of information technology intertwine and multiply one another in symbiotic relationships. They are poised to rupture, alter, and perhaps even destroy the fabric of human nature—our minds, souls, mortality, consciousness, personalities, our imperfection, our physical makeup, our freedom of choice, and the indefinable that makes us who we are.
The machines thrive.
Today computing power rides a curve of exponential change unprecedented in human history, and the exponential change itself will continue to accelerate. Moore’s Law states that the power of information technology will double every 18 months. In 2002, the 27th doubling occurred with a billion-transistor chip. A doubling means that the next step is as tall as all the previous steps put together. Twenty-seven consecutive doublings of anything man-made remains unprecedented in human history—until now. The growth curve goes straight up. The potential systemic impact of such power translated to new technologies (genetics, robotics, nanotechnology) and on all of life staggers the mind.
When Moore’s Law exhausts itself it most likely will be followed by a new technological paradigm that will grow even faster. There may be no limits.
We are on the verge of an almost unimaginable future: what scientists call the Singularity. At the point of Singularity technology evolves so rapidly that our everyday world no longer makes sense—we enter a massive neutral zone—a place of no rules. We probably cannot escape this “perfect storm” of chaos; we must go through it.
Author Vernor Vinge wrote of the essence of the Singularity: A super humanity–artificially created. Soon machines smarter than the human brain will be created according to Vinge (See Vernor Vinge on the Singularity available various places on the internet). Ray Kurzweil, author of The Spiritual Machines (www.kurzweilAI.net) wrote that the implications of this change include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence and immortal software-based humans.
As entities with greater than human intelligence are created most intelligence on the planet will become nonbiological and changes in all other aspects of life will accelerate dramatically—including the more rapid creation of even more intelligent entities on a shorter time scale. We will not be able to think and absorb fast enough to keep up with the changes.
Vinge wrote that this change will be comparable to the rise of human life on earth. This will be a unique transition with profound systemic implications for humanity fraught with unpredictability and unintended consequences.
Will we create a new heaven on earth with all problems solved? Or will a new hell on earth emerge where the technology goes bad and the machines rule and humans become their slaves? Or will life continue as it has in the past—imperfect and creative–just with new complexities to cope with?
As I write this essay I am reading the books, Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau and Frankenstein by Dean Koontz—the first non-fiction–the second fiction. As I alternate between the books I have trouble distinguishing the facts from the fiction. The boundaries between fiction and reality blur and foreshadow the approach of the Singularity where the technologies of genetics, information technology, robotics, and nanotechnology merge.
Koontz described Victor Frankenstein who wanted to live forever and save the world from the imperfections of spirit and emotion—including love—unnecessary in a purely material world without spirituality. Some might call him mad. Others would call him driven, brilliant, and totally absorbed in filling the holes within himself by eliminating them in future models of the human being.
Koontz’s scientist creates soulless beings that look like real people and programs them genetically without moral dimensions. Their minds fill with information downloaded from computers. The live out predetermined lives in service of the scientist with no ability to control their own destinies. The machines of flesh become the successor race.
Garreau, the non-fiction writer, described a world of telekinetic monkeys that can move distant objects via their thoughts, fictional super-heroes whose imaginary powers are now real or almost real and “better” human beings artificially enhanced by machines. The telekinetic monkey (near telepathic) foreshadows future human telepathy, the imaginary heroes become soldiers who heal themselves, can go a week without sleep, and can run at Olympic sprint speeds for 15 minutes on one breath of air.
Garreau described machine enhanced people of many potential breeds who live for hundreds of years. Nanobots (nano robots) the size of human blood cells cruise their bloodstreams and attack pathogens, build new cells, and grow new organs. People separate into the enhanced—those who choose to be altered–and the naturals—those who choose to not be altered. Will the naturals become the pets or the slaves of the enhanced?
Parents could potentially order their new child gene by gene over the internet to be delivered to them on their schedule. Who or what would this child be? What would be its connection to the past, to a family, to those who come later? And what would happen when, a few months later, even more fully enhanced genetic models become available that make this state of the art child obsolete? Would the child ever forgive those who created her? Science fiction has merged with the vision of science.
Koontz’s creatures yearn to feel and to be happy like the inferior humans they were created to replace. They know they lack something within themselves despite their “perfection.” This yearning threatens the scientist’s control and leads to unintended chaos as the machines break the rules they were programmed to follow and genetic creation goes astray. Could super-intelligent machines in our “real” world do the same and turn against their creators? In Garreau and Koontz, fact and fantasy merge.
When Garreau asked a researcher to reflect on the meaning and the consequences of his work, the reply was, “That’s above my pay grade.” People are changing our world and toying with our human nature without much thought as to what they are doing. They are having too much fun to consider that the unintended consequences might be bad. This is irresponsible. It remains up to you and me to set the initial conditions for this development, whatever it may be, and to hold creators accountable for their creations. For we do care about what “not so fun” things could happens to our humanity.
Some believe that to save our humanity and even our species, we must stop this technological development. Scientist Bill Joy wrote: “…We are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil….” (See Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us in the April 2000 issue of Wired magazine) I believe that we cannot stop or control this development. People always seek to improve themselves and their lives. This will not change.
If we push development underground it will only free the technology from ethical and moral considerations. The technology and its impact on our lives and the potential impact on the human soul will not be stopped. What development can happen, will happen—our human nature drives us.
Others believe that the future technology will lead to a heaven on earth with all problems finally solved. We become God and create Heaven. Kurzweil: “We see exponentially greater love.” I believe that these are the beliefs of the pseudoinnocent (see Pamphlet 50). Pseudoinnocence colludes with evil as it denies the imperfection of human beings—artificially enhanced or not.
