The road to transhumunism will be gradual to the point that people will not notice.
Can you imagine the reaction of people from the 1930s if you tell them women slit open their breath/bums and stuff bits of soft glass/sand under their flesh to make them more attractive. Or that people do surgeries to their faces to look entirely different. Shining really really intense light to itch away the cornea will make ones eyesight better. Biomoniac limbs are already happening and so are brain electrodes to control them. Latest is highly flexible polymers that reconnect the nerves for people with broken backs.
I have bad knees and terrible eye sights so I can't wait until being better.
great to see you on here, Dana. I've been following some of your writing in some of the Facebook blockchain groups, always good stuff.
great writeup. keep an eye out for @core when he starts posting on here - he's been working on some tech similar to what you're describing, yet a whole other level... :-)
@rok-sivante Thank you so much for opening this topic up. Here's hoping it becomes the first $100k hitter, because it's a damned important topic to be discussing.
I sure wish I could have jumped in this topic sooner. I would have been upvoting the hell out of every comment so far. Nevertheless I need to get my 2c in, because this is the subject in life about which I am the most passionate. I spend days examining the evidence and seeing where it leads.
First off, judging from the response level in here, we need a new tag for transhumanism topics, I recommend H+ or hplus speaking of which...
For those of you who are genuinely curious to know what's going on http://hplusmagazine.com/ is a magazine I strongly recommend you read. That and www.sciencedaily.org will keep you up to date on most of what is going on in this movement but I urge you not to buy into the popsci side of things and read the actual science behind these things.
I'm a futurist and a transhumanist. I'm not a body modder, but that's more a matter of practicality than anything.
Alright so here is how I see this...
We already ARE transhuman
It's not a thing we will become, it's not a road we will travel.
It's right here, it's right now, you are in it and you are IT.
Transhumanism is exactly and precisely about one thing... Self directed evolution.
It is as much about biology as technology. There are no limits, there are no bounds either to what we are now, nor what we can become.
While there are those who choose to hold religious beliefs and find some extra personal fulfillment by looking at this spiritually, I tend to take a much more pragmatic approach and just focus on the physical side.
Someone was mentioning that things like your smartphone are a crutch, because the address book makes it harder to remember numbers. That's not true at all. Its just makes the task of remembering numbers a lot less important. You will always remember what is most important to you so long as that squishy bit of computing power between your ears continues to function correctly.
As for remembering entire books? Ask your average bible thumper or other zealout and I'll bet many of them can quote you page and verse for any random scripture you care to toss out there. For a thousand years the only books people had access to were scriptures and they were told if they didn't memorize it that they would spend an eternity in hell. So it definitely qualifies here.
As long as the human mind finds information important it will attempt to keep it fresh and at the ready.
Transhumanistic viewpoints inform us that humans can become so much more than we are right now. It is self evident that we can push our limits. The average age of mortality in our species has gone up 25% in only 75 years. There is no reason to assume that this is unsustainable at all. In some cases we are waiting for technology to catch up to biology. In other cases we are waiting for biology to catch up to technology.
But there is a concept called Unity, and no this has nothing to do with the singularity and various transhumanists will use various words to describe it, but Unity is the word I use.
Face it, when you misplace your phone it feels like you're missing a piece of yourself. It has become an extension of you. When it's lost, it feels like a missing limb. I have to turn in my phone at a security point every week when I go into a secure data center. I already have "phantom limb" syndrome when that happens. It's not addiction, it's because the device is so ingrained into my workflows that it is offsite storage for a large part of the information that is me.
And this is where it may take some getting used to. You aren't the body you are sitting in. You are "the information that is you".
Here is a bit more information on that since it can be hard to wrap your mind around it.
Right now you are information contained in a purely biological carrier. That carrier can change and the information persists.
As technology marches on, it becomes deeper ingrained into who and what we are. Nanotech for example is little more than hype, but microtech is very much here right now. Nano is coming along nicely though. I promise you if you are GenX or Millenial you are either in the last generation to die or the first to live forever, possibly both.
The reason is that the hype is quickly becoming real. The lines between what is biological and what is technical are blurring more and more everyday.
We already have small bots the size of a cell that are programmable and can be powered by ATP, the stuff that makes cells work.
Very soon you will go to a Dr and the doctor will inject you will a small diagnostic robot that will explore you at the cellular and systems level and provide the most accurate report possible about your present conditions. This tech isn't "just around the corner", it's here now but it doesn't yet have the ability to traverse the whole body yet.
These bots will continue to shrink and yet get more powerful. In 5 years time the ability to have bots that check every system in your body and report in realtime instead of just generating a final report on selected systems.
Give it another 5 years beyond that and these will evolve into "programmable medicine". Builders of targeted drugs and chemicals that are manufactured in your body on demand. Last pill you'll ever need to take.
Yet another 5 years and these begin to gain a swarm intelligence. They can not only monitor and do what they are specifically instructed to, but they can detect and respond to unknown phenomena. They'll already be in your body, they already have a "print" of what "you" look like. They just need to detect and correct for small deviations such as cancer by destroying errant cells and coercing your natural cells into a stem cell state at the problem site.
This is 20 years out from now and if you didn't get the first or second generation, you will get the third generation. Imagine going into the Dr and getting an injection for an "enhanced immune system". One that is intelligent. Not sentient per se, but intelligent enough to detect and repair any sort of damage that occurs. You fall and break your arm, but it's healed by the time the paramedics get there.
Once we get to that point, new questions begin to emerge about what we are.
A system like this could easily begin to optimize the handiwork of the blind watchmaker. Getting rid of irrelevant parts and reshaping and restructuring organs and tissues for more optimum function and constantly replacing your old worn out parts and tissues. At this point you are functionally immortal.
