Peter Fotis Kapnistos
12 comments
Image Credit: sxc.hu Since the 1949 publication of the classic novel by English author George Orwell, “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the terms Big Brother and Orwellian have entered our popular jargon. Americans and Moslems in particular have endured the past eight years trying to come to grips with the loss of personal privacy, an unprovoked war, and “enhanced” interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.
That dishonest U.S. epoch is presumably finished now, and we can talk about it with poise. The ghost of 911 produced countless conspiracy theories that took in everything from the machinations of secret cabals to a race of reptilian humanoids. Yet many truth-seekers failed to see the exact source behind the confusing plot — the abuse of technology.
In the 1990s, a new phrase became a nagging issue of our daily news bulletins: “browser security.” It seemed negligible to most observers at the time, but it was setting the stage for an unprecedented decade of the abuse of technology. The need for paranoia-free surfing and security zone breaches became new Orwellian threats that would continue to plague end-users in their own homes. Behind the scenes of Wall Street, modern markets were rapidly emerging. The marriage of technology and big oil was creating the basis for “outsourcing” governmental attempts to control or misuse information. A trillion-dollar market was about to hatch.
The phrase “Big Brother is Watching You” specifically connotes large-scale, invasive surveillance. Naturally, the general public respected the need to preserve personal privacy and was not at all interested in new surveillance technology. There was really no market for it -- not yet, at least. But the new-fangled spy technology and software to power it was already there, collecting dust on the shelves of major marketing firms. So, mass media providers were gracelessly called into action to popularize the prospect of 24-hour surveillance. In Orwell’s society, the Thought Police have two-way “telescreens” and hidden microphones in the living quarters of every citizen and in every public area. With that way of thinking, “Big Brother” became the televised reality show of 1999. Everyone could now show off the look of a movie star. “Big Brother is a reality television show where, in each series, a group of people live together in the Big Brother House, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras. The first Big Brother broadcast was in the Netherlands in 1999 on the Veronica TV channel. It has been a prime-time hit in almost 70 countries.” But a torrent of reality shows also created a new class of psychiatric disorders:
The Truman Show delusion, or Truman Syndrome, has drawn attention in recent months, in the United States and Britain, as psychiatrists in both countries describe a small but growing number of psychotic patients who describe their lives as mirroring that of the main character in the 1998 film “The Truman Show.” Played by Jim Carrey, Truman Burbank leads a mundane existence in the suburbs, starting from the time he was in the womb, while being filmed for a documentary television show that he cannot escape. Everyone is in on it, including his wife, and no one will believe Truman when he discovers clues that his life is being chronicled all the time by cameras.
With Internet delusion, patients typically incorporate the Internet into paranoid thoughts, including a fear that the Web is somehow monitoring or controlling their lives, or being used to transmit photographs or other personal information. The delusions are fueling a chicken-and-egg debate in psychiatry: Are these merely modern examples of classic paranoia fed by the cultural landscape, or is there something about media like reality television and the Internet that can push people over the sanity line? (Sarah Kershaw, “Culture of surveillance may contribute to delusional condition,” The International Herald Tribune, August 29, 2008)
Big Brother’s final push, of course, would require “a New Pearl Harbor.” Almost overnight, the modern world would be pleading for 24-hour surveillance and paying top dollar for fishy technology that was previously characterized as a red herring. It wasn’t alien abductions or occult rituals that made it all happen. It was simply the abuse of technology — and the warming of greedy markets. But there was also a grave risk the Big Brother system failed to identify: They would miss out on the coming “Technological Singularity.”
Because Big Brother configured his security settings too high, he turned off his system’s best features. As a result of that blunder, his market future became notoriously insecure. In the end, Big Brother’s claim to power became a reckless hoax. Luckily, there was only one “Room 101” in Big Brother’s inclusive realm, and usually that torture-seat was taken. As a result, a long waiting list of likely victims had to be filtered through his useless records. Of course, Big Brother was able to pick the brains of a few targets at a time. But that wouldn’t prevent his complete corroded coalition from finally crumbling.
At the height of the Big Brother obsession (Coalition of the Willies: feelings of uneasiness), the U.S. government “abused” the most complicated technology ever devised for screening all types of communications including the sinister “ECHELON” and “CARNIVORE” systems. These systems were the world’s largest information interceptors, sucking up an incredible amount of voice, fax, and data communications including satellite, microwave, fiber-optic, cellular and everything else from all over the planet — a projected 3 billion communications per day.
