WHAT I'M INTERESTED IN: A FEW IDEAS TO PONDER

I have come to believe that 21st century technology—especially nanotechnology, genetics, artificial intelligence and robotics—will transform reality. In the process, humans will become post-human; that is, our descendents will evolve to resemble us about as much as we now do the amino acids from which we sprang. Moreover, humans and their post-human descendents will understand and control matter, life, and mind. I view these developments as part of cultural evolution which itself is a part of cosmic evolution, with both processes producing higher and more complex forms of life and mind. However, I recognize that all of the above is at the moment but science fiction, and I make no religion of these speculations. They are guesses, and subject to an infinite number of variables. In the end, contingent factors beyond our imagination will lead to some unimaginable future.

Furthermore, evolutionary progress is not inevitable; it could be halted by terrestrial or celestial disasters, or by dogmatists, zealots, religious fanatics, and others who oppose progress. Such individuals may dream of a past paradise, fear what they don’t understand, believe they possess a monopoly on the truth, or think humans subservient to superbeings. But for whatever reasons, they oppose change, preferring stasis and stagnation to dynamic, progressive evolutionism; and they seek to delay or prevent the groundswell of initiative, creativity, inventiveness, perseverance, and hope that drive evolution forward. They are fearful that the new world will render them, and their beliefs, anachronistic. They are the enemies of the future.

But if the surge of cosmic longing is not halted, then higher forms of being and consciousness will emerge. In the process, the universe will become increasingly self-consiousness. This is, afterall, the story of cosmic evolution—the universe becoming self-conscious through the creation of conscious beings. Humans are not an end, but a beginning. They need not fear imaginary gods, but instead have the courage to create minds more powerful than the gods they imagine. Let the dark ages not again descend upon us; rather, let our most fantastic longings be realized.

JGM - August 2006