But that is only the first step. A system which can optimize and replace whole organs in situ could also create new organs and use newer better materials.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, organic you is replaced with something more durable and your entire body can be reconfigured as needed.
The brain is part of the body. Alzheimers, dementia, parkinsons are all horrible diseases of the brain that cause you to lose who you are. Any system that could repair and reconfigure an organ could begin to work on the brain. Perhaps by replacing failing nueral tissue with enhanced neural prosthetics.
Not only do you not develop these horrible diseases, but your ability to process information is quite literally "upgraded".
Yet there becomes a point, where the last piece of meat is gone. The last bit of organic tissue is replaced. But you are still you. You think like you only better. You look like you, only healthier and in the prime of life. You are still you, but you are now effectively immortal, deathless, endless.
And this is only the second stage.
There are stages well beyond that because physics tells us that the maximum information density is the planck length and moores law says that information density increases by doubling every 18 months.
By the time we get to stage two we're talking about bytes per angstrom.
We aren't even 1% of the way to the maximum information load we could carry.
There is a progression here. The first stage, the one we are just now entering is "homo cyber". You already are a cyborg, we all are. You wear glasses, or use a smart phone, ask Siri a question, or rely on a computer to research information, receive entertainment, communicate, work etc. You are a cyborg. But you don't call yourself that because you don't remember when that really occurred. It was a slow and natural progression.
The next stage is "homo superior", this is the stage where biology and technology become truly blurred and is the progression I laid out above because it is our next step as a species.
The third stage is "homo transcendent" and at this point our technology has evolved to the point that we no longer have any biology to speak of but we also have no technology. Homo transcendent is the point where we reach unity. We have individual thoughts, feelings and emotions, but we are primarily concerned with the tasks of learning and information interchange. In otherwords we are mentally much more than we are now and war, famine and poverty have ceased because they aren't really possible anymore. We're just something different.
So this is how transhumanists generally see the world. There are a lot of us, we all have our own ideas and opinions and thoughts. What I've stated above is the utopian vision. I believe the utopian vision is the correct destination, because the future is the only thing we can control and all we have to do is create it.
ok. this is absolutely, by far, the best of all the comments on this post. wow.
I'm near-shocked you don't have more writing like this on your blog. it's top-notch, mate. QUALITY.
I'd recommend copy & pasting your entire comment, add some pics and format it into a post of its own. REALLY good content. throw it up with a bunch of great tags to increase exposure. it's pure gold, though will quickly buried as a comment in this thread. built it out into its own piece and maximize its real estate in relevant categories.
you'll do well on this site continuing to write at this level, as it's some amazing valuable content! :-)
The underlying assumption of transhumanism is that the human potential is limited or broken and thus needs fixing or "enhancement".
The subconscious admission of "enhancing" one's self with technology is that the combination of human body, mind and soul cannot do what machinery can. This is lodged as a self-limiting / self-crippling subconscious self-suggestion that is then re-inforcing the assumption of limited human potential.
One simple example is memory. If you have a technological helper (say your phone) to keep your phone book memorized, you don't need to remember phone numbers. But that doesn't mean you can't. But if you start relying on the phone to do that, it's an admission that you can't, and then it's becoming excessively difficult to start memorizing even 2-3-5 numbers (let alone tens of numbers like we did in the 80s or 90's - prior to mobile phones).
Extending that, prior to the printing press, we were memorizing entire books - a task which is seemingly impossible today because most people give up by merely thinking about it.
The mind, with proper programming*, can be able to do extraordinary things. However (if it involves self-reprogramming and not external programming by a third party) this is predicated on the assumption and admission that the human potential is far larger than we think.
This was a man with pretty bad memory (so he thought), Derren "programmed" him, he consumed an amazing amount of content in books and then he entered a quiz-competition that is normally collaborative (entire teams). He entered alone and IIRC he came second or first.
Memory is just one example. There is creative thinking, processing more information than is apparently available, controlling the body in ways that we aren't normally familiar, etc. Intelligence is also another factor which is programmable, meaning one can program themselves (or others) to be smarter.
In a sense, we are barely scratching the surface of human potential.
Personally, if I were to have any implants, I would want something that would effective alter and enhance my physical form. Like my eyes are defective and can't focus light perfectly onto the retina. Or my knees are showing signs that they might not last into my twilight years.
Some of the skill that we needed to have "back then" that are abandoned now is a good progression as long as we use the free capacity available to embark on even more productive endeavours.
Take photography for example. With digital medium, we no longer have to faff around with choosing the right ISO films or having to develop the photo ourselves using dangerous chemicals. Now we have easy to use, highly portable and robust camera that we can take to more places to compose better shots. For those who want more can do more extreme stuff like HDR, or star trails.
There is no need to romanticise and settle for the mundane as long as you continue to push our boundaries.
Btw, what you are really asking is a better input interface for content creation. This doesn't need to be "integrated" into our biology. A proper UI that would take speech commands (so that you don't have to write) and directions (where to place photos, what stuff to highlight, put to the center, etc etc) is probably 3-5-10 years away and will not be invasive.
Noise is a problem now because the proper filtering algorithms don't work so well, but good AI will do it. Privacy though, that's a problem so in those cases it may require inventions like yours or miniaturized non-invasive neural readers in something like a headphone set.
Speed of speech is actually slower than the speed of thoughts. I read in speed read guide somewhere that one should reading out words in your head as it actually impede the speed at which the words are processed.
Have you ever had a time when a name or word is that the tip of your mouth but you can't get it out? That's the link between thought and speech malfunctioning! With the right set up, a machine can theoretically know what you mean better than yourself!
thanks for the intelligent, insightful, well-articulated input, mate. your contribution to the conversation is much appreciated.
re: .
