I, Cyborg: Ghosts In The Machine
An interesting adaption of Michaelangelo's "Creation of Adam". Courtesy of http://www.urbeingrecorded.com/
Humanity has reached a limit where its development may be changing it from the inside out. Society is interweaving itself with technology, creating an arcane setup in which biology may end up second best and eventually ousted. With silicon infrastructure growing rampantly and seeping into all counts of life, an intelligence as-super-organism may for all practical purposes be evolving out of our endeavors to progress. A careful recalibration of organic-technological interfacing is probably the only way for flesh to survive this setup in the long term. How that takes effect remains to be seen.
For now humanity is faced with a technological outburst. We’re in the middle of a giant inventive spurt. The most natural thing to do is pursue it, even if this means getting absorbed by it. Green and other ecologically-minded movements may be advocating the opposite i.e. a clampdown on technology, but that is a dubious choice of course. Disassembling knowledge is dangerous. It is synonymous to oppression and can lead to fossilization, as all overshooting causes do. Technology must be allowed to run its course, with caution, yes, but fully and free, at the pace of knowledge.
This creates a problem. Its name is AI or Artificial Intelligence. Whether singular and malicious like some Hollywood creation or abstractly omnipresent like the giant electro-silicon network that has already meshed itself into modern and post-modern society, one thing’s for sure: life is on the move, evolving in ways so arcane we are having trouble accepting it.
A technological singularity may be a daunting development to think about. Having been the pinnacle of evolution and the paragon of what life is, what intelligence ought to be and feel and look like, we may not be so open to the idea of self-awareness evolving out of microchips and mainframes. We may not want to become part of such a life form – or form of life.
On the other hand, a technological singularity may be the greatest thing to happen to us yet. It will probably promote our adaptation to the technological infrastructure we have constructed around us, facilitating our adjustment to it. It may help us survive its toxic wake. We, albeit transfigured, may actually make it through to the next era.
The insight is hard to digest. We are talking about a shift unlike any other in the history of our species. The implications are huge. From protein to mammal was one thing, a huge leap but nevertheless genetic and organic. Now we’re contemplating flesh to silicon, to steel, to binary code and digital framework. Life as we know it may disappear – or be left behind, surpassed and dated, a collection of animated proteins and minerals too dull and slow to play any significant part in life except the one assigned to us by sophisticated, animated, complex infrastructures. Our resourcefulness and edge lost. Our existence turned into something else’s resource and utility.
From protein to human to resource and utility. What a development.
It makes sense to be honest: protein is a great resource of immense utility. Turning into food may be nothing more than owning up to our potential.
On a more serious note, our reassignment from king of the castle to rich resource and outdated template is not a pleasant prospect. Everything we know, our relation to the world and its surroundings will change and we, left behind as we will be, will suffer the fate of the king who became a man. It may be good for our soul and a sure way of reconnecting with our essence and with the real world in general – as cautionary stories praising the human spirit say, their teaching being to point out the fallacy of pretense – but what difference will that make when the human spirit they so dutifully praise proves to be the essence of an organism unfit and unable to adapt to the times? What good will it do when such presence signifies nothing other than a greater outside awareness, watching us from above – or from all around, or wherever – with a mind and presence of its own, whose capacity obliterates our own by a billion megabits per second, whose anatomy does not bleed to death, whose body doesn’t get cancer from exposure to radiation or chemicals.
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