I, Cyborg: Motion To Progress
This is the old-school trailer for “Ghost in the Shell”. It is one of the greatest animated features ever made.
“It’s as simple as this: No Ghost in the Shell, no Matrix” (UT’s Alex Phillips)
Our rapid technological advancement is creating an artificial infrastructure that may be more than just silicon processors and random networks joined at the nodes. It may in fact be a super-organism, a technological singularity, intelligent and aware, in and of itself, present everywhere and meshed with our lives more than we would care to admit. We may be well on our way to becoming the biological ghosts in the artificial super-machine. The DNA of Artificial Intelligence.
Or not. We may progress all the same as a self-determined species: We, Humans, always fleshborn and earthbound, turning the tables and incorporating technology to our biological-societal mainframe – flesh-based cyborgs a la Iron Man or Victor Stone, with state-of-the-art appendages that afford us the capacity to perceive more of the universe, and do more with it, and live longer, better, and wiser lives through it.
Either way, flesh and technology are gradually being incorporated into one another.
Modern society is prime example of how this is already taking place 24/7 – albeit in a very basic form – from the moment we get up and turn on the hot water, to the in-between time of work, play, and vacation, to the moment we set our alarm clocks when we turn in at night. Biology and the inorganic framework are completely wired into each other.
Which of the two paradigms is the dominant one: biology or technology, is up for debate and remains to be seen.
At the end of the day you are what you wield. Humans – we wield knowledge, and plenty of it. We keep changing our tools and possessions, transforming the world we belong to. We are – and have been, since time immemorial – fully interwoven to the apparatus we use. Tools give us a sense of achievement and capacity beyond the one we are accustomed to, enhancing our abilities and potential, driving our sense of self with it. We grow with our tools – and our tools grow with us. They spread to such an extent that they inevitably become part of us, crucial and amalgamated parts of our society – and we in turn become part of them, inseparable and complete, components to a greater dynamic, to a system larger than (our) lives. Life and society come together in the form of two intelligent paradigms, biology and technology, meshed together to create something bigger, better, and more fit to survive.
Some may not like the scenario. Good old flesh-based, home-grown individuals living in nature-bound surroundings, in charge of their own agenda, masters of their domain, is what it’s all about. We can’t let technology hack its way across nature’s flesh and take over. The inventive body attached to the biological mind, doing its bidding for it, is a dangerous prospect to follow. It can carry us away, far from what we have long considered human and natural. Organic life needs to be protected from this threat, watched and guarded carefully in order to survive the silicon blades of the cyborganic, some think, and rightly so.
Visions of the Matrix and machines feeding on people: that’s what’s driving this cautionary approach. The prospect of flesh’s enslavement to machinery begins to sprout in terrified minds. We ought to be careful lest we ensure our survival through the annihilation of all organic life on earth, human and other.
The danger is not only horrifying but also real, less science-fiction and more reality-in-the-making. Our current situation is grave and shifting too rapidly, to the degree it warrants huge transitions, some of which may easily get out of hand. Once exercised, evolution knows no etiquette, as we very well know; it just takes its course, no questions asked, evolving into what will survive, no qualms attached. If push comes to shove, we, as a species fighting to survive, will certainly not stop and wax morally. We may do so on a superficial level, exercising our right to debate, but on a deeper level, where life organizes itself and takes form, we will go ahead. We will go all the way and evolve. If not we will perish. Or we will stay behind and suffer in the wake of the Transformed, those who took the evolutionary quantum leap into a new world while others were busy over-debating it.
Bottom line is that a transforming and shifting humanity – on the brink of economic and environmental crisis – is an unpredictable player. It may pull out all the stops if confronted with annihilation and do whatever it must in order to survive. If that means meshing with technology while destroying all life around us – including our own nature – we may very well do it without second thought.
It may also mean destroying all technology in order to survive the toxic onslaught, pressing on as a purer form of life. The possibility is there – though the probability is low. Erasing amassed and registered knowledge is highly unlikely and goes against the flow of consciousness. Power is never erased, only redistributed. Knowledge can never go away without creating some sort of secretive system that guards it – or some complete calamity that deletes it along with everything else, taking us back to the Dark Age.
As history testifies, Dark Ages don’t last. They are always followed by regeneration. Resurgence is part of the formula, and knowledge, however cleverly or brutally suppressed, always resurfaces. Ignorance, however convenient, never prevails.
If there is to be one major stop pulled, chances are it will be the barrier between us and a thriving technology. Our knowledge will remain, or re-surge, and organic life will be incorporated, if not fully integrated, to inorganic infrastructures. We will have ended life as we know us to continue living.
Yet we, as organism and species fighting to survive, have amounted enough knowledge and wisdom over the millennia to be able to prevent such an extreme outcome, should it ever come to that. We know enough things about life by now to exercise change without bulldozing reality, even in the wake of great transitions. We are finally cognizant of the power of transformation and how it needs to be calibrated within its surroundings to work. No life-form is an island, and we know it.
We are also well aware of the power of observation. We have seen and realized – and even proven to a certain extent, through mathematics and science – that we really do shape reality in very tangible, very lasting terms just by observing it. Having sound visions is something we now know. We are no longer children with unrealistic scenarios bursting through our heads. We are young adults with the knowledge to implement groundbreaking ideas in achievable ways. There’s a difference. We have realized it.
Vision is the key to the future. It will help us shape our world and manage our transformation. How we envision that transformation – and through what lens we do so – is the money question. Our actions will determine how things develop, prescribing whether we change in ways that preserve both our existence as well as our biological essence, not to mention the rest of organic life around us. Whether that involves shifting certain fundamentals around and attaching ourselves to the technological mainframe – or adapting fully to it – or creating two separate habitats, technological and biological – or meshing two interfacing ones – or rejecting technology outright and returning to a non-technological way of life, to a pristine nativism of sorts – or even developing other sorts of technology to replace it (bio-intuitive, “metaphysical,” extrasensory”) – … whether we do these things, or one of them, or a few of them, or all of them at the same time, remains to be seen. For now we are a species evolving alongside our tools and knowledge. Homo Sapiens wising up.
Some would rejoice at the prospect. They would call this progress. They would call it development, adaptation, or a necessary turn of events.
Others would not be so accommodating and deem it forbidding. Deterministic. Unacceptable.
Others would invoke long-held orders and call it heretical and blasphemy. Brand it ominous. A danger to civilization as we know it – to humanity in general – to human nature. To nature overall.
These are nothing more than connotations, stereotypes and labels. They typecast the process and lose sight of the essence, acting as semantics and, in the grand scheme of things, mind-traps. They need to be swept aside for a moment if we are to focus on what they represent, calling things by their name: Evolution.
This is what it’s all about. The evolution of life from one form to another, rendering each transformation fit to adapt to a given environment, increasing the odds of survival.
It’s a process we are all well aware of. It has been happening for millions of years, transfiguring living organisms, societies and cultures accordingly. It will keep on going for as long as there’s life in the universe. It isn’t about to stop now because we are politically unable to agree on how to qualify its motions.
[...] the potential for mutually enforcing trends in nanotechnology, genomics, artificial intelligence, robotics and ubiquitous connectivity to come of age in the next decade and move from abstract concepts to [...]