"The underlying assumption of transhumanism is that the human potential is limited or broken and thus needs fixing or "enhancement".
I respectfully disagree, for the reason that such a statement is more subjective than objective. I WOULD agree that there may be many in the transhumanist movement who come from this stance - though such is a matter of personal perception rather than an absolute truth.
Humans never NEEDED any technology - be it agricultural production methods, industrial innovations, phones, computers, or internet. We don’t NEED fixing or enhancement - such a suggesting is a subjective opinion.
For there to be an argument validating the belief for a need of “fixing” or “enhancement,” a context must be first set to define what “problems” exist. Then, one could say a “fix” was “needed” - however, it is to be noted that the “need” is a “need”only with that context, if there is a determined outcome required. It’s only a “need” if one is attached to a particular outcome and is not flexible to any other outcomes.
We don’t “need” Steemit. We don’t need cars. We don’t need houses, cities, or anything. Fuck, we don’t even “need” food, clothing, and shelter. We could wander about in the wild and get eaten by fucking lions. And that’s all ok. These things only become “needs” when we get fixated into a belief of a necessary outcome.
As such, human potential is simply a matter of authorship - what each individual chooses to create of him/herself.
The way we use technology has already upgraded human potential in ways beyond description. Further use of technology - while external as faster smartphones, or internal & integrative with external technology - may simply be means available for an individual to explore and further develop their human potential - not needed, not as a means of fixing or enhancing anything, but just as a vehicle to take the person to a new destination/experience of his/her choice.
” The subconscious admission of "enhancing" one's self with technology is that the combination of human body, mind and soul cannot do what machinery can. This is lodged as a self-limiting / self-crippling subconscious self-suggestion that is then re-inforcing the assumption of limited human potential.”
again, I respectfully disagree - for the reason that humans DO have limited potential. the acceptance of such is not a “self-limiting / self-crippling” suggestion - but an empowering respect for natural limitations and alignment with natural law. No crippled midget will ever become an all-star basketball player. That’s not pessimism, a limiting belief, or crippling suggestion - its a fact. This IS an extreme example. But it proves the point: human potential is NOT limitless, like the motivational gurus like to preach. Limits are not evil. Sometimes limits are required to contain the expenditure of resources within boundaries. And there’s ALOT more power in acknowledging inherent limitations rather than deluding oneself they don’t exist. A whole other topic on its own...
"Btw, what you are really asking is a better input interface for content creation. This doesn't need to be "integrated" into our biology. A proper UI that would take speech commands (so that you don't have to write) and directions (where to place photos, what stuff to highlight, put to the center, etc etc) is probably 3-5-10 years away and will not be invasive."
input interface, yes. doesn't need to be integrated into biology, yes - the exception would be a BRAINWAVE-BASED INTERFACE. a UI taking speech commands would be archaic in comparison, like Atari versus virtual reality games that are still 20 years aways...
The subconscious admission of "enhancing" one's self with technology is that the combination of human body, mind and soul cannot do what machinery can.
There's no such thing as a soul. Google "the problem of interaction".
The name ("soul") is kind of irrelevant - it's just a symbol. I could say the "player" (=soul) and the "avatar" (=body) in a "virtual reality" analogy where this world is simply one layer of reality controlled by another.
I'm upvoting and replying, so this will become a bookmark for me to seriously comment on this at some future date. I've been involved with cryonics, life extension, anarchism and transhumanism since the late seventies. Unfortunately, many transhumanists are statists, but their philosophy is not popular among the elite. Almost everyone, including elite psychopaths, have come to terms with aging and death. Cryonics is super rational and incredibly unpopular, even though it is not really expensive.
Anyway -- placeholder here for a more serious post on this in the future.
Remind me to tell the story of Robert Enzmann of Project Orion, and his autogenetic cycling plus neocortical brain patch implants method.
Transhumanism is happening, and sooner than we might think. Ray Kurzweil's timeline is optimistic, but possible. We have to take it carefully, but frankly, it can only be great for humans. We lose so much time, energy, focus, creativity and compassion through negative emotions such as fear and anger. These emotions were very useful for our ancestor species surviving in the jungles, but they are just unnecessary baggage today.
That's what I think this is truly about - enabling humanity to achieve its true potential.
I upvoted as I really enjoyed your outburst. But I can see that the transhumanism concept is scaring the shit out of many people. But the problem they face is that most of them use technology without even understanding it - and technology moves with exponential growth. So the question is can anybody or anything even prevent the singularity from happening? None of us probably knows the ultimate plan if there really is one objectively - so all we can do is enjoy the ride as much as we can. The ride is a very subjective and special experience ;-)
There are people who are super fast readers who can read and assimilate information very quick. That is possible without technology. All it takes is practice and hard work.
There can be a technology where one can speak short phrases and software creates human readable content out of it. That seems very much possible.
That can speed up the process of consuming and sharing of information.
Transhumanism sound fascinating too. Just that humans currently differ from one another at the level of intelligence. The Transhumanism will give humans power. Still how that is used will make someone a success or a loser.
Just like in the movie Limitless. There were few who had access to the drug. Only the protagonist was able to utilize it to his advantage.
Thanks for this post. Now that is one more thing to look into. Such a promising future.
Yes - such advancements are possible without technology, though still have limitations. For such technological advancements to be utilized constructively would most likely require such internal development of natural intelligence, first - in order to develop the wisdom to effectively manage the power such external technologies would enable.