But it was soon alleged that the United States was unethically using the whispered ECHELON surveillance system for European industrial espionage, according to the European Parliament. “The U.S. has been using the spy system to win well-paying business contracts, outbidding their European counterparts due to inside knowledge as to what competitors’ plans are.”
It was also unclear whether Echelon-style eavesdropping could really prevent terrorist attacks. “Six Degrees of Separation” is the theory that anyone can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called “Chains” first proposed the theory in 1929.
In the 1950s, MIT and IBM set out to study the hypothesis mathematically. In 1967, American sociologist Stanley Milgram developed a new way to test it. Milgram’s findings were published in “Psychology Today” and coined the phrase “six degrees of separation.” Playwright John Guare made the phrase fashionable when he chose it as the title for a 1990 play.
In 2001, Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University, continued his own research into the puzzle and found that the average number of mediators was without a doubt, six. After checking 30 billion electronic messages, Microsoft researchers in 2008 also proved that the theory does indeed hold up. You are just 6.6 introductions away from any other person on the planet, which means that you are linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances to any criminal or terrorist in the world.
All of those theoretical studies implied, in plain language, that Big Brother’s grand surveillance system was nothing more than “a junk database.” In 2006, Siobhan Gordman, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun attended a national security panel discussion and publicly stated:
“And in terms of what people have explained to me about how this particular program works, I was told by someone who was quite confident in this, and was able to corroborate it with at least one other person, that they are doing the link analysis wrong. They’re doing it out too many degrees. And in doing that you end up with far too many people in the net. And I was told similar things were going on with the patterns. And so what they end up with is a database that gets junked up a lot.”
According to Gordman, the people who initially assembled the database had to be called back repeatedly to try “to unjunk up the database.” The fact that Big Brother also used face recognition and other advanced surveillance applications didn’t seem to help. An average Londoner, for example, is captured on video hundreds of times a day as he walks the streets, rides the “Tube,” visits the bank or drives a car. There may now be more than 10 million video cameras operating in a country with a population of about 60 million, according to David Murakami-Wood, a specialist on surveillance issues at Newcastle University. But excessive surveillance doesn’t necessarily reduce crimes:
Studies in the U.S. and Britain suggest the cameras are a limited deterrent in combating crime and terrorism. They appear to reduce crime when installed in confined spaces, such as parking garages, but are much less effective on open streets and plazas. Experts in surveillance suggest that the boom in camera use is partly driven by an aggressive private sector that pushes technology as the solution to social problems, and the insistence of insurance companies that businesses have cameras in place. (Julie Sell, “It must be ‘1984’: ‘Big Brother’ snoops and Britons don’t mind,” McClatchy Newspapers , Dec 5, 2008)
Computing horsepower and sophisticated data-mining technologies didn’t seem to help in disentangling projected surveillance innovations from junk databases in the US. The intelligence community finally faced up to the fact that Big Brother’s method was proving to be a systemic failure:
San Francisco’s surveillance cameras in high-crime areas do not prevent violent crime, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California. The long-awaited study by the UC Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society found the program is hurt by lack of training and oversight, a failure to integrate footage with other police efforts, poor quality cameras, and what may be a fundamental weakness of cameras as anti-crime devices. Mayor Newsom began the program four years ago, but out of concern for people’s privacy, police are not allowed to monitor cameras in real time. Investigators must wait until a crime is reported before looking at footage. (Holly Quan, “Study Critical of San Francisco Surveillance Cameras,” KCBS, January 12 2009)
Today, authorized institutions are addressing unwarranted surveillance on a massive scale and the responsibility for breaking national and international conventions against torture and spying. Big Brother’s junk database can no longer be promoted by fear-mongering press releases and overconfident media hype, for his markets have totally collapsed. A staggering financial meltdown came about when it finally emerged that Big Brother’s grand security system was merely an expensive hoax. In his haste to eat into national sovereignty and civil liberties, Big Brother failed to notice that “democratic change” would be the strongest weapon against his shifty scheme. Like a sign above an open doorway with the phrase: “Democracy is Watched by You,” democratic and constitutional oversight will usher in the Technological Singularity.
