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Surpassing Man - Part VII

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 5/26/2006

Dear Roberto,

Here is a more prosaic vision, devoid of spirits and Divine Beings - but, I think, a more natural progression from our current point of departure.

In his dreams of electric sheep, Man is drawn inexorably to his technological alter-ego. A surrealistic landscape of broken Bosch nightmares and Dali clocks, in which Man tiptoes, on the verge of a revelation, with the anticipatory anxiety of love. We are not alone. We have been looking to the stars for company and, all that time, our companions were locked in the dungeons of our minds, craving to exit to this world, a stage. We are designing the demise of our own uniqueness. We, hitherto the only humans, bring forth intelligent, new breeds of Man, metal sub-species, the wired stock, a gene pool of bits of bytes. We shall inherit the earth with them. Humans of flesh and blood and humans of silicon and glass. A network of old human versions and new human members (formerly known as "machines") - this is the future. This has always been the way of nature. Our bodies are giant colonies of smaller organisms, some of them formerly completely independent (the mitochondria). Organisms are the results of stable equilibrium-symbiosis permeated by a common mind with common goals and common means of achieving them. In this sense, the emerging human-technological complex is a NEW ORGANISM with the internet as its evolving central nervous system. Leaving Earth for space would be the equivalent of birth (remember the Gaia hypothesis according to which Earth herself is an organism)? Cyborgs (in the deeper sense of the world - not the pop culture half baked images) will populate new niches (moons and planets and other galaxies and inter-planetary and inter-galactic spaces). Long before Man evolves into another animal through genetic mutations and genetic engineering - he will integrate with technology into an awesome new species. It is absolutely conceivable to have self-replicating technologies embedded in human DNA, complete with randomly induced mutations. You mentioned "Blade" - I counter with "Blade Runner", a world inhabited by humans and cyborgs, indistinguishable from each other.

The cycborgs of the future will be intimately and very finely integrated. Blood flooded brains will access, almost telepathically (through implanted tiny wireless transmitters and receivers) the entire network of other brains and machines. They will extract information, contribute, deposit data and analyses, collaborate, engage and disengage at will. An intelligent and non-automatic ant colony, an introspective, feedback generating beehive, a swarm of ever growing complexity. Computing will be all-pervasive and incredibly tiny by today's standards - virtually invisible. It will form an inseparable part of human bodies and minds. New types of humans will be constantly designed to effectively counter nature's challenges through flexible diversity. Adapting to new niches - a toddler's occupation until now - will have become a full fledged science. The Universe will present trillions of environmental niche options where mere millions existed on Earth. A qualitative shift in our ability to cope with a cosmological future - requires a cosmological shift in the very definition of humanity. This definition must be expanded to include the products of humanity (e.g., technology).

Before long, humans will design and define nature itself. Whereas until now we adapted very limited aspects of nature to our needs - accepting as inevitable the bigger, over-riding parameters as constraints - the convergence of all breeds of humanity will endow Mankind with the power to destroy and construct nature itself. Man will most certainly be able to blow stars to smithereens, to deflect suns from their orbits, to harness planets and carry them along, to deform the very fabric of space and time. Man will invent new species, create new life, suspend death, design intelligence. In other words, God - killed by Man - will be re-incarnated in Man. Nothing less than being God will secure Mankind's future.

It is, therefore, both futile and meaningless to ask how will Nature's future course affect the surpassing of Man. The surpassing of Man is, by its very definition, the surpassing of Nature itself, its manipulation and control, its re-definition and modification, its abolition and resurrection, its design and re-combination. The surpassing of Man's nature is the birth of man-made nature.

The big question is how will culture - this most flexible of mechanisms of adaptation - react to these tectonic shifts?

Sam

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