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Humanity is transforming itself. A philosophical conversation is needed.

Question: How will the artificial intelligence and biotech revolutions lead to a post-human future? Consider the points of view of: Fortran McCyborg—a cyborg designed as advocate for artificial intelligence Nonette Naturski—a naturalistic philosopher and humanist Sophia Naturski—the twelve-year-old daughter of Nonette Becket Geist—a romantic philosopher with leanings toward contemporary science Tonisha Tolliver—a psychologist Wilfrid Abducto—a pragmatist philosopher Their philosophical conversations include topics such as: The human migration to the cyber world The spiritual nature of intelligent machines When a simulation becomes the thing simulated Life’s worth Human obsolescence Unnatural history The role for humans in the post-human era Remaining question: What is your place in these conversations?

loss of the World Participants in order of appearance: Narrator: A witness to the conversation as an historical event. Becket Geist: A romantic philosopher with views tempered by twentieth century science. Fortran McCyborg: A cyborg with leanings toward Scottish philosophy. Fortran was designed to interact with humans especially in discourse. Nonette Naturski: A naturalistic philosopher who conserveshumanist views. Narrator: Humanity has begun to move from the natural world into the cyber world. Three of my friends discussed issues related to this mental migration. First there is Becket Geist, a romantic philoso- pher with views tempered by 20th century science. He opened the discussion with a monologue in which he argued that “loss of the world” in exchange for the cyber world is dark and inevitable. The |3 chief adversary who disputed these opinions is Fortran McCyborg, a cyborg with leanings toward Scottish philosophy. The moderating force separating them is Nonette Naturski— a naturalist philosopher and conservator of humanist ideals and prudent conclusions. In all, I counted eight counter-arguments to Geist’s vision. The arguments and Geist’s replies led to unanticipated changes in position that cascaded to a chilling close. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to a report of the conversation from that time. Not all of us were unwitting victims. Some of us saw what was coming and debated its desirability. One conversation stands out as a frame for the others. To the best my memory serves me, this was exactly as it occurred. We sat in a semi-circle and as usual we expect- ed that Fortran McCyborg would dominate the discussion. Nonette Naturski looked wistful but became sober after glancing at Becket Geist. He had that drawn look which signified that he had too much on his mind. This meant that he would speak at length excitedly and irritate me with his habit of asking questions and allowing no one to answer them. He began his dark account of things to come. Geist: We, that is humanity at large, will lose the world by us, as individuals, not taking an interest in it. Preposterous, you think!? The likelihood of this loss is so low that it is hardly worth consider- ing. After all, we can’t help but take an interest in the world; the necessities of life draw us into it. Our creature-nature requires main- tenance— food, exercise, shelter. Our social needs direct us into interaction with others. Our work life makes us part of organizations. Use of transportation forces us to pay attention within the world of cars, airplanes, and trains. Family life and citizenship keep us tied into the proximate, local, and greater communities. But all of this can change so that we no longer need or even prefer to take an interest in the world. Already in some places this change has taken place. In the present century, it promises to spread like a creeping blight over great swatches of the planet— like plague in a 1950’s science fiction 4 | The human FuTure movie. Is this ominous? (At the top of an emotional spike, he imme- diately continued.) My point is not that things unworldly will come to hold sway through a religious revival prescribing asceticism. No Dali Lama. No Franciscan vision. The forces at work are much more insidious. We will gradually become so structured by habit and so governed by external controls that we will have to exercise deliberative choice to opt for the world. When we relax control or when we attend to other business, the governing powers of habit and environment will resume rule. If this is not bad enough, people will come to prefer following these powers rather than opt for the world. They will deliberately act on that preference against the world; they will take an interest in the world only as dictated by a few greatly marginalized necessities of life. Is there a natural preference for the world? (He quickly said “I” with great force.) I attended a lecture in a large hall. From the back of the room, the speaker appeared quite tiny. To compensate for the effects of distance, a video camera fed the speaker’s image into a rear-screen projector. So, the speaker appeared at two places at the same time— live on the podium and looming large on a screen behind. As I sat near the back of the room, I noticed that my eyes would gravitate toward the im- age on the screen in preference to the live person. The image on the screen was “more magnetic”, had greater presence, and commanded the senses. The countervailing forces of etiquette and ingrained cour- tesy directed me to look at the live person. After all, she was speaking to me! It would be rude to act as if she were not there. So, I would look back at the speaker, only to be drawn to the big screen time after time. For a number of years, I had a black and white television set with a small screen. I watched programs selectively. If nothing was of in- terest, I had plenty of other things to do. Some time later I acquired a good-sized color set. At first I noticed how difficult it was not to be Loss oF The WorLd | 5 drawn to the screen. I mean that my eyes would move to the set as I picked up the image in peripheral vision. It was