The “Technological Singularity” is the theoretical emergence of smarter-than-human intelligence. It represents a paradigm shift that humans will experience when they stumble upon a “higher intelligence that never sleeps.” Since we’ve already learned from Big Brother that it’s not smart to be cruel, the Singularity will almost certainly be a source of benevolence – an intervention of the greater good.
Mathematician and author Vernor Vinge originally coined the term “Singularity.” Just as our model of physics breaks down when it tries to measure the singularity at the center of a black hole, our model of the world breaks down when it tries to measure a future that contains entities smarter than human.
“Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence,” Vinge wrote in the 1980s. “Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended.”
“Transhuman” is a term that refers to that evolutionary transition. Transhumans are the initial manifestation of new evolutionary beings. “Transhumanism” is a cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human characteristics and capacities. How will we know when we’ve entered the Technological Singularity? Maybe when intonations everywhere will unassumingly declare, “We can’t turn back!”
PublicAgenda recently wrote: “If change is to come, we cannot return to business as usual.”
The UNI Global Union freshly stated: “There can be no going back to the ways of unfettered capitalism that have caused the worst financial and economic crisis in decades.”
U.S. Congressman Charlie Melancon said: “We can’t repeat these same mistakes and pray for a different outcome.”
The Boulder Weekly reported: “You cannot fix our economic future by continuing to repeat the same mistakes.”
CNBC conveyed: “Once all the dust settles and the housing market returns to health, as it inevitably will, the old model simply cannot persist.”
The Washington Post testified: “We’ve moved to a new chapter in our history. We cannot, and I say this loudly, we cannot go back to business as usual.”
U.S. President Obama plainly pronounced: “Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter.”
How will we know it when we’ve entered the Singularity? “Human intelligence is the foundation of human technology; all technology is ultimately the product of intelligence. If technology can turn around and enhance intelligence, this closes the loop, creating a positive feedback effect. Smarter minds will be more effective at building still smarter minds.”
The Singularity is beyond huge, but it can begin with something small. If one smarter-than-human intelligence exists, that mind will find it easier to create still smarter minds. In this respect the dynamic of the Singularity resembles other cases where small causes can have large effects; toppling the first domino in a chain, starting an avalanche with a pebble, perturbing an upright object balanced on its tip. (Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Inc., 2007)
Without question, a Technological Singularity will lead to the rapid development of a Kardashev Type I civilization that achieves mastery of the resources of its home planet. Transhumanist thinkers predict that human beings will eventually be able to transform into beings with greatly expanded abilities to overcome the adverse causes of disability, suffering, disease, aging, and death.
Non-transhumanists have often made the accusation that it is a veiled form of “eugenics.” That’s why it must be emphasized that the Technological Singularity will not involve cruelty or induce suffering. That would be a return to Big Brother’s brainless schemes and become another threat to democracy. After all, the Singularity is a higher form of intelligence, not a crude automation that will yield to the cravings of every mad scientist. We should therefore not confuse a higher intelligence with the mindless scientific errors of the past. But when it finally does arrive, the Technological Singularity will certainly not allow us to get in the way of its design. We simply won’t comprehend it. Nor will we be able to prevent it.
Most devoted transhumanists today distance themselves from the term eugenics to avoid having their position confused with the discredited theories and practices of early 20th Century eugenic movements. Instead, they refer to the miracle of organ transplants (a heart transplant would probably have been considered immoral a hundred years ago) and the mind-blowing success of stem cell therapies that don’t rely on fetus tissues. An almost compassionate representation of transhumanism and soothing allusions to a “Hi-Tech Singularity” are not the elements of a conspiracy (or as one confused editor recently told me, “a quasi-Spencer like crypto-eugenic ideology”). They are probably closer to this idea:
Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. (1 Corinthians 15:51)
This type of transhumanism is sometimes also known as “Translation.” In Christian theology, it is when a person is physically changed from a mortal human being to an immortal human being (i.e., a translated being). Similar concepts can be found in Eastern philosophies. In science, translation is when a messenger RNA molecule specifies the linear sequence for protein synthesis.
The Technological Singularity — although incomprehensible in its entirety — will provide all humans with a never-ending stream of precise and factual information. Just as the potential for “cloud computing” (humanity’s collective intelligence) is anticipated by science, it will literally shape and pattern our future world.
Without a doubt, another essential point we must also reflect on involves modern alien abduction reports, in which numerous people claim they were biologically experimented on by extraterrestrials. Is that a type of creepy hi-tech eugenics conspiracy — or could it be a herald of the coming Technological Singularity and transhumanism in the making?
