blah blah blah...
...
Well, I see it unfolding much differently than this, of course. And to me the major future player in all areas of our lives will be non-human AGI. The rise of AGI and demotion of the human species from smartest being to second smartest being shall change everything about everything. The human species as we know it today I don't think will even exist for too many more generations. We'll morphing into beings that are increasingly machine-enhanced and durable for exploration into near infinite cosmos.
The sooner the better, as far as I'm concerned.
If we're morphing into "increasingly machine-enhanced durable beings", why bother solving a purely biological problem of aging? Why not step over it and go straight to the 'merging with the machines' phase?
Don't get me wrong, I like scifi, even though, as an ex-"IT professional" I do not share your enthusiasm for an AGI, which, you hope, will come and solve all our problems (garbage in garbage out). I'm pretty sure though about my somewhat dystopian vision of the future. The prerequisite conditions are already in place (precedents, cultural expectations, even legislation). And even from the point of view of a composition, that's how the history of humanity should progress (you know, the finale should echo earlier developments like, for example, in Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu -- nice!)
In fact, I'm starting to think that's how things have always been. We have already merged with technology. Many times over. It's easy to see, once you realize that that there is no chance in hell that life has emerged as a result of some random fluctuations. The more I study biology the less doubts remain that life was created -- quite a development for a born and raised atheist, no? From this it's not difficult to imagine that perhaps the rest of the world was created too, as the necessary prerequisite stage for life. And if so, then we do live in a simulation, no?
More than that, recently we have created a simulation of our own, though it is still young. It is the Internet, of course. It is a brand new world, with its own space and its own 'physical laws'. It is already populated with life-like, though still primitive, entities. Wait till it grows, imagine how enormous it will be in just a hundred years! In a thousand? And think about it, from its very conception, it has never been turned off -- you can't turn it off. It is alive -- alive not as a life form, but as a world, as a universe. And it will continue to grow and evolve. And it does not matter that its underlying technology will continue to change and evolve with it. The underlying principle on which it is based has been in place from its very conception and will remain the same forever. It will continue to act as the principle law that governs its organization. Sorta its main physical law.
And so this world is already alive and, chances are, it will outlive humanity. If not, we, the humans of the future, will download ourselves into it, in our perpetual pursuit of new experiences. Hey we already spend most of our time attached to it! lol (not to mention the games! oh don't get me started).
And yeah, why not, one day it will be possible for us to 'upload' ourselves into this world. In the process we will realize, or remember rather, that that's how it had always been: We create a world, perhaps without realizing it at first. And then we populate it, first with props and virtual beings, then joining in ourselves. Expanding, growing, enhancing. Before you know it, yet another immense, diverse, fascinated world is created -- and discovered in the process of creation. Evolution of life is a passe idea. That's not what life progression is all about. It's about the evolution of worlds that life creates in order for life to continue.
ah never mind
I got carried away.
Edited by xEva, 13 May 2017 - 09:47 PM.