The Next Generation

EReidJ writes "Washingtonpost.com has a story about what biotechnology means to being post-human. While the article gets a little dorky at times, and the comic-book references somewhat over-the-top, it manages to penetrate well past the surface of what most articles would do. (And come on, admit it, how many of us have daydreamed well into our twenties about doing the kinds of things they only comic book heros can do?) They reference a lot of good material, talk to Kurzweil and Max Moore, and use the excellent Science Magazine issue on this subject for a lot of their material."

Comments

the Mann

[Transient0]

And not a single mention of Steve Mann.

Understood that his electronics are non-invasive, but still his projects are the cutting edge in human/machine amalgamation.

Ye gods

[Rand Race]

We have as much a chance of predicting the eventual post-human as a chimp would have had predicting a human a few million years ago. If he had known (and had the capacity to know) that the super-chimp involved losing body hair, standing up strait, losing muscle density and almost total loss of natural weaponry he'd have called bullshit on the idea. But here we are.

"The remaining human future is 25 years or 50 years," says Max More, president of the Extropy Institute, a pioneering explorer of the acceleration of technology and trans-humanism.

Excellent, just in time for AI right?.... right?

And how many of us grow up?

[line-bundle]

And come on, admit it, how many of us have daydreamed well into our twenties about doing the kinds of things they only comic book heros can do?

And also admit how many of us decide we wouldn't want to do such things when we grow up.

All of a sudden we just want to be normal human beings, to be loved and to love.

from the article..

[sniepre]

This is a paragraph that fascinated me from the article --

"In the near term, the world could divide up into three kinds of humans: the Enhanced, who embrace these opportunities, the Naturals, who have the technology available but who, like today's vegetarians, choose not to indulge for moral or aesthetic reasons, and the Rest -- those who lag behind, envying or despising these ever-increasing choices. Especially if the Enhanced can easily be recognized because of the way they look, or what they can do, this is a recipe for conflict that would make racial differences quaintly obsolete."

What is so scary about that is how true it is.

I think that quite easily it could become a status symbol, somewhere between wearing expensive clothing and having tattoos..

Have any of you played the roleplaying game "Shadowrun"? Same principle.

If we think rascism is bad now, just wait until we can create even new ways of grouping people.

The main thing I think the article misses ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

... is that when this stuff arrives, it will seem like No Big Deal.

They mention a few examples already -- the $20 portable CD player, which is indeed a combination of a computer (albeit a very specialized one) and a laser, is a good example. The cool thing about CD players, and laptops, and cell phones, etc., is that not only are they all over the place, but also hardly anyone thinks of them as exotic. And, Future Shock to the contrary, they haven't come too fast for people to handle them. People have, in general, looked at them and said either, "Cool, I could use one of those," or, "I don't think I really need one right now" -- but hardly anyone is running around screaming about how cell phones have Fundamentally Altered Human Nature.

Now, I can easily imagine some intelligent, forward-thinking person from the pre-telephone, pre-radio era imagining something like a cell phone and saying, "In the future, people will be able to carry around small devices which will allow them to communicate instantaneously with each other over long distances. This will fundamentally redefine what it means to be human." And they'd have been right on the first point, of course ... but very wrong on the second.

Bring on the cyborg eyes, the immortality pills, the nanotech assemblers. These technologies and many others may no doubt make a major difference in the way we live. But there will never be a point where, in our wired/bioengineered/nanotech world, we look back and say, "It's a different world now. We're not human any more." We'll just go on living our (hopefully very long) lives, the way we do with cars and TV's and electric lights now.

Because technology doesn't make us less human. It is a large component of what makes us human. Building things to make our lives better and easier has been a defining characteristic of human nature for the last hundred thousand years or so. Why should it be any different now?

Re:The main thing I think the article misses ...

[Junks Jerzey]

... is that when this stuff arrives, it will seem like No Big Deal.

And there's a high, high, probability that this is all just like robot housecleaners and flying cars and all that other nonsense from seventy years ago that never came to pass. Kurzweil may have been brilliant at some point in his life, but he's been indulging in pointless fantasizing and rambling, most of which has no basis in reality. I mean, yeah, it's easy to say that in fifty years we could dump someone's brain to a computer, but that ignores the fact no one has the remotest understanding about how the mind actually works. All of the writings in the field are vague at best, like Chemistry textbooks from the 17th century, back before there was even enough knowledge to call the field "Chemistry."

Re:The main thing I think the article misses ...

[rnelsonee]

I'll have to agree with you there. I have yet to witness a gadget that will fundamentally alter human nature.

I mean, look at our daily lives in the last 1,000 years.