- Peter Fotis Kapnistos Comments (12)
Hi-tech conspiracy: truth or theory ?
February 3, 2009 | 12 comments
Image Credit: sxc.hu Since the 1949 publication of the classic novel by English author George Orwell, “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the terms Big Brother and Orwellian have entered our popular jargon. Americans and Moslems in particular have endured the past eight years trying to come to grips with the loss of personal privacy, an unprovoked war, and “enhanced” interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.
That dishonest U.S. epoch is presumably finished now, and we can talk about it with poise. The ghost of 911 produced countless conspiracy theories that took in everything from the machinations of secret cabals to a race of reptilian humanoids. Yet many truth-seekers failed to see the exact source behind the confusing plot — the abuse of technology.
In the 1990s, a new phrase became a nagging issue of our daily news bulletins: “browser security.” It seemed negligible to most observers at the time, but it was setting the stage for an unprecedented decade of the abuse of technology. The need for paranoia-free surfing and security zone breaches became new Orwellian threats that would continue to plague end-users in their own homes. Behind the scenes of Wall Street, modern markets were rapidly emerging. The marriage of technology and big oil was creating the basis for “outsourcing” governmental attempts to control or misuse information. A trillion-dollar market was about to hatch.
The phrase “Big Brother is Watching You” specifically connotes large-scale, invasive surveillance. Naturally, the general public respected the need to preserve personal privacy and was not at all interested in new surveillance technology. There was really no market for it -- not yet, at least. But the new-fangled spy technology and software to power it was already there, collecting dust on the shelves of major marketing firms. So, mass media providers were gracelessly called into action to popularize the prospect of 24-hour surveillance. In Orwell’s society, the Thought Police have two-way “telescreens” and hidden microphones in the living quarters of every citizen and in every public area. With that way of thinking, “Big Brother” became the televised reality show of 1999. Everyone could now show off the look of a movie star. “Big Brother is a reality television show where, in each series, a group of people live together in the Big Brother House, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras. The first Big Brother broadcast was in the Netherlands in 1999 on the Veronica TV channel. It has been a prime-time hit in almost 70 countries.” But a torrent of reality shows also created a new class of psychiatric disorders:
The Truman Show delusion, or Truman Syndrome, has drawn attention in recent months, in the United States and Britain, as psychiatrists in both countries describe a small but growing number of psychotic patients who describe their lives as mirroring that of the main character in the 1998 film “The Truman Show.” Played by Jim Carrey, Truman Burbank leads a mundane existence in the suburbs, starting from the time he was in the womb, while being filmed for a documentary television show that he cannot escape. Everyone is in on it, including his wife, and no one will believe Truman when he discovers clues that his life is being chronicled all the time by cameras.
With Internet delusion, patients typically incorporate the Internet into paranoid thoughts, including a fear that the Web is somehow monitoring or controlling their lives, or being used to transmit photographs or other personal information. The delusions are fueling a chicken-and-egg debate in psychiatry: Are these merely modern examples of classic paranoia fed by the cultural landscape, or is there something about media like reality television and the Internet that can push people over the sanity line? (Sarah Kershaw, “Culture of surveillance may contribute to delusional condition,” The International Herald Tribune, August 29, 2008)
Big Brother’s final push, of course, would require “a New Pearl Harbor.” Almost overnight, the modern world would be pleading for 24-hour surveillance and paying top dollar for fishy technology that was previously characterized as a red herring. It wasn’t alien abductions or occult rituals that made it all happen. It was simply the abuse of technology — and the warming of greedy markets. But there was also a grave risk the Big Brother system failed to identify: They would miss out on the coming “Technological Singularity.”
Because Big Brother configured his security settings too high, he turned off his system’s best features. As a result of that blunder, his market future became notoriously insecure. In the end, Big Brother’s claim to power became a reckless hoax. Luckily, there was only one “Room 101” in Big Brother’s inclusive realm, and usually that torture-seat was taken. As a result, a long waiting list of likely victims had to be filtered through his useless records. Of course, Big Brother was able to pick the brains of a few targets at a time. But that wouldn’t prevent his complete corroded coalition from finally crumbling.
