![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Transhumanism
Jul. 18th, 2003 01:27 amThe other day I wibbled about choice and the morals of influencing it. The questions I wrote about there were taken from fiction, and so may seem far-fetched and quite irrelevant to our daily life. Currently, they are. But they may not stay that way for very long.
Reading Transmetropolitan and playing Deus Ex have made me pay attention to transhumanism again. I had a look at that years ago, when I first read Vernor Vinge's Marooned In Realtime and ran into his thoughts on the Singularity. Back then, I thought that the transhumanists were way too optimistic and that the scenarios they envisioned lay centuries in the future, at best. I still think that they are way too optimistic, but I've revised my opinion on the timescale of transhuman technologies. Hard to do otherwise when you see them being born around you.
The essence of transhumanism is the hope that we will one day be able to make better humans. To use science and technology to improve ourselves far beyond our current limits. And they're usually not thinking about anything as crude as the Six Million Dollar Man. No, the first and most important way in which the transhumanists hope we will improve ourselves is to make us smarter. And we're already doing that.
A couple of years ago a friend of mine called me while I was at work. "You know Sun Solaris, right?" he said. Which I admitted that I did. "I'm getting this weird error message," he went on. "I have no idea what it means and I can't find it in the manual." He read it out to me, and I admitted that I hadn't got the vaguest idea what it meant. "But," I said, "try pasting it into Google and see what crops up." Ten minutes later the problem was solved. I don't remember what the message or the problem was. But I remember wondering afterwards how long it would've taken to solve without Google. Days, easily. Maybe weeks. Possibly never.
That was just a beginning, of course. These days I tend to use Google as soon as I can't remember something offhand. I've even used them when I forgot where I'd put a certain page on my own website. And occasionally the question arises: how did I ever get by before Google existed? It's the same with IMDB, in a more limited way. Do you remember watching a movie, recognizing some actor or actress and being terribly frustrated because you couldn't remember where you'd seen him or her before? Hardly ever happens any more, because it takes at most a couple of minutes to find out with the help of IMDB. Or take the old game Trivial Pursuit. Do you think that would still be an interesting game if you got to look stuff up on the net before you answered?
I believe that Google alone has measurably increased the collective intelligence of the human species. And as powerful as it is, it's still very, very crude. You've got to have a net-connected computer and a web browser to use it, and those are still not very portable. Things are moving towards smaller and more constantly connected, and I have used Google from the commuter train by way of a PDA and a mobile phone. But try to imagine what it might be like to have a search interface and a database like that interfaced right into your head. At a still pretty crude level it might just be a web interface projected onto your visual field and navigated by eye movements. You'd never have to wonder about a fact ever again. At a more sophisticated level, imagine that the interface could snoop your thoughts and initiate queries as soon as you thought about something you didn't already know. By the time the question made its way to your conscious, the answer would already be there waiting for you to assimilate. You would never again have to read a manual. Never look at a timetable. Never search for a recipe.
The thought is a bit scary, isn't it? Granted, the subconscious query thing is probably fairly far off. But wearable interfaces, with a wireless-net-connected computer in a small box on your belt, display projected on a pair of glasses and input via a one-hand chord keyboard/mouse have already been around for several years. They're still bulky, tricky to use and expensive -- but those are just engineering details. If you really want nonstop net access, you can have it. Today. The first steps towards true Intelligence Amplification have already been taken. The question is no longer if we will reach superhuman intelligence, the question is when.
Transhumanists also talk about other kinds of improvements, of course. Improvements to the body as well as the mind. Here, too, the first steps have already been taken. The Human Genome Project have sequenced the human DNA, and several years ahead of schedule at that. Nanotechnology has moved from pure science fiction to very serious research subject in little more than a decade. There is already at least one university that has a Nanotech Engineering program. It's starting to look like the weaker forms of nanotech will be useful technology within a couple of decades.
It looks like we will indeed be living in interesting times.
Reading Transmetropolitan and playing Deus Ex have made me pay attention to transhumanism again. I had a look at that years ago, when I first read Vernor Vinge's Marooned In Realtime and ran into his thoughts on the Singularity. Back then, I thought that the transhumanists were way too optimistic and that the scenarios they envisioned lay centuries in the future, at best. I still think that they are way too optimistic, but I've revised my opinion on the timescale of transhuman technologies. Hard to do otherwise when you see them being born around you.
The essence of transhumanism is the hope that we will one day be able to make better humans. To use science and technology to improve ourselves far beyond our current limits. And they're usually not thinking about anything as crude as the Six Million Dollar Man. No, the first and most important way in which the transhumanists hope we will improve ourselves is to make us smarter. And we're already doing that.
A couple of years ago a friend of mine called me while I was at work. "You know Sun Solaris, right?" he said. Which I admitted that I did. "I'm getting this weird error message," he went on. "I have no idea what it means and I can't find it in the manual." He read it out to me, and I admitted that I hadn't got the vaguest idea what it meant. "But," I said, "try pasting it into Google and see what crops up." Ten minutes later the problem was solved. I don't remember what the message or the problem was. But I remember wondering afterwards how long it would've taken to solve without Google. Days, easily. Maybe weeks. Possibly never.
That was just a beginning, of course. These days I tend to use Google as soon as I can't remember something offhand. I've even used them when I forgot where I'd put a certain page on my own website. And occasionally the question arises: how did I ever get by before Google existed? It's the same with IMDB, in a more limited way. Do you remember watching a movie, recognizing some actor or actress and being terribly frustrated because you couldn't remember where you'd seen him or her before? Hardly ever happens any more, because it takes at most a couple of minutes to find out with the help of IMDB. Or take the old game Trivial Pursuit. Do you think that would still be an interesting game if you got to look stuff up on the net before you answered?
I believe that Google alone has measurably increased the collective intelligence of the human species. And as powerful as it is, it's still very, very crude. You've got to have a net-connected computer and a web browser to use it, and those are still not very portable. Things are moving towards smaller and more constantly connected, and I have used Google from the commuter train by way of a PDA and a mobile phone. But try to imagine what it might be like to have a search interface and a database like that interfaced right into your head. At a still pretty crude level it might just be a web interface projected onto your visual field and navigated by eye movements. You'd never have to wonder about a fact ever again. At a more sophisticated level, imagine that the interface could snoop your thoughts and initiate queries as soon as you thought about something you didn't already know. By the time the question made its way to your conscious, the answer would already be there waiting for you to assimilate. You would never again have to read a manual. Never look at a timetable. Never search for a recipe.
The thought is a bit scary, isn't it? Granted, the subconscious query thing is probably fairly far off. But wearable interfaces, with a wireless-net-connected computer in a small box on your belt, display projected on a pair of glasses and input via a one-hand chord keyboard/mouse have already been around for several years. They're still bulky, tricky to use and expensive -- but those are just engineering details. If you really want nonstop net access, you can have it. Today. The first steps towards true Intelligence Amplification have already been taken. The question is no longer if we will reach superhuman intelligence, the question is when.
Transhumanists also talk about other kinds of improvements, of course. Improvements to the body as well as the mind. Here, too, the first steps have already been taken. The Human Genome Project have sequenced the human DNA, and several years ahead of schedule at that. Nanotechnology has moved from pure science fiction to very serious research subject in little more than a decade. There is already at least one university that has a Nanotech Engineering program. It's starting to look like the weaker forms of nanotech will be useful technology within a couple of decades.
It looks like we will indeed be living in interesting times.