• We wake up in the morning after 7-8 hours of sleep.
• We wake up the kids and go to work
• We work (usually looking forward to coming home)
• We come home and have dinner
• We entertain ourselves with family/friends
• We go to bed
• Rinse, lather, repeat

When is that going to change? Sure, cell phones and computers make it easy to connect to other people, but was it that hard to simply go outside and say "hi" to your neighbors? I know I still haven't met my neighbors to either side of me. For all I know, they're the experts answering the questions I post on USENET.

And biotech advances? Sure, less disease, better life exectancy is great, but it's not like we're going to have hordes of genetically superior humans enslaving the 'norms' or anything.

Meh. I'm going back to work. I hope dinner's waiting.

-- Rick

Re:The main thing I think the article misses ...

[sketchy_gomez]

I see your point, but remember, what is being discussed here is possibly the ending of the human species in the strict biological sense. Rather than just a change in our capabilities (like a cell phone brings) it's possible that these "transhumans" will no longer be able (or willing) to breed with today's Homo Sapiens and a divergence in species will occur. I'd say that's a little more startling than the next evolution in information technology.

Re:The main thing I think the article misses ...

[Remus Shepherd]

... is that when this stuff arrives, it will seem like No Big Deal.

Wrong. It will seem like No Big Deal to you, and to the majority of Slashdot readers. We are, after all, the techno-elite -- we're able to adapt to the rapid progression of technology better than most.

The cool thing about CD players, and laptops, and cell phones, etc., is that not only are they all over the place, but also hardly anyone thinks of them as exotic. And, Future Shock to the contrary, they haven't come too fast for people to handle them.

Haven't come too fast for *you* to handle them, and for most of the populace of the US. But the RIAA/MPAA certainly are having problems accepting the technology of CD burning and network transfer. Our legislature still can't get a grasp on the internet. There are aristocrats and senior citizens who don't know how a supermarket scanner works (c.f. George Bush, Sr.) or can't handle simple technology. My mother still won't use a microwave oven. Some people *do* have problems with tech progress, and that segment of the population will grow exponentially as the rate of change accelerates. That was the nature of Future Shock as Toffler described it...it sneaks up on us.

And people in foreign countries are less likely to adapt to rapid technological progress. The Islamic countries are having problems with the concept of high speed communications and an open society -- not that they can't accept it for themselves, but they're having problems accepting its *existence*.

What do you think will happen in third world countries when the first man becomes immortal, and he's an American? There will be war.

I'm glad you're enjoying your rose-colored glasses, but the transcendence of the human race is going to be as turbulent as it is inevitable. Brace yourselves.

Re:The main thing I think the article misses ...

[Remus Shepherd]

I mean, look at our daily lives in the last 1,000 years. [...] When is that going to change?

You're underestimating the magnitude of the changes in store for the human race in the next 50 years.

• We no longer need to sleep, as fatigue poisons are scoured from our body by nanobots, while the processors added to our brains do memory processing in the background with no downtime.
  
• We design kids from their genes up, and they learn through their neural links, 24 hours a day.
  
• We work? Why? Robots perform all menial labor, and nanotech insures that all material products are free. Perhaps we spend the day diddling with art, philosophy, or programming for our own pleasure.
  
• I'll assume we'll still need to eat. We almost certainly won't need to *cook*...
  
• We entertain ourselves with family, friends, simulated friends, simulated long dead famous people, and the simulations of the children you're designing for next year. And you won't be able to tell the difference between them.
  
• We go to bed? Again, why?
  
• Nanobots automatically clean our hair, so even 'Rinse, lather, repeat' becomes a thing of the past. ;)
  

If you're thinking life will go on much as it always has, you're thinking too small.

Re:The main thing I think the article misses ...

[Flarg!]

Not to mention the fact that, if we had great health, great physical and mental abilities, and an indefinite lifespan, there would be so many more things we could do to keep from being bored. I might like to be an artist. And a musician. And a pilot (or an astronaut?) The possibilities really could be endless.

"just in time for AI"

[NFW]

I think it's the other way around, actually... The human era is expected ends in 25-50 primarily because of AI. It's not just a coincidence, it's the cause.

No, wait... it's blackout time, what am I doing here? Pfft.

The Singularity

[Zathrus]

Kurzweil repeatedly refers to "The Singularity", which is (as he defines it), "a merger between human intelligence and machine intelligence that is going to create something bigger than itself."

For reference, this is very similar to something that Vernor Vinge has espoused in several novels, chiefly Marooned in Realtime. Basically that technological progress is logarithmic in scale, not linear, and that at some point any intelligent, technological race will reach an apex, or singularity, beyond which it's essentially unrecognizable to anything prior to it (in the book humanity simply disappears from the solar system with no evidence of what occurred). Consider it Clarke's old adage "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" taken to the extreme.

The question that's really posed, and which will be vehemenantly opposed by some groups (and almost certainly most religious groups), is "is this good for us?". After all, when it comes down to it individuals still tend to be rather petty and bicker over the least slights. We tend to be very devisive over things - witness the Middle East, which has been undergoing strife for thousands of years.

