|
|
| Articulate: An Angstlust Project |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Humanity on the Brink
by Jimmy
There comes a point in the evolution of any species at which it encounters a seemingly insurmountable barrier. The choices available for dealing with this barrier are simple: break through it, or go extinct.
Prehistoric bacteria encountered this problem when they respirated carbon dioxide and released oxygen as waste. The atmosphere filled with oxygen, which was poisonous to them. Bacteria that could process oxygen then arose. Some anaerobic bacteria survived by absorbing the oxygen-eating eukaryotes. The eukaryotes became mitochondria, and both types of bacteria endured in a symbiotic tango.
Dinosaurs were less fortunate. To oversimplify, those that were too large could not find adequate shelter or food in the aftermath of a devastating asteroid impact. Mammals--small, and with low energy requirements--were better suited to such an inhospitable environment. What dinosaurs did survive managed to do so through adaptation: remaining small and replacing scales with feathers, or in other words, being more like the mammals.
Humanity encountered a similar barrier several thousand years ago, but the cause was human, not cosmic. While humanity could sustain very low numbers on hunting and gathering, experiments with agriculture and pastoralism became the norm. Why this transition occurred is not concretely known. One hypothesis is that the end of the last Ice Age, which turned large swaths of lush jungle into scorching desert, placed immense pressure on human food supplies. Animal and plant populations dwindled, and pre-civilized humans looked to raising their own animals and plants, to ensure a stable food supply.
The problem created by agriculture, however, was that it became a universal paradigm. Agriculturalists could not readily coexist with hunter-gatherers: while hunter-gatherers lived off of the land, agriculturalists came to believe that they owned the land. As agriculture spread, tribes that used it squeezed the land available to hunter-gatherers to almost nothing. Jeff Vail calls this process "intensification." Agriculture grew in both scope and efficiency, which caused other tribes to either play catch-up, or risk being outpopulated. A tribe of 100 foragers stood no chance against an agricultural settlement of 1000. So, foragers were either driven from the land, or killed for it.
Another barrier not thought of as often, but caused by the increased population densities made possible by agriculture, was sanitation. Large clusters of humans living in close quarters allowed disease to thrive. In fact, disease was virtually unknown in the world of hunter-gatherers. The Romans made great progress in controlling wastewater, but their knowledge was lost. It was not until the discovery of germs in the mid-19th century that sanitation came into common practice again. It is not coincidental that the sudden skyrocketing of human populations coincided with the rediscovery of sanitation.
According to some, we are reaching yet another barrier: a resource crisis. Though debate rages over which particular resource will come up short first, it is accepted that it is only a matter of time until one of them does. World oil production is near or at its peak, and could begin decline at any time. Supplies of fresh water are drying up, owing to overfarming, waste, and global warming. Deforestation eliminates countless species and could threaten to upset the chemical balance of our atmosphere. Overpopulation, all by itself, could simply put too much pressure on Earth's resources to sustain us.
Which of these crises strikes first is irrelevant--any one of them can and will trigger a dieoff of humans unlike any in memory. Anywhere from 90-99% of today's population could die in a matter of a decade.
Yet, even though we are beginning to encounter these barriers, there is hope we will overcome them. The answer comes from the one meme of human civilization that has been both our greatest asset and our greatest threat: technology. Some adherents to Moore's Law indicate that technology in general, not just computer processing power, will increase exponentially in the decades to come. Mathematician and novelist Vernor Vinge proposed that this increase will cause us to reach not an apex, but an evolutionary milestone in which all of human history up to that point will become meaningless. This point is called the technological singularity, or just Singularity.
The Singularity is a predicted convergence of human technological achievement believed to result in superintelligence, advanced artificial intelligence, or both. Like the previous barriers encountered by humans and other species, humans that do not embrace the Singularity will perish. Humans that do embrace Singularity will find their intelligence enhanced, both in speed and aptitude. Feats achievable by natural geniuses today will be the norm for all augmented humans and AIs.
A world of Singularity is not without its drawbacks, however. The very real possibility of human enslavement to artificial intelligences casts a dark shadow over the prospect of Singularity. Even if AIs do not turn out to be feasible, human integration with cybernetic technology would make us dependent on that technology to survive--in fact, we would quickly forget how to function without it, much like the Borg of Star Trek. Also like the Borg, collective consciousness would be too tempting--and perhaps too effective--to be ignored. Billions of augmented minds linked together would represent much more cognitive ability than an individual mind. It is a foregone conclusion that any minds that refuse to join the whole would either be "assimilated," destroyed, or simply cast aside.
The Singularity would also feed on itself--intelligence begetting greater and greater intelligence. Just as our technology represents exponential leaps in advancement, and just as the Singularity is an exponential leap from today's technology, so too would its development come in exponential rather than linear increases in power and ability.
As the Singularity society grows, so do its energy requirements. Limited to a single planet, it would quickly exhaust all energy. But it could also have the cognitive power to devise alternatives, including various methods for harnessing solar and nuclear energy. In the way human populations have exploded on Earth, so too could they explode across the solar system--and then the galaxy. Even without faster-than-light travel, wormholes, or other oddities of physics, Singularity humans could colonize the entire Milky Way in a matter of millennia--the blink of an eye, in terms of both human development and the age of the universe.
What should be of interest to us, then, is how to navigate a course between the approaching Scylla and Charybdis. On one side lies ecological disaster--the depletion of our resources and a massive dieoff of humanity. On the other side is Singularity--a total revolution in what it means to human, and an irreversible change in the way technology affects our lives. Given our current rates of population growth and resource usage, we will slam into one wall or the other. Technological slavery could be worse than near-extinction. The deaths of 99% of all people could mark a second chance for humanity. By contrast, reaching Singularity means never going back--once humans integrate fully with their technology, we will become biologically dependent. There would be no starting over, no second chances.
In the end, the choice is ours.
|
|
|