Both Limitless & Lucy - AMAZING movies. not entirely fiction. Both present a fairly accurate representation of what may be possible with the development of the brain. and anyone who's done psychedelics may be familiar with these states. (there's probably good reason the movie was called "Lucy.") though even the psychedelic experiences aren't just because of the drugs themselves - the compounds are just a high-energy fuel source to activate increased brain processing power, unveiling the potential of human consciousness. such states ARE possible without external substances - the brain produces DMT naturally, and if one knows how, DMT can be produced intentionally in higher-than-normal doses.
very exciting times and things ahead, with such developments in all these fields...
Imagine if you didn't have to sit down at a computer and spend hours typing out all the articulate details of the ideas in your head to form a well-composed article or book.
I have a couple objections to that and can see a couple problems.
First, even the most powerful chip set can't substitute for the work that the brain is doing, at its natural pace - that is, creating new content that is unique to you. That only you can dream up. Otherwise, the chip set is only converting data into words, like this sports writing bot. The only color commentary is preloaded by its human programmers. So you wouldn't actually be learning.
Second, unless you loaded your entire mind into the chipset, you'd fail to make new connections and deductions based on experience, which your brain helpfully throws up when exposed to new, but connected, information. You couldn't say, wow, that Tarzan movie really is deceptive, it makes it look like the natives banished the Belgians from the Congo, when in reality I know from King Leopold's Ghost that the horror and suffering went on for decades. And, I'm able to draw on all the other examples of imperial colonialism to contrast and compare.
What I'm getting at is the difference between information and knowledge. If you're still going to use the brain to come up with solutions, you have to respect the pace it works at.
Finally...there's so much pleasure to be had in reading, allowing knowledge to dawn on you organically (literally in this case). And some of that pleasure is difficulty. It should be hard for me to understand HTF Steemit manages to really truly pay all these $ out of nowhere, because of how rewarding it is to the brain to solve it.
Take away that reward system, and the brain atrophies, and all the knowledge in the world won't wake it up.
thanks for the contribution to the discussion. I've spoken to some of these points in a few of the other comment replies I've just been making - though the main emphasis I hope comes through them (which perhaps was underemphasized in the story itself):
natural, internal development would be required FIRST for any of these technologies to be effective. a person would need to achieve a certain level of internal development, acquiring a degree of wisdom and innate mental capacities/skill, before the external technology would be of any value.
compare it to a fresh computer with no programs on it - but a processing capability without limits.
on its own, the computer won't do ANYTHING.
the outcome is entirely dependent upon the programmer.
if someone's inherent coding skills are basic, the output of the computer will be basic.
if someone's an EXPERT, master programmer, they could create some AMAZING output.
the development of that knowledge & skills is part information that could potentially be uploaded, but for alot of that development, there is no magic-pill, quick-fix, or shortcut.
I view such technological potentials as discussed as that limitless-power-computer. for a master programmer - a dream come true. but to a complete newbie, essentially useless.
there'd need to be prerequisite development of consciousness and wisdom that couldn't be substituted with any technology - the organic development of specific neural pathways and activation of certain genetic codes - prior to the technology's potential to be activated. the tech could upload info, but it'd be the organic infrastructure that'd convert that information into knowledge and integrate it into the person's neural network, from which its interconnection would culminate in wisdom...
Do you has happened any time that think more quickly of which you speak? to my happens to me constantly. I do not think at any time... Sometimes I would like to be able to disconnect but seems something impossible. He made of unite our minds with the technology not think that would be a mistake? How many people in the world would be able to process the information. Recognize that not have investigated in relation to this issue, and perhaps it make more forward but if not remember wrong, use only the 10 or the 20% of our brain. This science will help open the doors to the rest of the sections of our brains? No one could steal or worse... steal information? Then we would just be an empty hard disk. The truth is that this post gives to think... The elite of mankind has always proposed control body of the human being, imagine if also you could control our minds... Although I really am which believe that they already control our minds and we live in the cavern described by Plato. We are locked, subject and repressed in a prison and we must free our minds, but I don't know if this would be the right solution. My apology by write so poorly in English, but both to read a post as to write a comment, always need of a translator
Kirtash, thanks for your input. yes, your English is a bit broken and difficult to follow along with, though I get most of what you're saying.
just a quick tip to help your future posts/comments become more easily readable: split into multiple paragraphs, rather than just one big one. you have many ideas within your comment, and its difficult to separate - whereas it'd be much easier for people to translate if you split into maybe 5-7 distinct/separate chunks, separating each with spacing.
It will also make it easier for people to respond to each of the different questions/points.
the main reply I have to your questions, that stands out the most: the 10% brain figure is inaccurate, and creates misunderstanding. what percentage of your CPU power does your computer use?* there is no set answer. it depends on what/how many programs are being run at a single time, and what each program does.
there is no 100% brain power as people have thought. there can be no absolute peak potential, because of neuroplasticity. we are constantly growing new neural networks. with intentional development, the neural networks (architecture) of the brain can keep being expanded near indefinitely. processing power can always be upgraded.
science is still in its infancy when it comes to understanding this.
this topic is worth volumes in itself.
but if you are interested in it, keep an eye out for when @core starts posting on here. I promise you - the stuff he will be sharing is light-years ahead of anything you'll come across in the mainstream neuroscience community, completely leading-edge - and he's got some amazing technologies and techniques that allow a person to mastery their own development and achieve this type of brain development, exponentially increasing brain processing power WAY beyond the norm.
do keep practicing your English and writing skills. I think you will have some valuable insights to contribute to the community... :-)
The road to transhumunism will be gradual to the point that people will not notice.
Can you imagine the reaction of people from the 1930s if you tell them women slit open their breath/bums and stuff bits of soft glass/sand under their flesh to make them more attractive. Or that people do surgeries to their faces to look entirely different. Shining really really intense light to itch away the cornea will make ones eyesight better. Biomoniac limbs are already happening and so are brain electrodes to control them. Latest is highly flexible polymers that reconnect the nerves for people with broken backs.
