by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright Jan 2013
Some visionaries speculating on the upcoming Singularity feel that it will unfold as a sort of Rapture of Science -- people who are with the program will be transported into some elsewhere cyber place and leave Earth as we know it behind. Some believe the transition will be with human bodies going along for the ride, others believe without them. And either way, humans will disappear from Earth because they will be so happy to move on to this new existence that none will stay behind. Earth will be either depopulate as humans move into some new plane of existence, or as cyber-enhanced hybrids take the place of pure-blood humans.
I disagree. My vision is different. I feel some parts of some humans will merge or be replicated in cyberspace, but lots of humans, doing lots of human activities and thinking, will remain on Earth. And those humans who remain on Earth will take the existence of higher entities for granted -- cyber and other styles. (There will be many styles.) Whether or not those higher entities contain human elements will be irrelevant to humans. Human civilization will remain, and thrive or dwindle slowly, unless some diabolical cyber super entity takes on human extermination as a must-happen cause.
Here are some further thoughts on how humans living as humans will experience "going cyber".
First, let me introduce you to a concept that I came up with earlier in my writings: The Birds and Boeings concept. The root of this concept is that innovation is powered by dreams, but the reality of what those dreams produce is usually quite different from the inspiring dream. Jet planes were inspired by inventors watching birds fly, but jets and birds have very little in common in terms of design and performance characteristics.
Singularity cyber intelligences are likely to have a Birds and Boeings relation with what today's dreamers are hoping for. One of the earliest dreams for cyber was the robot personal assistant, ala Robbie the Robot of Forbidden Planet (1956). Robotics has started contributing in significant ways to human civilization, but the robot personal assistant is still firmly in dreamland.
There are two basic dreams involved in going cyber. The simple one is enhancing the brain's awareness by improving connections to the cybernet and other sensory enhancers. Instead of having to use phones, monitors, keyboards and mice, the cybernet will communicate more directly with human sensory neurons in some fashion. In this dream the consciousness stays inside the brain, but the brain has fast, transparent access to a lot more information and sensory perception. The 60's version of Superman, with X-ray vision, super vision and super hearing, is a good representation of the sensory enhancement side of the dream.
The second dream is to replicate the human consciousness and memories into cyberspace and and have then function there, and also be able to implant them back into a different body or a rejuvenated body. This becomes a form of immortality as well as a form of godhood. One movie that portrayed this fairly well was John Boorman's 1974 movie Zardoz.
Nice dreams but...
The harsh reality is that human consciousness sits atop a neural network so complex that scientists to this day can't figure out where consciousness starts and stops inside humans. I've written a bit about this complexity in my Human Thinking Stack essay. Sensory perception is also complex. Both of these have evolved over billions of years to adapt to the life chemistry environment of living beings, and they are a high performance fit.
Cyber intelligence is not built on human style neural networks. It rests on electronic circuit logic -- very different. This means that trying to transfer a human consciousness and memories into the cyber environment in a way in which the consciousness can function is very much an apples-and-oranges issue. Any fit that comes into existence will be hideously awkward by cyber intelligence standards. Any native cyber intelligences will consider such transfers as an expensive hobby.
This means that the dream is going to come out in surprising ways. Cyber entities that embody human consciousness will be expensive, inefficient and rare. Efficient cyber entities will be based on other premises.
Expect surprises, big surprises.
Here are some possibilities that are likely to be practical.
Using implants to enhance connectivity and sensory perception are quite likely. The big issue is going to be how to insert this additional information flow into the brain's usual sensory and decision-making stream. How should the consciousness be interrupted with things such as cyberspace messages and X-ray vision? (Two different ways are likely for these.)
Multi-tasking is something the younger generations are learning. It's a learned skill, and newly important. It will likely be the skill that is extended to handle these new kinds of information flows.
Another possibility is that new stuff gets inserted into memories rather than consciousness -- a person formulates a question, puts it in their "unsolved mysteries" cache, then some time later "remembers" the answer.
It is likely that audio, text and video formats will all be kept around and used. Each can transmit different kinds of information well. Audio is great for real-time updates, text is wonderful for math and tabular oriented data, video is great for showing color, motion and spatial relations. As evidence of this, even today text, aural and pictures are all used extensively by smart phone users.
It may be hideously wasteful to try and operate a consciousness in the cyber environment, it may be a lot more economic to simply store it. If this is so, then moving a consciousness and memories to a new body specifically grown to contain them may be practical. This could be the practical form of human immortality -- store a copy of consciousness and memory, grow a new body but keep the brain "clean" in some way, implant the new body with a copy of the consciousness and memories -- perhaps as it is developing.
This implanting may be a continuing process rather than a one-shot. It could happen as the body is developing in vitro, or it may be a case of bringing the maturing body already growing up in the real world in for a weekly updating.
There will be surprise uses of these technologies.
Humans strive to be better at what they do. An example is athletic competition.
Swirling around that striving is what tools to use and which to forebear upon. A high profile example of that is which drugs are OK to use while being an Olympic aspirant or a professional athlete. The recent Lance Armstrong scandal is an example of a person successfully crossing the line for many years.
As cyber connections become more efficient and prolific, similar controversies will arise over their use -- some uses will be "OK" others will be "too much". Much of the use of these enhancements will center on jobs, which will make the waters much murkier than they are for athletics.