like a living presence in the room— like a dominant family member— a needy child that continually insists, “Look at me! Look at me!” I found myself watch- ing more and more TV— not watching more programs but more TV. Is this what McLuhan had in mind or did he mean something more esoteric? I thought about it and concluded that among other things, the colors on the set were more brilliant than most colors in my environ- ment. In the rooms of our house, light varies with the time of day, shadows come and go, colors become gray as they recede into darker areas. Color in the man-made or natural environment is usually re- laxed, not intense, washed out, subtle. By contrast, sunlight does not vary the colors of television images. They are uniform and bright. It is similar to looking into a properly adjusted light bulb. Color on the TV is in brilliant blocks, intense, and lacking in subtlety. Color on TV is coarse and loud, but captivating. Only at rare moments does it capture intellectual interest; it readily captures visual interest. It is a visual escape lean on reflective content. Is great reflective content consistent with the medium? (He left no pause.) Consider less passive pieces of technology. Computer games de- mand responses, timely responses. Our internal program comes to resemble a structure reactive to the game. Software is salable because it establishes neural nets in us— bio-ware as part of our brains! (He was pointing to his head.) Consider work done on a computer; elec- tronic workstations replace working in the world with working on screens. As the reports of technological advance roll in (or are they really advertisements?), eventually we will be able to do all of our shopping, banking, and ordering via computer. Interactive T.V. allows advertisers to intrude in personal lives and manipulate customers. We teleconference, and the T.V. phone is not far behind. The home theater is replacing the home entertainment center integrating sound 6 | The human FuTure with visual media packing a wallop. High-density television is a real- ity. At the dual lecture/projection, a high-density image would have made the rear-screen image appear primitive. With a high-density image, the audience’s eyes would have been riveted to the screen— the speaker would never have a chance. Who needs a live speaker anyway? As you know, the inventors of virtual reality took the process two steps further— creating illusions so convincing as to be thoroughly deceptive and providing means for acting on them. Why exercise in a gym or park when you could jog (on a treadmill) along the rim of the Grand Canyon, beside the canals of Venice, or within the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon? Why attend programs of live music or theater? Media presentations enable experiencing the best perfor- mances, at whatever distance or angle we choose, at whatever time we want. CD Rom discs swallow up the entire human achievement in painting, sculpture, theater, and music. We are entering a world where the individual can gain total access to vast bodies of informa- tion. At the same time, are fewer and fewer of us sufficiently educated to use or need them? Nonetheless, the hours in front of a television, terminal, or within a headset will gradually expand through necessity or preference until our major realities will be electronic illusions. And so it will go with loss of the world. Artists, engineers, and programmers will have taken over the sen- sorium. Behind produced sensory objects will be the feverish and confining heat of their intentions. Everything that is there, will be there because they intend for it to be there or at least that will be our suspicion. The theologian who divines nature for God’s intentions can turn to electronic reality to discover human intentions— God is omit- ted unless God’s intent just happens to coincide with some human intent or works through divinely inspiring scriptwriters, engineers, and artists. Loss oF The WorLd | 7 Wilderness as an environment that transcends human intent can be a source for perceptions that newly inform human understanding. It will be superseded by convincing illusions. Someone nursed on the milk of electronic reality will quickly lose patience with the seeming chaos and emptiness of wilderness; where is the point to it, you know, the message? Garcin’s exclamation in No Exit can be extended into, “Hell is other people and their cyber-intentions!”1 Real political power lies in shaping a populace’s preferences without them knowing it. Control of reality, through inducing persons to prefer the medium that provides access to reality, is the first phase of an ultimate form of mind control. The powers that control the me- dia present the greatest potential threat to individual freedom and democratic institutions. Loss of the world will begin selectively with the concentration of technology in the First World. The Have’s in post- industrial nations will have illusions whereas the Have-Nots in the agrarian sector will have the world albeit an increasingly degraded one. Perhaps by the time the revolution reaches the fourth-world, they will need the electronic world as a humane escape from extreme environmental oppression. While it is not too late, knowledge of the technology for dominat- ing reality should be locked up and brought out only for purposes of study. Put the genie back in the bottle! You say, “It is already too late.” Perhaps as Hegel suggested, these ominous thoughts can arise only after the profound fact is established— only after the gravel truck has begun to empty on the ice cream cone. All of this bleak talk may be taken as a sign of my infected spirit. Maybe so, but a person’s attitude is quite beside whether an argument is good. I grant that a measure of healthy skepticism is in order. On the one hand, we don’t want to Pangloss the “loss of the world”— that is, suggest that the best of all possible worlds includes the loss of the world.2 On the other, you may not want to buy uncritically into my dark vision. I see that distant look in some of your eyes. 8 | The human FuTure