I have bad knees and terrible eye sights so I can't wait until being better.
I posted on this topic as my first ever post on Steemit.
https://steemit.com/technology/@dana-edwards/thinking-outside-the-brain-why-we-need-to-build-a-decentralized-exocortex-part-2
Cyborgization is a great idea but not everyone understands what it is. We need more people to explain the concept.
great to see you on here, Dana. I've been following some of your writing in some of the Facebook blockchain groups, always good stuff.
great writeup. keep an eye out for @core when he starts posting on here - he's been working on some tech similar to what you're describing, yet a whole other level... :-)
@rok-sivante Thank you so much for opening this topic up. Here's hoping it becomes the first $100k hitter, because it's a damned important topic to be discussing.
I sure wish I could have jumped in this topic sooner. I would have been upvoting the hell out of every comment so far. Nevertheless I need to get my 2c in, because this is the subject in life about which I am the most passionate. I spend days examining the evidence and seeing where it leads.
First off, judging from the response level in here, we need a new tag for transhumanism topics, I recommend H+ or hplus speaking of which...
For those of you who are genuinely curious to know what's going on http://hplusmagazine.com/ is a magazine I strongly recommend you read. That and www.sciencedaily.org will keep you up to date on most of what is going on in this movement but I urge you not to buy into the popsci side of things and read the actual science behind these things.
As I said in https://steemit.com/steemit/@williambanks/bot-warz-a-hybrid-approach
I'm a futurist and a transhumanist. I'm not a body modder, but that's more a matter of practicality than anything.
Alright so here is how I see this...
We already ARE transhuman
It's not a thing we will become, it's not a road we will travel.
It's right here, it's right now, you are in it and you are IT.
Transhumanism is exactly and precisely about one thing...
Self directed evolution.
It is as much about biology as technology. There are no limits, there are no bounds either to what we are now, nor what we can become.
While there are those who choose to hold religious beliefs and find some extra personal fulfillment by looking at this spiritually, I tend to take a much more pragmatic approach and just focus on the physical side.
Someone was mentioning that things like your smartphone are a crutch, because the address book makes it harder to remember numbers. That's not true at all. Its just makes the task of remembering numbers a lot less important. You will always remember what is most important to you so long as that squishy bit of computing power between your ears continues to function correctly.
As for remembering entire books? Ask your average bible thumper or other zealout and I'll bet many of them can quote you page and verse for any random scripture you care to toss out there. For a thousand years the only books people had access to were scriptures and they were told if they didn't memorize it that they would spend an eternity in hell. So it definitely qualifies here.
As long as the human mind finds information important it will attempt to keep it fresh and at the ready.
Transhumanistic viewpoints inform us that humans can become so much more than we are right now. It is self evident that we can push our limits. The average age of mortality in our species has gone up 25% in only 75 years. There is no reason to assume that this is unsustainable at all. In some cases we are waiting for technology to catch up to biology. In other cases we are waiting for biology to catch up to technology.
But there is a concept called Unity, and no this has nothing to do with the singularity and various transhumanists will use various words to describe it, but Unity is the word I use.
We are already very intimate with our machines.
In many cases we are more intimate with our machines than our loved ones.
https://steemit.com/photography/@blinova/all-men-are-obsessed-with-s-steemit
Face it, when you misplace your phone it feels like you're missing a piece of yourself. It has become an extension of you. When it's lost, it feels like a missing limb. I have to turn in my phone at a security point every week when I go into a secure data center. I already have "phantom limb" syndrome when that happens. It's not addiction, it's because the device is so ingrained into my workflows that it is offsite storage for a large part of the information that is me.
And this is where it may take some getting used to. You aren't the body you are sitting in. You are "the information that is you".
Here is a bit more information on that since it can be hard to wrap your mind around it.
Right now you are information contained in a purely biological carrier. That carrier can change and the information persists.
As technology marches on, it becomes deeper ingrained into who and what we are. Nanotech for example is little more than hype, but microtech is very much here right now. Nano is coming along nicely though. I promise you if you are GenX or Millenial you are either in the last generation to die or the first to live forever, possibly both.
The reason is that the hype is quickly becoming real. The lines between what is biological and what is technical are blurring more and more everyday.
We already have small bots the size of a cell that are programmable and can be powered by ATP, the stuff that makes cells work.
Very soon you will go to a Dr and the doctor will inject you will a small diagnostic robot that will explore you at the cellular and systems level and provide the most accurate report possible about your present conditions. This tech isn't "just around the corner", it's here now but it doesn't yet have the ability to traverse the whole body yet.
These bots will continue to shrink and yet get more powerful. In 5 years time the ability to have bots that check every system in your body and report in realtime instead of just generating a final report on selected systems.
Give it another 5 years beyond that and these will evolve into "programmable medicine". Builders of targeted drugs and chemicals that are manufactured in your body on demand. Last pill you'll ever need to take.
Yet another 5 years and these begin to gain a swarm intelligence. They can not only monitor and do what they are specifically instructed to, but they can detect and respond to unknown phenomena. They'll already be in your body, they already have a "print" of what "you" look like. They just need to detect and correct for small deviations such as cancer by destroying errant cells and coercing your natural cells into a stem cell state at the problem site.
This is 20 years out from now and if you didn't get the first or second generation, you will get the third generation. Imagine going into the Dr and getting an injection for an "enhanced immune system". One that is intelligent. Not sentient per se, but intelligent enough to detect and repair any sort of damage that occurs. You fall and break your arm, but it's healed by the time the paramedics get there.
