Ideas about humanity’s fate are evolving

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Shirley, Grain Valley, Mo.:
Well, this isn't my own idea, but I like it. It's based on a book I just re-read — "Darwin's Radio," by Greg Bear. In this book, big jumps are made in our evolution in one generation. The change is motivated by our own genes in response to our environment (That's one theory in the book.) ...

Richard Sempsrott, Boise, Idaho:
Although his work has been set aside for many of years as being outside the box, the theories of the late Timothy Leary in "Musings on Human Metamorphosis" and "Chaos and Cyber Culture" address this issue with clarity and evidence worth opening your mind to. These theories from the late '80s and early '90s present themselves with compelling implications of today's world. Leary proposes that space migration is an inevitable evolutionary destiny, and that we possess circuits of neurons meant to be activated for high altitude and cybernetic ecological niches. In the near future, with the new spike of space fever called the space race, and Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace, etc., fully dedicated to creating cheap orbital real estate, the first zero-G birth doesn't seem so far off. Leary also argues that the genetic process has designed us to manipulate it for three reasons indicated in his saying "SMILE" — space migration, intelligence increase, and life extension. ...

Marcus Schaefer, New Haven, Conn.:
It's my opinion that no one of the scenarios will occur, but rather a combination. The best example of my view of the path that future human evolution is likely to take is Bruce Sterling's book "Schismatrix," where the engineered evolutionary paths of population groups diverge and converge due to social and philosophical pressures/identities. Basically, evolutionary variation will be driven by social/cultural isolation and/or divergence, not geographical isolation.

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Robert Norsworthy, Houston:
I would have liked to see you incorporate [Ray] Kurzweil's notions about the Singularity, some of which you hinted at ... although you had a lot of ground to cover, and did so well I thought. I think Kurzweil would argue that humans will want to augment themselves with machines and will do so at every opportunity, using both machine and genetic augmentation, until such time as there is a new "hardware" platform that doesn't fail, i.e., doesn't die. At that point, there may be some humans that "stay behind" — like the Amish — but the vast majority will move ahead, ultimately becoming some as yet unpredicted (to my knowledge) combination of genetic machine. Kurzweil's view is that we will become a machine in an evolutionary way such that we will not view the machines as "other." It will be ourselves. We will not give birth to a race of machines and just watch and hope, that's just naive.

Pivorak:
The Ringworld series by Larry Niven investigates the divergence of a proto-human spacefaring race. On the Ringworld, "breeders" evolve to fill many ecological niches.

Michael O'Hara, Redmond, Wash.:
What may happen is that as humans spread to other worlds, human subspecies for each world will develop. This will occur both through evolution and a bit of genetic engineering. For instance, Martians will have lightweight frames and powerful lungs, to adapt to lower gravity and weaker atmospheres. E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman books touched on this idea. The humans that settled on the world of Valeria — which has triple Earth's gravity — became incredibly muscular. When advances in body armor made projectile weapons less effective, axes were reintroduced into warfare. Valerian space-axemen were the most feared soldiers in the galaxy. Terraforming might weaken many of these changes, but each world will have different levels of gravity.

Yonah Berwaldt, Palo Alto, Calif.:
The previously outlined scenarios of the future make the same mistake: they presuppose a linear (or mild exponential) growth of intelligent technology. None of them outline the simple observation that intelligent machines can create still more intelligent machines ad infinitum. Vernor Vinge's conception of the technological singularity seems more plausible than any scenario advanced in the aforementioned discussion.

Let us note that humans are not just genius chimpanzees that created agriculture and industry to grow bananas. The difference between a human and a post-human, or a true general all-purpose artificial intelligence, will be of at least this magnitude. A chimpanzee attempting to fathom a human is like a human attempting to understand a post-human or a truly self-recursive AI. ...

Vinge's seminal analysis helps assign validity to various futurist scenarios. Unsurprisingly, the Technological Singularity as envisioned by Vernor Vinge and other futurist thinkers, such as Max More, Nick Bostrom, and Eliezer Yudkowsky, garners more support than the standard futurist model. I recommend consulting their treatises and their Web sites for more information.

CONTINUED : Perspectives from around the globe

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