The flipside, of course, is exactly how are you going to stop technological progress? Every society that attempts to do so simply becomes outpaced and outmoded by its neighbors. Complacancy seems to be a formula for catastrophe. If we don't develop advanced biological and technological enhancements, they will (insert values for we and they that make you happy... or that make you concerned). Societal mores are not universal, and just because one group of people feel that something is immoral, unethical, or beyond human capability to be responsible, doesn't mean another group does.

Ok, so now that I've spouted that, what's my take? I'm hoping to ride the wave... I know I won't be the first (and wouldn't want to be) to take any advanced treatments, but I hope they become available before the end of my life. Barring that, that they are available to my (future) child(ren). I know that in such a society I wouldn't want to be one of the people on the "have-not" side. And this being /., I suspect the sentiment will largely run to that side.

Interesting times, indeed.

stronger and smarter - but how to get wiser?

[Mr. Slippery]

Certainly technology is going to change our bodies, and our brains. But how will this new capacity be directed? Will we become gods made in the image of man, Olympian myths made manifest, possessed of great power but still mired in petty squabbles? Or will we truely become transcendant, more serene and compassionate deities?

There's no technological enhancement that can make us wiser. If we're going to start becoming gods, it behooves us to start acting with a bit of maturity.

It takes more than a naked ape with superpowers to be a god.

Kurzeil's Assumption

[leodegan]

I always found Kurzweil's predictions to be over the top. It is my impression that many of his predictions rely on the premise that the human brain functions in a deterministic way. We know far too little about the brain to make this assertion.

I personally believe it does not. Roger Penrose, a British mathematician has attempted to prove that a deterministic process cannot copy the human brain. He uses the uncertain nature of quantum mechanics as the basis of his proof. It is difficult to swallow, and frankly, beyond my understanding of quantum, but interesting none the less.

I like to believe the brain cannot be copied by a computer simply because I am attached to the belief that our human minds have something else to them besides a bunch of atoms banging around.

Biotech fantasies

[espressojim]

I figured I'd weigh in on this discussion as I work in the bioinformatics field (the merger of biotech and computers, neat stuff). I've spent the last 5 years of my life working at places like the WhiteHead Center for Genome Research http://www.wi.mit.edu/news/genome/gc.html working on the study of complex traits.

As much as I'd love to see some of the bits in this article come true, I don't see it happening anytime soon. Complex traits are incredibly hard to study, and there are only a handful of non-mendelian traits (the not so simple ones) that have /real/ links to genetic causes. These studies often take a very long time, and are a hit or miss proposition.

The best we can do right now is construct candidate gene approaches (read: make your best guess when you don't know what 90% of the genome does), and hope you hit something. Our group spent 2 and one half years looking for a signal for diabetes, and found one that is only interesting when combined with all the other data generated by a number of other labs.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cm d= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10973253&dopt=Abstrac t

(sorry, I can't get the link to not include the space between the c and t in "Abstract")

The genome isn't about to cough out it's secrets in the next week so that we can magically hack it. We know that there is a long string of 4 letters, be we have no idea what they mean. I'll be thrilled to know we figure out some semi-significant portion of this information in the next 20 years. This one dimensional view of the genome will need to also be expanded into a 3 dimensional view of the protiens and how they fold and splice together...and while sequences are being added to public databases very quickly, the structures of the things actually doing something (proteins) is growing at a much slower rate.

Government and Religion

[Skevin]

neither governments nor religious groups will be able to stop this" in the next few decades, says Christine Petersen, president of the Foresight Institute running the program.


Didn't George Bush pass something to hinder fetal stem cell research? Didn't the pope state that it was immoral to create complete duplicate clones of ourselves [for spare body parts]?

I hate to say it, but our government does have a very strong stake in Xtian voters, and most Xtians I know think that messing with the body is abhorrent if you think about it long enough. After all, isn't the body supposed to be your own temple? The key point is, if religion [or a sufficiently large enough body of supporters of that religion] opposes it strongly enough, it can get written into law. If the law enforces it strongly enough, it can be stopped.

Ray Kurzweil makes an interesting point in the Age of Spiritual Machines: if you get an implant to replace the damaged hearing centers of your brain, are you still human? Now, let's say you get an implant to bolster the parts of your brain that control your ability to remember things. Are you still human? As you start replacing more and more parts of your brain with artificial equivalents, at what point do you stop being human? It appears the religious answer to this is, don't even start. I can even see that argument going as far as rejecting all medicine entirely. Suddenly I can see where Xtian Scientists come from.

Problem is, Religion sees our lumpy sacks of meat [aka bodies] as being a Sacred Thing. For as long as people are both religious and involved in government, there are going to be a hell of a lot of obstacles to overcome.