At the height of the Big Brother obsession (Coalition of the Willies: feelings of uneasiness), the U.S. government “abused” the most complicated technology ever devised for screening all types of communications including the sinister “ECHELON” and “CARNIVORE” systems. These systems were the world’s largest information interceptors, sucking up an incredible amount of voice, fax, and data communications including satellite, microwave, fiber-optic, cellular and everything else from all over the planet — a projected 3 billion communications per day.
But it was soon alleged that the United States was unethically using the whispered ECHELON surveillance system for European industrial espionage, according to the European Parliament. “The U.S. has been using the spy system to win well-paying business contracts, outbidding their European counterparts due to inside knowledge as to what competitors’ plans are.”
It was also unclear whether Echelon-style eavesdropping could really prevent terrorist attacks. “Six Degrees of Separation” is the theory that anyone can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called “Chains” first proposed the theory in 1929.
In the 1950s, MIT and IBM set out to study the hypothesis mathematically. In 1967, American sociologist Stanley Milgram developed a new way to test it. Milgram’s findings were published in “Psychology Today” and coined the phrase “six degrees of separation.” Playwright John Guare made the phrase fashionable when he chose it as the title for a 1990 play.
In 2001, Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University, continued his own research into the puzzle and found that the average number of mediators was without a doubt, six. After checking 30 billion electronic messages, Microsoft researchers in 2008 also proved that the theory does indeed hold up. You are just 6.6 introductions away from any other person on the planet, which means that you are linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances to any criminal or terrorist in the world.
All of those theoretical studies implied, in plain language, that Big Brother’s grand surveillance system was nothing more than “a junk database.” In 2006, Siobhan Gordman, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun attended a national security panel discussion and publicly stated:
“And in terms of what people have explained to me about how this particular program works, I was told by someone who was quite confident in this, and was able to corroborate it with at least one other person, that they are doing the link analysis wrong. They’re doing it out too many degrees. And in doing that you end up with far too many people in the net. And I was told similar things were going on with the patterns. And so what they end up with is a database that gets junked up a lot.”
According to Gordman, the people who initially assembled the database had to be called back repeatedly to try “to unjunk up the database.” The fact that Big Brother also used face recognition and other advanced surveillance applications didn’t seem to help. An average Londoner, for example, is captured on video hundreds of times a day as he walks the streets, rides the “Tube,” visits the bank or drives a car. There may now be more than 10 million video cameras operating in a country with a population of about 60 million, according to David Murakami-Wood, a specialist on surveillance issues at Newcastle University. But excessive surveillance doesn’t necessarily reduce crimes:
Studies in the U.S. and Britain suggest the cameras are a limited deterrent in combating crime and terrorism. They appear to reduce crime when installed in confined spaces, such as parking garages, but are much less effective on open streets and plazas. Experts in surveillance suggest that the boom in camera use is partly driven by an aggressive private sector that pushes technology as the solution to social problems, and the insistence of insurance companies that businesses have cameras in place. (Julie Sell, “It must be ‘1984’: ‘Big Brother’ snoops and Britons don’t mind,” McClatchy Newspapers , Dec 5, 2008)
Computing horsepower and sophisticated data-mining technologies didn’t seem to help in disentangling projected surveillance innovations from junk databases in the US. The intelligence community finally faced up to the fact that Big Brother’s method was proving to be a systemic failure:
San Francisco’s surveillance cameras in high-crime areas do not prevent violent crime, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California. The long-awaited study by the UC Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society found the program is hurt by lack of training and oversight, a failure to integrate footage with other police efforts, poor quality cameras, and what may be a fundamental weakness of cameras as anti-crime devices. Mayor Newsom began the program four years ago, but out of concern for people’s privacy, police are not allowed to monitor cameras in real time. Investigators must wait until a crime is reported before looking at footage. (Holly Quan, “Study Critical of San Francisco Surveillance Cameras,” KCBS, January 12 2009)
Today, authorized institutions are addressing unwarranted surveillance on a massive scale and the responsibility for breaking national and international conventions against torture and spying. Big Brother’s junk database can no longer be promoted by fear-mongering press releases and overconfident media hype, for his markets have totally collapsed. A staggering financial meltdown came about when it finally emerged that Big Brother’s grand security system was merely an expensive hoax. In his haste to eat into national sovereignty and civil liberties, Big Brother failed to notice that “democratic change” would be the strongest weapon against his shifty scheme. Like a sign above an open doorway with the phrase: “Democracy is Watched by You,” democratic and constitutional oversight will usher in the Technological Singularity.
