The technological singularity may well be on its way. The hypothetical day when Artificial Intelligence achieves self-awareness and armed with incomprehensible amounts of interconnected data processing units (read: insanely powerful brain), will program and upgrade itself instantaneously—ad infinitum—and thereby usher in a technological revolution.
A revolution so profound we are unable to fathom it and its possible repercussions. We will experience technological growth and expansion so catastrophic that no one can predict what it might look like. But for this post, we’re going to try.
Every nanosecond thereafter, the newly self-aware AI will be able to build upon itself, upgrading, writing and re-writing its own code in a self-referential feedback loop seeking an unforeseeable epistemological infinity. Seeking to “know all,” as if that were a possibility. Hopefully, it may even answer our questions with better statements than 42.*
Although we are not able to understand what exactly this might entail, it is not difficult to envision it as a possible future. A future we may all be barreling towards at the speed of time.
Anatomically “correct” humans have been around for around 200,000 years. Language for possibly that long. Considering our discovery of quantum mechanics and our creation of cyberspace one could assume we are nearing an evolutionary stepping stone unlike we have ever seen before The amount of information cascading down upon every mind today is overwhelming. Yet we only read one word at a time.
We need to augment if we are to make progress. To go quantum and allow ourselves to entertain multiple perspectives at once. Futurists now believe that stepping stone is the technological singularity itself, and it’s easy to see why. But, after that supposed event our foresight breaks down, and a veil falls over our conceiving mind’s eye. On the other side of the singularity, there be dragons.
This supposed pivotal moment may come before or after we’ve reached another foreseeable future; that of directly augmenting our minds with our computer technology. We are aiming to jack-in to our computers to assist our mediocre memories with mechanical circuitry. Existing as beings swimming in inner and outer space we desire to explore the novel ontological dimension of our own creation: cyberspace. Can it be done?
There is a growing subculture concerned with what they’ve called bio-hacking. A small group of people who purchase RFID chips online and install them in their hands under the skin. The data contained on these RFID chips or the person’s identity and personal information. These chips use NFC technology, and the few who have augmented their hands in this way no longer require keys to get into their homes or to drive their cars. If they’ve stored their banking information on the chip, they can also pay for any transactions that require said chip. This is futurism at its peak.
Another profound step taken in the merging of biology and technology — consciousness and computers — is the invention of a light-sensitive plate that is placed on the retina of a blind person and hooked up to their optic nerve and it allows them to (crudely) see again. At the moment this technology is in its infancy but improving quickly. Furthermore, as many have seen online and were probably brought to tears by it, many deaf people have received cochlear implants that allowed them to hear for the first time. How beautiful is that?
To my mind, however, the most interesting idea behind bio-hacking is that of augmenting consciousness directly with cyberspace and the Internet to see what we may be able to achieve with interconnected computer-assisted minds. With the current rate of growth for virtual reality and computer simulations, it will not be long until we are living in an unbelievable future. A future as far removed as this time is from the medieval. It is quite difficult to predict what the augmentation of our consciousness with our computer technology would result in. To see a possibility of interconnection let us introduce an idea from non-equilibrium thermodynamics; a chemical clock.
A chemical clock is an oscillating reaction that exhibits periodic and sudden property changes after a certain amount of induction time has transpired. To elucidate, consider the words of one of the founders of Chaos Theory and Nobel Laureate, Ilya Prigogine: “Suppose we have two kinds of molecules, "red" and "blue." Because of the chaotic motion of the molecules, we would expect that at a given moment we would have more red molecules, say, in the left part of a vessel. Then a bit later more blue molecules would appear, and so on. The vessel would appear to us as "violet," with occasional irregular flashes of red or blue. However, this is not what happens with a chemical clock; here the system is all blue, then it abruptly changes its color to red, then again to blue. Because all these changes occur at regular time intervals, we have a coherent process.
Such a degree of order stemming from the activity of billions of molecules seems incredible, and indeed, if chemical clocks had not been observed, no one would believe that such a process is possible. To change color all at once, molecules must have a way to "communicate." Dissipative structures introduce probably one of the simplest physical mechanisms for communication.”
Fast-forward — the year is 2044 and the data processing of the internet is uncompressed and light-speed and interconnects every human being in an instantaneous and global now (slight variances from relativistic physics aside). Every cerebral cortex is wired-in to a wireless computer; our minds jacked-in to the techno-scientific web that is the whole of cyberspace. It contains nearly the whole of written history and accumulated knowledge from every field of study as well as the plurality of minds surfing that web at the moment. We — augmented post-humans — have achieved literal telepathy and can “communicate” with the speed and precision of a chemical clock. Speaking without speaking our intention is shared and known.
What would that even look like? To be inundated and informed by the sum-total of human knowledge and of all other minds at the same time sounds preposterous. Is this even a plausible idea at this point? Could our brains even handle that much information? Or would our computers process the bulk of it? Would we understand novel entities of which we are currently completely unfamiliar with? Quantum mechanics and the equations of supersymmetry for example?
It would seem we are left with more questions than we began with and the answers to which we can only speculate. We have profound projective faculties, yet I do not think we can accurately predict this sort of future. The truth is none of these ideas may come to pass, but it is fruitful to consider them. Even if to only learn how to live better in better harmony with uncertainty and an eternally evolving universe which we ourselves are. The conceptual acrobatics we’ve just put ourselves through allow us to be more open to uncertainty. For this is just what we must do. We are faced with many problems and a socio-economic system that leads us to fight one another. It would seem the world is just as absurd as Camus left it. Yet even though the world is absurd, it is an absurdity we co-create. For we are in this together.
Our future is a collective issue, and we constantly suffer prediction anxiety. Collectively and individually. So we must learn to embrace uncertainty while striving to make positive changes now. To turn our focus from the problems to their solutions and remember:
“Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.”
*42 is the answer given by the supercomputer Deep Thought in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when asked the ultimate question: "What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?
Casey Mitchell is an avid reader and incurable thinker who finally thought to pick up the pen to share his thoughts on life and love and the meaning of existence. A lover of philosophy, he is consistently perplexed and amazed by the ever-unfolding universe. He is the creative pulse behind SophiasIchor.com and writes to share his curiosity and thoughts about this mystery we live.
This article (Collective Computer Consciousness and its Connective Symmetry) was originally created and published by Sophias Ichor and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Casey Mitchell and sophiasichor.com It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.