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Re: Interesting analogies...

Rich food for thought, Jamie. You could pitch at least a dozen new sci-fi series to the networks based on your last post!

I've often wondered on these issues myself. (I've even written a few of them.) But, we always seem to project a faster evolution into the future than we've ever experienced in the past. It doesn't happen that quickly, methinks. Just as the future depicted in "1984" was way off mark, and the view of life in "2001" was even more off mark, I tend to think the next hundred years will see more subtle changes in humanity unless we manage to trigger the worst of the climatic oscillations that my father spoke of. In that case, I tend to think humanity will have to go "lower-tech" to survive. For example, consider how little the Amish are affected when the power grid goes down, or the oil refineries are destroyed by hurricanes, or a nasty computer virus takes out half the internet... Without power of some sort, machines are dead in the water. Even if they develop ways to fuel themselves, the organization is human-created and without the human aspect of the equation, machines are too limited (even if we manage to organize complex versions) to be stable as "life forms". All of our technological research and development relies on the kind of specialization we are comfortable enough as a species to be able to engage in. But if the rock-bottom basics of life suddenly became an individual matter of survival (shelter, water, food...) and the level of simple comfort or basic hygiene became a luxury, I guarantee that very little technological progress would be achieved at the level required for what you're talking about.

It could be enough to make the planet very unpleasant for humanity, though, for a couple centuries. Our overpopulation problem will be solved; I'm pretty sure of that. I suspect there could very well be a return to small kingdoms or territories and a barter economy. Hopefully we won't lose all of our advances of the past few millennia and I really hope there isn't a widespread return to religious extremism (like the future in "The Handmaid's Tale")! But I'm all for a more intelligent relationship with nature.

Thinking along these lines can be pretty terrifying, but that's partly why Star Trek is so uplifting, in its original concept. The way Roddenberry presented it, humanity did initiate a third world war, over genetic engineering and "eugenics." But those who survived managed to pull themselves out of that tailspin and reorganize humanity as a planetary community, with a coda based on ethics and responsibility as balancing principles for freedom. The original history for Star Trek sadly got changed and warped, over time, especially after Gene Roddenberry died. I was pretty disgusted with the way it became just another shoot-em-up space soap opera. Those changes in philosophy killed all but two of the Next Generation movies and maybe three of the original cast movies, as well as most of Deep Space Nine. I stopped watching halfway through the life of the series that came after that one, and have only seen bits of the newest series. That one is actually a prequel to the first series, or at least is intended that way-- more fiddling with the original history-- I HATE it when they do that! As a fiction writer, I'm a stickler for consistency in a created back-history. Those are the entailments for the story itself-- to change them after the fact is wrong and to change them out of expedience (the producer's desire to crank up the drama of a new "prequel" series) is really, really wrong. Just a personal quirk of mine, I guess.

Judith
Web address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com
BioTheory: An electronic journal of general science based on the Relational (Rosennean) Complexity Paradigm
On Nov 5, 2005, at 11:40 AM, James N Rose wrote:

the tender problem is that no/few human minds are capable
of holding in their instantaeous thinkings -- all the entailments
that a contemplated system embodies. The options and possibility
qualities - let alone specific events/condition/state/relations
(;the information about) - are more than we can linearly/mentally
put together in single moments of consideration.

so we resort to simplified sets of what we -can- deal with,
which turn out to be 'reduced groupings'. a satisfactory
practice till now. sufficient to survive with, by doing.
reductionist thinking.

we're at a bifurcation node in mentality, though

many will continue along the same model path, others will
develop new thoughtways; and the net result wil be a blended
combinant neither projected.

one of the quirky but unavoidable changes will be the nature
of future stories that will deal with the relationship between
humans and machines. Right now all stories on this theme have
machines performing at the speed of human thought, and
depict machine-machine communication happening at the same
paced cadence as human verbal language.

Patently, that is absurd. Future AI systems will blow past
our rate of thinking/communicating and act out their capabilities
at blistering rates humans won't be able to (bio-gnomically
and bio-metabolically) cope with.

I,Robot. AI. these recent fables of human-machine relations,
are pure wishful thinking when it comes to that.


The qualitative difference between the systems - for right
now - is that bio systems methodically opted (through the
technique of improvement called 'evolution') not for speed
of processing, but for exploration of co-integration
possibilities. Our neural-net core is a messy, but eventually
consistant run, of pattern trials; configurations; that
hyperconnect dendrites with axons. Way past our (current)
ability to (linearly) pre-design 3D spatial connections
of logic circuits - wherein "our" instructions of -what-
to 'think' are placed.

Neural net research is simply us trying to copy nature,
and segue from our plodding system of logic relations
into cantorian/quantum transfinite information-connection
organizations. We are trying to replicate the achievement
of natural systems to see if it missed something, that we
can capitalize on before nature itself does without us.

:-)

My opinion is that - given time - nature will gain back
its native advantage, even if we gain a temporary front
runner position. Our current neuro-form may be state-of-
the-art for now, but our biology harbors bigger and more
capable brain components in its potential for the future.

It's spent millions of years slowly inventing/emerging/testing
specific neural organelle parts (cortex, cerebrum, cerebellum).
Who's to say the i/e/t process is finished?? De-restrict brain
case formation at certain critical stages of in-womb development
and who knows?, a new struction may have the space the test
organizing into. Maybe infusion of a new metabolite at that
juncture will be the key, and the new species we become will
rise from that coming combinant of conditions/opportunities.

And we will yet maintain an advantage over the 'artificials'.

The main advantage we have right now is not any aspect of
superior 'wisdom', but the reality that we are integrated
from the beginning and totally, with the energy acquisition
cycles of being and Life. Machines aren't. They don't
self-assemble from the nature of the material(s) they're
contrived of. "Life" does, because it is.

If some clever person ever comes up with -that- component
and capability for artificed systems, well, -that's- the
time for organics to watch out for themselves.

I fear that the tinkering has already well begun unfortunately.

The spate of viruses incompatible with current living tissue
are the precursers to whole-competent entities capable of
inventing for themselves a whole new ecology.

In the transmillenial scope and scheme of things, 'our kind'
- aerobic organisms - replaced the rich biota of anaerobic
lifeforms on this planet. They past away like so much
powdered de-constituted dust. Aerobics may have the same
fate, inspite of our arrogance and self-storied importance.

The future may belong to a whole new ecology of 'life-forms'
- foundationed in the combinant of new-viral adapters meshed
with nano-bots and new neural-nets.

Self assembly, replication, reparation, adaptation, energy
acquisitioning ... what more could a lowly lifeform ask for
in its (desire) to survive and prevail??! :-)


hmmm I wonder what literature and art its going to eventually create?
Do you think they'll have different takes on philosophy and the nature
of being. Will they appreciate us as their 'australopithecines',
or more like their 'trilobites'? :-) hmmmm I wonder.


I wonder where they will take their vacations.


:-)


Jamie