Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human

by Joel Garreau

  “the rush of technological innovation . . . can finally slow”: Ibid, page 198.

  what used to be known as “vitalism”: Michael Denton, “Organism and Machine: The Flawed Analogy” in Joy W. Edwards, ed., Are We Spiritual Machines? (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2002), page 79.

  His larger goal is to create: Emma Young, “Venter Gets Go-ahead to Build Lifeform,” NewScientist.com news service, November 21, 2002. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993094

  consciousness created by the effects of quantum physics: See, for example, Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). ISBN: 0-198-53978-9.

  John Searle is such a critic: John Searle, “I Married a Computer,” in Edwards, ed., Are We Spiritual Machines?, pages 56–76.

  Indeed, they will be “spiritual”: Ibid., page 71.

  “They have to do a lot more”: Personal communication, September 17, 2003.

  Kurzweil believes that: Ellen Ullman, “Engineering as a Quantum Act: Mistaking the Pointing Finger for the Moon,” presented at “Pop!Tech 2000: Being Human in the Digital Age,” October 27, 2000.

  writes Ellen Ullman, author of: Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents (San Francisco: City Lights Books, November 1997). ISBN: 0872863328; The Bug (New York: Nan A. Talese, 2003). ISBN: 0385508603.

  “Poetry is what gets lost”: http://www.quoteland.com/author.asp?AUTHOR_ID=127

  Then there is Steven Pinker of Harvard: At the time of this presentation, Pinker was still with his former employer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  genetic enhancement . . . is not particularly likely: Steven Pinker, “Why Genetic Enhancement Is Too Unlikely to Worry About,” Boston Globe, June 1, 2003, page D1. This article is very similar to the paper he presented at Boston University. http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/globe_better_babies.html

  A more sophisticated analysis: In Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us (New York: Pantheon, 2002). ISBN: 0-375-42079-7, page 206, Rodney Brooks delivers a report on this immortality prediction phenomenon, a slightly condensed version of which is: “In 1993 I attended a conference where Pattie Maes gave a talk entitled ‘Why Immortality Is a Dead Idea.’ She took as many people as she could find who had publicly predicted downloading of consciousness into silicon, and plotted the dates of their predictions, along with when they themselves would turn seventy years old. Not too surprisingly, the years matched up for each of them. Three score and ten years from their individual births, technology would be ripe for them to download their consciousnesses into a computer. Just in the nick of time! They were each, in their own minds, going to be remarkably lucky, to be in just the right place at the right time.” I am indebted to Geoff Cohen, Center for Business Innovation, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, for drawing this to my attention.

  “A traditional utopia is a good society”: Joy interview, May 5–6, 2003.

  Dyson has written many: “Freeman Dyson,” The Third Culture. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/dysonf.html Also, “Freeman Dyson,” The George Garnow Memorial Lecture Series, University of Colorado at Boulder. http://spot.colorado.edu/~gamow/george/1991bio1.html

  He replied to Joy’s provocative article: Freeman J. Dyson, “The Future Needs Us!” New York Review of Books, February 13, 2003. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16053

  On 9/11, the fourth airplane never made it: See, for example, Sheldon Pacotti, “Are We Doomed Yet?” Salon.com, March 31, 2003. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/31/knowledge/print.html

  An even more hopeful argument: John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, “A Response to Bill Joy and the Doom-and-Gloom Technofuturists,” The Industry Standard, April 13, 2000, reprinted in The American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science and Technology Yearbook, 2001. http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/ch4.pdf

  They wrote a very wise book: John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000). ISBN: 0-87584-762-5.

  he can’t see any other forces: Brown and Duguid, “A Response to Bill Joy,” page 78.

  “Technological and social systems shape each other”: Ibid., page 79.

  “social systems . . . shape, moderate and redirect the raw power of technologies”: Ibid.

  nanotechnology . . . almost wholly on the drawing board: Ibid.

  an immune system could co-evolve: Ray Kurzweil, “Promise and Peril of the 21st Century,” CIO Magazine, fall/winter 2003. http://www.cio.com/archive/092203/kurzweil.html

  “The thing that handicaps robots most is their lack of a social existence”: Brown and Duguid, “A Response to Bill Joy,” page 81.

  “We must shore up the foundations of civilization”: William H. Calvin, “‘Phi Beta Kappa Book Prize for Science’ acceptance speech,” Washington, DC, December 6, 2002. http://williamcalvin.com/2002/PBK.htm See also A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). ISBN: 0226092011

  Whenever Joy and I: Joy interview, May 5–6, 2003.