Once we get to that point, new questions begin to emerge about what we are.
A system like this could easily begin to optimize the handiwork of the blind watchmaker. Getting rid of irrelevant parts and reshaping and restructuring organs and tissues for more optimum function and constantly replacing your old worn out parts and tissues. At this point you are functionally immortal.
But that is only the first step. A system which can optimize and replace whole organs in situ could also create new organs and use newer better materials.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, organic you is replaced with something more durable and your entire body can be reconfigured as needed.
The brain is part of the body. Alzheimers, dementia, parkinsons are all horrible diseases of the brain that cause you to lose who you are. Any system that could repair and reconfigure an organ could begin to work on the brain. Perhaps by replacing failing nueral tissue with enhanced neural prosthetics.
Not only do you not develop these horrible diseases, but your ability to process information is quite literally "upgraded".
Yet there becomes a point, where the last piece of meat is gone. The last bit of organic tissue is replaced. But you are still you. You think like you only better. You look like you, only healthier and in the prime of life. You are still you, but you are now effectively immortal, deathless, endless.
And this is only the second stage.
There are stages well beyond that because physics tells us that the maximum information density is the planck length and moores law says that information density increases by doubling every 18 months.
By the time we get to stage two we're talking about bytes per angstrom.
We aren't even 1% of the way to the maximum information load we could carry.
There is a progression here. The first stage, the one we are just now entering is "homo cyber". You already are a cyborg, we all are. You wear glasses, or use a smart phone, ask Siri a question, or rely on a computer to research information, receive entertainment, communicate, work etc. You are a cyborg. But you don't call yourself that because you don't remember when that really occurred. It was a slow and natural progression.
The next stage is "homo superior", this is the stage where biology and technology become truly blurred and is the progression I laid out above because it is our next step as a species.
The third stage is "homo transcendent" and at this point our technology has evolved to the point that we no longer have any biology to speak of but we also have no technology. Homo transcendent is the point where we reach unity. We have individual thoughts, feelings and emotions, but we are primarily concerned with the tasks of learning and information interchange. In otherwords we are mentally much more than we are now and war, famine and poverty have ceased because they aren't really possible anymore. We're just something different.
So this is how transhumanists generally see the world. There are a lot of us, we all have our own ideas and opinions and thoughts. What I've stated above is the utopian vision. I believe the utopian vision is the correct destination, because the future is the only thing we can control and all we have to do is create it.
ok. this is absolutely, by far, the best of all the comments on this post. wow.
I'm near-shocked you don't have more writing like this on your blog. it's top-notch, mate. QUALITY.
I'd recommend copy & pasting your entire comment, add some pics and format it into a post of its own. REALLY good content. throw it up with a bunch of great tags to increase exposure. it's pure gold, though will quickly buried as a comment in this thread. built it out into its own piece and maximize its real estate in relevant categories.
you'll do well on this site continuing to write at this level, as it's some amazing valuable content! :-)
The underlying assumption of transhumanism is that the human potential is limited or broken and thus needs fixing or "enhancement".
The subconscious admission of "enhancing" one's self with technology is that the combination of human body, mind and soul cannot do what machinery can. This is lodged as a self-limiting / self-crippling subconscious self-suggestion that is then re-inforcing the assumption of limited human potential.
One simple example is memory. If you have a technological helper (say your phone) to keep your phone book memorized, you don't need to remember phone numbers. But that doesn't mean you can't. But if you start relying on the phone to do that, it's an admission that you can't, and then it's becoming excessively difficult to start memorizing even 2-3-5 numbers (let alone tens of numbers like we did in the 80s or 90's - prior to mobile phones).
Extending that, prior to the printing press, we were memorizing entire books - a task which is seemingly impossible today because most people give up by merely thinking about it.
The mind, with proper programming*, can be able to do extraordinary things. However (if it involves self-reprogramming and not external programming by a third party) this is predicated on the assumption and admission that the human potential is far larger than we think.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1903777/Derren-Brown-turns-average-man-into-pub-quiz-genius.html - you might find the whole episode or parts by searching derren brown, glen, memory
This was a man with pretty bad memory (so he thought), Derren "programmed" him, he consumed an amazing amount of content in books and then he entered a quiz-competition that is normally collaborative (entire teams). He entered alone and IIRC he came second or first.
Memory is just one example. There is creative thinking, processing more information than is apparently available, controlling the body in ways that we aren't normally familiar, etc. Intelligence is also another factor which is programmable, meaning one can program themselves (or others) to be smarter.
In a sense, we are barely scratching the surface of human potential.
Personally, if I were to have any implants, I would want something that would effective alter and enhance my physical form. Like my eyes are defective and can't focus light perfectly onto the retina. Or my knees are showing signs that they might not last into my twilight years.
Some of the skill that we needed to have "back then" that are abandoned now is a good progression as long as we use the free capacity available to embark on even more productive endeavours.
Take photography for example. With digital medium, we no longer have to faff around with choosing the right ISO films or having to develop the photo ourselves using dangerous chemicals. Now we have easy to use, highly portable and robust camera that we can take to more places to compose better shots. For those who want more can do more extreme stuff like HDR, or star trails.
There is no need to romanticise and settle for the mundane as long as you continue to push our boundaries.
Btw, what you are really asking is a better input interface for content creation. This doesn't need to be "integrated" into our biology. A proper UI that would take speech commands (so that you don't have to write) and directions (where to place photos, what stuff to highlight, put to the center, etc etc) is probably 3-5-10 years away and will not be invasive.
