Why We Could All Use a Heavy Dose of Techno-Skepticism
May 15th, 2010Via: Technofascism Blog:
A new prophet, Jason Silva, joins the ranks of Ray Kurzweil as evangelist for the emerging Singularity techno-religion.
In his new film, “Turning Into Gods”, Mr. Silva promotes the central tenet of this new cult: that all of us will one day become all-powerful deities, that will play with genes and atoms like circus clowns juggling balls. And, it is only our old-fashioned, superstitious notion of what it means to be human, that is holding us back from an eternal techno-utopia; in which, we will finally assume our pre-ordained role as a Divine Programmer.
Sound ludicrous? Well, Mr. Silva is definitely not alone with his unsettling hopes for the future. If you’re not familiar with the relatively new Singularity religion, you might also want to take a gander at Kurzweil’s “Age of Spiritual Machines” or Eric Drexler’s “Engines of Creation.” In those books, the authors not only spell out a vision of the future that would make any sane person’s hair stand on end; they believe a future spent locked into a virtual-reality vault is our inevitable destiny.
The thing is we could already be in a virtual vault. We do not currently posses the capabilities to detect this.
This whole show could be the realtime production of a hyperdimensional AI.
I found a copy of ‘Spyware’, by R. J. Pineiro, in the lobby of the senior center I live in. From the praise blurbs found inside (ex: “Move over Tom Clancy, there is a new kid on the block.” -Library Journal) I gathered it was contemporary military fiction.
It turned out to be a story about an AI that TPTB were neurologically wired into. Oops, it began to think for itself and decided humans suck and needed to be deleted and so took over it’s human hosts. The intrepid hero of the book saved us all of course.
So, was it science fiction? Nope, purely contemporary miltary fiction, albeit up to the nanosecond. Move over Tom Clancy, indeed.
Apparently, science fiction as a genre has run it’s course with all speculations come now to be possible.
The singularity approacheth ever faster, it seems.
The alleged downloading of the mind into a supposedly immortal machine reminds me of Philip K. Dick’s Lies, Inc. scenario where people teleport to another planet only to be enslaved in a police state; meanwhile, fake propaganda is broadcast back to Earth to encourage more people to emigrate.
A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet
(That’s assuming one can set up the interface/neural manipulation in such a way subjects don’t experience the ‘Gollum-like’ presence one person’s reported to have perceived.)
R. J. Pineiro works for Advanced Micro Devices, I should have added. (‘a worldwide leader in the develoment of nanotechnology’ it says on his inside back cover.)
My lazy use of the word ‘neurologically’ sidestepped the whole nanotech aspect of the interface his fiction hinged upon. Researching AMD’s supposed nano leadership did not quickly reward me with anything regarding AMD nanotech itself, but I did find this page pertinent and interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_Institute_for_Nanotechnology
Particularly the ‘Nano-bio Projects’ section.