Shaking my head in wonder over Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near
For those of you who haven’t read it, futurist Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near is a valentine to all those scifi writers who believed that the future and humans could only get better through technology. According to Kurzweil, in the near future humans will become technologically joined with superhuman intelligence to become superhuman. I won’t dispute his ideas but I will put forward the one question that must be answered — Why? Why do we want to supercede our biology? Yes, I know that is a hard question for humans, especially westerners, to ask themselves and others. But if we are going to make this drastic a change in our bodies, minds and civilizations, I for one want some good answers.
Perhaps the question that really needs asking is not whether Kurzweil is correct in his future projections but do we really want to allow technology to change our lives, relationships and civilizations so completely. More importantly, why do we wholeheartedly welcome such extensive changes?We have evolved over millenia to be a species that must work together, build connections with others, if we are to survive as a species. Yet the technology Kurzweil so welcomes is the antithesis of connection. He may talk about how we will all be connected through technology yet it is only the illusion of connection. We learn as a species through shared experiences. We learn as individuals through empathy, much of which is gained through shared events. I understand your hurt because I have felt pain. Virtual reality is NOT reality. In fact it is the offer of fake connection for the real connections of real people and events. Moreover, why should we want to embrace a reality for which we are not biologically or psychologically suited? Our brains are wonderfully evolved to process and manage information, and perhaps most importantly if you follow the work of certain neuroscientists (i.e., Damasio) emotional input. Where does emotion live in this new world of Kurzweil’s?Lastly, are we to expect that everyone will have access to this nanobot-enhanced world? What about the poor? What about the middle-class? I suspect that Kurzweil’s brave new medical and technical breakthroughs would only be available to those who could afford them. Just like medical care in America today, many people would simply be cut out and left behind.
The upshot of technology such as this at the beck and call of the wealthy is that they (who are already often extremely out of touch with the real world of everyday people) would become even more out of touch. What does this say for the decisions that they will make that influence us all? I suspect those decisions will do even less to draw us together. Why should the wealthy and powerful make decisions that help everyday people? Through virtual reality they can become even more insulated from the results of their acts. Those left on the outside (probably the mass of humanity) are not as “human” or advanced are we? So, like the 21st century version of Puritanism with this form of technology as God, everyone without it will be found wanting and cast off into the technological and civil underworld.
Note, I am not a Luddite. I would not question all new technology but something as fundamentally important as how humans interact with the world and others is something to be closely considered and examined before letting it loose to do untold damage. A device that beeps me to my keys is not likely to affect the way I interact with others and the way I think. A virtual reality womb that feeds my the sensory input and thereby chooses what I see and therefore how I feel about that input is something else all together.
So I ask again — Why do we so easily welcome this technology without closely examining potential results from every angle?
The great and greatly missed Theodore Sturgeon in his classic, More Than Human, envisioned a superhuman formed by the connections and relationships of a number of humans. It was their interdependence that made them the next step in human evolution. I wonder if Kurzweil’s world would usher in the less-than-truly-human rather than superhuman?