Speech doesn't work when it is noisy or privacy is required. A similarly non-invasive interface is a hand holdable, or wearable chordic input device, like the one in the Hip PC:
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@brindleswan/forgotten-history-of-wearable-computing-a-steemit-exclusive
Noise is a problem now because the proper filtering algorithms don't work so well, but good AI will do it. Privacy though, that's a problem so in those cases it may require inventions like yours or miniaturized non-invasive neural readers in something like a headphone set.
Speed of speech is actually slower than the speed of thoughts. I read in speed read guide somewhere that one should reading out words in your head as it actually impede the speed at which the words are processed.
Have you ever had a time when a name or word is that the tip of your mouth but you can't get it out? That's the link between thought and speech malfunctioning! With the right set up, a machine can theoretically know what you mean better than yourself!
at least 1000 times slower, at times...
thanks for the intelligent, insightful, well-articulated input, mate. your contribution to the conversation is much appreciated.
re: .
I respectfully disagree, for the reason that such a statement is more subjective than objective. I WOULD agree that there may be many in the transhumanist movement who come from this stance - though such is a matter of personal perception rather than an absolute truth.
Humans never NEEDED any technology - be it agricultural production methods, industrial innovations, phones, computers, or internet. We don’t NEED fixing or enhancement - such a suggesting is a subjective opinion.
For there to be an argument validating the belief for a need of “fixing” or “enhancement,” a context must be first set to define what “problems” exist. Then, one could say a “fix” was “needed” - however, it is to be noted that the “need” is a “need”only with that context, if there is a determined outcome required. It’s only a “need” if one is attached to a particular outcome and is not flexible to any other outcomes.
We don’t “need” Steemit. We don’t need cars. We don’t need houses, cities, or anything. Fuck, we don’t even “need” food, clothing, and shelter. We could wander about in the wild and get eaten by fucking lions. And that’s all ok. These things only become “needs” when we get fixated into a belief of a necessary outcome.
As such, human potential is simply a matter of authorship - what each individual chooses to create of him/herself.
The way we use technology has already upgraded human potential in ways beyond description. Further use of technology - while external as faster smartphones, or internal & integrative with external technology - may simply be means available for an individual to explore and further develop their human potential - not needed, not as a means of fixing or enhancing anything, but just as a vehicle to take the person to a new destination/experience of his/her choice.
again, I respectfully disagree - for the reason that humans DO have limited potential. the acceptance of such is not a “self-limiting / self-crippling” suggestion - but an empowering respect for natural limitations and alignment with natural law. No crippled midget will ever become an all-star basketball player. That’s not pessimism, a limiting belief, or crippling suggestion - its a fact. This IS an extreme example. But it proves the point: human potential is NOT limitless, like the motivational gurus like to preach. Limits are not evil. Sometimes limits are required to contain the expenditure of resources within boundaries. And there’s ALOT more power in acknowledging inherent limitations rather than deluding oneself they don’t exist. A whole other topic on its own...
input interface, yes. doesn't need to be integrated into biology, yes - the exception would be a BRAINWAVE-BASED INTERFACE. a UI taking speech commands would be archaic in comparison, like Atari versus virtual reality games that are still 20 years aways...
Technology could be developed that detects brainwaves without invasive ways, thus rendering these aids as external - instead of internal.
yes.
keep an eye out for @core when he gets online. he's been working on something like this, a whole different level...
There's no such thing as a soul. Google "the problem of interaction".
The name ("soul") is kind of irrelevant - it's just a symbol. I could say the "player" (=soul) and the "avatar" (=body) in a "virtual reality" analogy where this world is simply one layer of reality controlled by another.
I'm upvoting and replying, so this will become a bookmark for me to seriously comment on this at some future date. I've been involved with cryonics, life extension, anarchism and transhumanism since the late seventies. Unfortunately, many transhumanists are statists, but their philosophy is not popular among the elite. Almost everyone, including elite psychopaths, have come to terms with aging and death. Cryonics is super rational and incredibly unpopular, even though it is not really expensive.
Anyway -- placeholder here for a more serious post on this in the future.
Remind me to tell the story of Robert Enzmann of Project Orion, and his autogenetic cycling plus neocortical brain patch implants method.
cool. I'm really looking forward to some of your writing as you share more of your experience & knowledge in these fields.
also, keep an eye out for when @core comes online and starts posting. you will definitely be interested in what he has to offer. ;-)
Transhumanism is happening, and sooner than we might think. Ray Kurzweil's timeline is optimistic, but possible. We have to take it carefully, but frankly, it can only be great for humans. We lose so much time, energy, focus, creativity and compassion through negative emotions such as fear and anger. These emotions were very useful for our ancestor species surviving in the jungles, but they are just unnecessary baggage today.
That's what I think this is truly about - enabling humanity to achieve its true potential.
Awesome Twitter list by the way!
I upvoted as I really enjoyed your outburst. But I can see that the transhumanism concept is scaring the shit out of many people. But the problem they face is that most of them use technology without even understanding it - and technology moves with exponential growth. So the question is can anybody or anything even prevent the singularity from happening? None of us probably knows the ultimate plan if there really is one objectively - so all we can do is enjoy the ride as much as we can. The ride is a very subjective and special experience ;-)
There are people who are super fast readers who can read and assimilate information very quick. That is possible without technology. All it takes is practice and hard work.
There can be a technology where one can speak short phrases and software creates human readable content out of it. That seems very much possible.
That can speed up the process of consuming and sharing of information.
Transhumanism sound fascinating too. Just that humans currently differ from one another at the level of intelligence. The Transhumanism will give humans power. Still how that is used will make someone a success or a loser.
Just like in the movie Limitless. There were few who had access to the drug. Only the protagonist was able to utilize it to his advantage.
Thanks for this post. Now that is one more thing to look into. Such a promising future.
