Is it a
coincidence that right after we develop
nuclear weapons, we enter the
Information Age? Along come
weapons of mass destruction, and we immediately enter the age of
mass communication and
mass storage.
The problem with
Darwinian evolution is its lack of efficiency. It can take thousands of
generations for a useful
trait to appear,
thousands of
years for the new species to
dominate, and thousands of years for the
gene to spread. It's a very
slow process.
Ten thousand years ago, a
virus appeared that made
genetic evolution completely irrelevant. The virus can
reproduce at an amazing rate. It continues to grow a
million fold each generation. Very soon, it could even extinguish all
human life.
The virus, is
knowledge. Why is it that we hold in high esteem
geniuses? It is the optimum survival conditions for the virus. The Information age came after nuclear weapons because there was a
threat to its future
survival. Like the
bacteria in your stomach, the virus reproduces massively when it feels there's danger. However, when the bacteria multiplies at such a massive rate, it kills its
host. The virus is no different...
The virus is very communicable. It passes easily from human to human, from human to
computer, from computer back to human. The computer is simply a storage center for the virus. The computer, expanding the powers of the
human brain, now has the perfect place to thrive. However, the virus has
built a better host for itself. Computers will soon be able to build
robots, and improved versions of themselves (or rather, the virus will). This
post-genetic evolution will surpass normal evolution a trillion fold, on a scale even more massive than when the virus was first
introduced.
It is the
computers that threaten
humanity now. The virus has a new host, a host we made with out own hands. In the end, it is we humans who will build the
machines that will be our undoing.
Thanks to Eric L. Harry for Society of the Mind, the book that inspired me to write a node on this idea.