Evil will continue to exist, and villains will continue to utilize whatever means are available to them to meet their sinister objectives. The insane, immoral, immature, and irresponsible among us will sell their souls for the currency of the day, as they always have, and there will continue to be people of weak spirit and character who will use technology to exploit others. I do not believe there will be man-made gods or a heaven on earth.
For the past decade many have railed against the mechanistic world view and the devastating unintended consequences of a world view that dehumanizes people. I’ve spoken and written of the conscious evolution of our humanity for years (wholeness, authenticity, relationships) because I believe our spiritual development is crucial to reversing the environmental mess we’ve created, which threatens our way of life. We can now add exponential technical development to the threats to our species. We need to pay attention.
Singularity or not, I see the potential for life to create differently than the technologically driven linear projections of heaven or hell—gods or devils. Instead of being led by technology, we can lead technology. To do so effectively we must accelerate our maturity as people and communities and bring forth a creative renaissance of relationships that will transform life on this planet.
The global transformation we are in has spiritual and technical elements. They must not compete or, I fear, the spiritual will be driven deeply underground. We must wisely manage the use of our technical genius. We must embrace the technology that threatens our humanity and outfox the creative dark side of human nature with the creative light of our humanity. We must use the very tools of our potential destruction to outwit those who would destroy our unique humanness in their grandiosity. We must absorb the technology into our greater life force. The spiritual must transcend the technical; people must transcend machines.
Can we preserve our species, retain our humanity, and become even more human in the face of unprecedented pressure and temptation to step outside of a caring and creative human nature? Can and will the good, well-intended people, who comprise the vast majority of people on this planet, find the inner courage and strength to say, “We must manage this wisely and holistically?” To do so we must catch up socially and culturally to our technical development so we can find solutions to problems faster. We must apply our deepest human values to this technology.
I believe that in the chaos of today’s world, if we wish to retain our human nature as we intuitively understand it, we must focus first on being whole, imperfect, and authentic people connected to one another by a shared vision for our collective future. This movement must leap willingly into an unknown future and see creative potential in uncertainty. We will evolve through our creativity, not technological determinism. The impact of such a focus would be profound.
Abraham Maslow wrote that to save our world we must create the “good person.” He defined the good person as:
The self-evolving person,
The fully human person,
The self-actualizing person….
Long ago Confucius wrote that the cultivation of the person must be the root of everything else. Playwright Vaclav Havel wrote: “Transcendence is the only real alternative to extinction.” I believe that Havel, Maslow, and Confucius meant creativity and spirituality when they wrote of transcendence, human cultivation, and self-actualization, not people crossing over to be linear, literal, and dehumanized machines. They understood that each authentic life lived fully provides the diversity to insure the sustainability of humanity. I don’t care about being mechanically perfect; I care about being creatively imperfect.
Each of these great thinkers calls forth images of people who continually grow in complexity in a more natural way. The goal (for me) becomes to use the technology in our spiritual quests to realize our deepest sense of purpose and authenticity. We can deepen and expand our creativity, compassion, and connection with self, others, and nature. We can create meaning in our lives as free, responsible, and spiritual people. We can use the technology to help us do so. We can say “NO” to any technology that threatens who we are in our essential spiritual being and intimate connectedness to self, others, and nature.
Life is about heroic journeys. The human spirit that suffers in our world today must renew itself for the greatest challenge in our brief history on the planet Earth:
The critical challenge of our lifetime may well be to use explosive technical development to preserve and enhance our humanity rather than to have it destroyed by the mindless acceleration of technology without though as to the unintended consequences.
What are the technological lines we will not cross? How do we decide? Who decides?
I don’t know. I do know that we need deep and broad awareness and dialogue among people of the world.
I do believe that we must go forward into the unknown with care, caution, awareness, and thoughtfulness. We must plan, act, reflect, and adapt as we proceed. We have much to think about.
Thomas Friedman wrote in a recent New York Times article (July 27, 2005) that America’s most serious deficit today is a deficit of leaders who can talk about long-term problem-solving and the national interest. Leadership will not come from nationalistic politicians more concerned about re-election than our shared future on this planet or corporate leaders more concerned about riches than sustainability. Nor can the future of humanity be left to engineers, scientists, and technicians who do not want to be responsible or accountable for their creations.
You and I and all global citizens are responsible for the future. We get to choose who we will be in the future. We can be creative spiritually as well as creative technically. We can imagine and create the future we want. Or, as Friedman wrote, we can “Live wrong. Party on. Pay later.”
To be continued.
I wrote about and tried to teach consulting clients to learn how to change organizations faster as a competitive advantage 20 years ago. My management team and I talked about lifelong learning in the early 90’s. John Gardner wrote about lifelong learning in the 1960’s. Most have not paid attention.
Trump and Trumpism are a dysfunctional denial of what is happening in America and globally. They can do great damage but they cannot stop the forces at play—unless they blow all of us up.
It appears that many of us are on the path to being victims of these transformations. We can choose differently. What happens is up to us.
We begin with awareness: Do we use technology as a tool to evolve our humanity or do we fall under its control and give up our attention one choice at a time? Do we set our own agendas or do we let the machines gradually control our attention, feelings and actions? Do we let smartphones and computer algorithms make our decisions for us? Do we continually learn and reinvent ourselves over and over again throughout our lives to avoid being unemployed and unemployable? Do we resist efforts to go backwards to decline and go forward into the unknown future boldly?
It is up to us.
Tom's Thoughts 