Yes - such advancements are possible without technology, though still have limitations. For such technological advancements to be utilized constructively would most likely require such internal development of natural intelligence, first - in order to develop the wisdom to effectively manage the power such external technologies would enable.
Both Limitless & Lucy - AMAZING movies. not entirely fiction. Both present a fairly accurate representation of what may be possible with the development of the brain. and anyone who's done psychedelics may be familiar with these states. (there's probably good reason the movie was called "Lucy.") though even the psychedelic experiences aren't just because of the drugs themselves - the compounds are just a high-energy fuel source to activate increased brain processing power, unveiling the potential of human consciousness. such states ARE possible without external substances - the brain produces DMT naturally, and if one knows how, DMT can be produced intentionally in higher-than-normal doses.
very exciting times and things ahead, with such developments in all these fields...
Agreed. Today's magical dream is tomorrow's scientific achievement. Here's to the exciting future.
I have a couple objections to that and can see a couple problems.
First, even the most powerful chip set can't substitute for the work that the brain is doing, at its natural pace - that is, creating new content that is unique to you. That only you can dream up. Otherwise, the chip set is only converting data into words, like this sports writing bot. The only color commentary is preloaded by its human programmers. So you wouldn't actually be learning.
Second, unless you loaded your entire mind into the chipset, you'd fail to make new connections and deductions based on experience, which your brain helpfully throws up when exposed to new, but connected, information. You couldn't say, wow, that Tarzan movie really is deceptive, it makes it look like the natives banished the Belgians from the Congo, when in reality I know from King Leopold's Ghost that the horror and suffering went on for decades. And, I'm able to draw on all the other examples of imperial colonialism to contrast and compare.
What I'm getting at is the difference between information and knowledge. If you're still going to use the brain to come up with solutions, you have to respect the pace it works at.
Finally...there's so much pleasure to be had in reading, allowing knowledge to dawn on you organically (literally in this case). And some of that pleasure is difficulty. It should be hard for me to understand HTF Steemit manages to really truly pay all these $ out of nowhere, because of how rewarding it is to the brain to solve it.
Take away that reward system, and the brain atrophies, and all the knowledge in the world won't wake it up.
thanks for the contribution to the discussion. I've spoken to some of these points in a few of the other comment replies I've just been making - though the main emphasis I hope comes through them (which perhaps was underemphasized in the story itself):
natural, internal development would be required FIRST for any of these technologies to be effective. a person would need to achieve a certain level of internal development, acquiring a degree of wisdom and innate mental capacities/skill, before the external technology would be of any value.
compare it to a fresh computer with no programs on it - but a processing capability without limits.
on its own, the computer won't do ANYTHING.
the outcome is entirely dependent upon the programmer.
if someone's inherent coding skills are basic, the output of the computer will be basic.
if someone's an EXPERT, master programmer, they could create some AMAZING output.
the development of that knowledge & skills is part information that could potentially be uploaded, but for alot of that development, there is no magic-pill, quick-fix, or shortcut.
I view such technological potentials as discussed as that limitless-power-computer. for a master programmer - a dream come true. but to a complete newbie, essentially useless.
there'd need to be prerequisite development of consciousness and wisdom that couldn't be substituted with any technology - the organic development of specific neural pathways and activation of certain genetic codes - prior to the technology's potential to be activated. the tech could upload info, but it'd be the organic infrastructure that'd convert that information into knowledge and integrate it into the person's neural network, from which its interconnection would culminate in wisdom...
Do you has happened any time that think more quickly of which you speak? to my happens to me constantly. I do not think at any time... Sometimes I would like to be able to disconnect but seems something impossible. He made of unite our minds with the technology not think that would be a mistake? How many people in the world would be able to process the information. Recognize that not have investigated in relation to this issue, and perhaps it make more forward but if not remember wrong, use only the 10 or the 20% of our brain. This science will help open the doors to the rest of the sections of our brains? No one could steal or worse... steal information? Then we would just be an empty hard disk. The truth is that this post gives to think... The elite of mankind has always proposed control body of the human being, imagine if also you could control our minds... Although I really am which believe that they already control our minds and we live in the cavern described by Plato. We are locked, subject and repressed in a prison and we must free our minds, but I don't know if this would be the right solution. My apology by write so poorly in English, but both to read a post as to write a comment, always need of a translator
Kirtash, thanks for your input. yes, your English is a bit broken and difficult to follow along with, though I get most of what you're saying.
just a quick tip to help your future posts/comments become more easily readable: split into multiple paragraphs, rather than just one big one. you have many ideas within your comment, and its difficult to separate - whereas it'd be much easier for people to translate if you split into maybe 5-7 distinct/separate chunks, separating each with spacing.
It will also make it easier for people to respond to each of the different questions/points.
the main reply I have to your questions, that stands out the most: the 10% brain figure is inaccurate, and creates misunderstanding. what percentage of your CPU power does your computer use?* there is no set answer. it depends on what/how many programs are being run at a single time, and what each program does.
there is no 100% brain power as people have thought. there can be no absolute peak potential, because of neuroplasticity. we are constantly growing new neural networks. with intentional development, the neural networks (architecture) of the brain can keep being expanded near indefinitely. processing power can always be upgraded.
science is still in its infancy when it comes to understanding this.
this topic is worth volumes in itself.
but if you are interested in it, keep an eye out for when @core starts posting on here. I promise you - the stuff he will be sharing is light-years ahead of anything you'll come across in the mainstream neuroscience community, completely leading-edge - and he's got some amazing technologies and techniques that allow a person to mastery their own development and achieve this type of brain development, exponentially increasing brain processing power WAY beyond the norm.
do keep practicing your English and writing skills. I think you will have some valuable insights to contribute to the community... :-)