Mathematician and author Vernor Vinge originally coined the term “Singularity.” Just as our model of physics breaks down when it tries to measure the singularity at the center of a black hole, our model of the world breaks down when it tries to measure a future that contains entities smarter than human.
“Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence,” Vinge wrote in the 1980s. “Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended.”
“Transhuman” is a term that refers to that evolutionary transition. Transhumans are the initial manifestation of new evolutionary beings. “Transhumanism” is a cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human characteristics and capacities. How will we know when we’ve entered the Technological Singularity? Maybe when intonations everywhere will unassumingly declare, “We can’t turn back!”
PublicAgenda recently wrote: “If change is to come, we cannot return to business as usual.”
The UNI Global Union freshly stated: “There can be no going back to the ways of unfettered capitalism that have caused the worst financial and economic crisis in decades.”
U.S. Congressman Charlie Melancon said: “We can’t repeat these same mistakes and pray for a different outcome.”
The Boulder Weekly reported: “You cannot fix our economic future by continuing to repeat the same mistakes.”
CNBC conveyed: “Once all the dust settles and the housing market returns to health, as it inevitably will, the old model simply cannot persist.”
The Washington Post testified: “We’ve moved to a new chapter in our history. We cannot, and I say this loudly, we cannot go back to business as usual.”
U.S. President Obama plainly pronounced: “Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter.”
How will we know it when we’ve entered the Singularity? “Human intelligence is the foundation of human technology; all technology is ultimately the product of intelligence. If technology can turn around and enhance intelligence, this closes the loop, creating a positive feedback effect. Smarter minds will be more effective at building still smarter minds.”
The Singularity is beyond huge, but it can begin with something small. If one smarter-than-human intelligence exists, that mind will find it easier to create still smarter minds. In this respect the dynamic of the Singularity resembles other cases where small causes can have large effects; toppling the first domino in a chain, starting an avalanche with a pebble, perturbing an upright object balanced on its tip. (Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Inc., 2007)
Without question, a Technological Singularity will lead to the rapid development of a Kardashev Type I civilization that achieves mastery of the resources of its home planet. Transhumanist thinkers predict that human beings will eventually be able to transform into beings with greatly expanded abilities to overcome the adverse causes of disability, suffering, disease, aging, and death.
Non-transhumanists have often made the accusation that it is a veiled form of “eugenics.” That’s why it must be emphasized that the Technological Singularity will not involve cruelty or induce suffering. That would be a return to Big Brother’s brainless schemes and become another threat to democracy. After all, the Singularity is a higher form of intelligence, not a crude automation that will yield to the cravings of every mad scientist. We should therefore not confuse a higher intelligence with the mindless scientific errors of the past. But when it finally does arrive, the Technological Singularity will certainly not allow us to get in the way of its design. We simply won’t comprehend it. Nor will we be able to prevent it.
Most devoted transhumanists today distance themselves from the term eugenics to avoid having their position confused with the discredited theories and practices of early 20th Century eugenic movements. Instead, they refer to the miracle of organ transplants (a heart transplant would probably have been considered immoral a hundred years ago) and the mind-blowing success of stem cell therapies that don’t rely on fetus tissues. An almost compassionate representation of transhumanism and soothing allusions to a “Hi-Tech Singularity” are not the elements of a conspiracy (or as one confused editor recently told me, “a quasi-Spencer like crypto-eugenic ideology”). They are probably closer to this idea:
Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. (1 Corinthians 15:51)
This type of transhumanism is sometimes also known as “Translation.” In Christian theology, it is when a person is physically changed from a mortal human being to an immortal human being (i.e., a translated being). Similar concepts can be found in Eastern philosophies. In science, translation is when a messenger RNA molecule specifies the linear sequence for protein synthesis.
The Technological Singularity — although incomprehensible in its entirety — will provide all humans with a never-ending stream of precise and factual information. Just as the potential for “cloud computing” (humanity’s collective intelligence) is anticipated by science, it will literally shape and pattern our future world.
Without a doubt, another essential point we must also reflect on involves modern alien abduction reports, in which numerous people claim they were biologically experimented on by extraterrestrials. Is that a type of creepy hi-tech eugenics conspiracy — or could it be a herald of the coming Technological Singularity and transhumanism in the making?
- Peter Fotis Kapnistos Comments (12)
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