  Chapter Six PREVAIL

  “I decline to accept”: William Faulkner officially earned the Nobel Prize in literature for the year 1949, but he did not receive it until the following year, because the Nobel Prize committee could not reach a consensus in 1949. Hence, two Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1950, for each year. The speech Faulkner delivered was not intelligible to his listeners, both because of his southern accent and because his mouth was too far from the microphone. When it was printed in newspapers the following day, however, it was immediately hailed as one of the more significant addresses ever delivered at a Nobel ceremony. The text here is reprinted from William Faulkner, Essays, Speeches, and Public Letters, ed. James B. Meriwether, 2nd edition, (New York: Modern Library, 2004). ISBN: 081297137X. I am indebted to the author Bruce Sterling for reminding me of Faulkner’s words, and for appending the following observation about Faulkner’s breathtaking line, “when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.” Sterling notes: “You know, the most interesting part about that speech is that part right there, where William Faulkner, of all people, is alluding to H. G. Wells and the last journey of the Traveler from The Time Machine. It’s kind of a completely heartfelt, probably drunk mishmash of cornball crypto-religious literary humanism and the stark, bonkers, apocalyptic notions of atomic Armageddon, human extinction, and deep Darwinian geological time. Man, that was the 20th century all over.” Personal communication, March 5, 2004.

  In New Mexico, El Camino Real: Christine Preston, et al., The Royal Road: El Camino Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998). ISBN: 082631936X.

  But the boundaries move a lot: “History of Mesilla,” ¡Viva Mesilla! http://www.oldmesilla.org/html/history_of_mesilla.html See also: Ellen Dornan, “Discovering the New World,” American Frontiers: A Public Lands Journey. http://www.americanfrontiers.net/history “Mesilla,” El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail. http://elcaminoreal.org Bill Kelly, “La Mesilla, New Mexico—The Last 100 Years,” SouthernNewMexico.com, 2003. http://www.southernnewmexico.com/Articles/Southwest/Dona_Ana/LaMesilla/LaMesillaNewMexico-thelas.html

  Billy the Kid: Marcelle Brothers, “About Billy the Kid,” BillytheKid.com, 2004. http://www.aboutbillythekid.com/ See also “‘Outlaw’ William Henry McCarty,” The Rockin Cherokee Ranch. http://www.rockincherokee.com/Billy.htm Also, “Billy the Kid Legend,” NMIA.com. http://www.nmia.com/~btkog/billy_the_kid.htm There you can experience the impressive audio of a Winchester lever-action rifle—like the one Billy the Kid is holding in the celebrated tintype for which he posed—being cocked every time you change the page.

  Mesilla has seen little change: Kelly, “La Mesilla.”

  Learned jou
rnals have published: Lanier interview, May 9–11, 2003.

  “virtual reality” as a shared experience: Virtual reality head mounts for a single user were first developed by Ivan Sutherland.

  made the cover of Scientific American: Lawrence G. Tesler, “Programming Languages: They offer a great diversity of ways to specify a computation. A language transforms the computer into a ‘virtual machine’ whose features and capabilities are determined by the software,” Scientific American, September 1984, pages 70–78. Cited in Oliver Burkeman, “The Virtual Visionary,” The Guardian, December 29, 2001. http://education.guardian.co.uk/academicexperts/story/0,1392,625423,00.html

  It aimed to create alternative worlds: “Brief Biography of Jaron Lanier,” The Well. http://www.well.com/user/jaron/general.html See also “National Tele-Immersion Initiative.” http://www.advanced.org/tele-immersion See also Jaron Lanier, “Phenotropics, or Prospects for Protocol-adverse Computing,” The International Computer Science Institute, 2003. http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/talks/Lanier.html

  Virtual reality “represents a kind of new contract between humans and computers”: Howard Rheingold, “Virtual Reality: The Faustian Bargain?” Noetic Sciences Review, autumn 1991, page 17. http://www.noetic.org/Ions/publications/review_archives/19/issue19_17.html Quoted in Burkeman, “The Virtual Visionary.”

  “It was a constant struggle”: Lanier interview, May 9–11, 2003.

  “There were diseases that”: Burkeman, “The Virtual Visionary.”

  his classmates had murdered the child: Lanier interview, May 9–11, 2003.

  He recalls little of man’s first landing on the moon: Lanier, personal communication, March 20, 2004.

  “my father made some disastrous financial decisions”: Lanier interview, May 9–11, 2003.

  The White Sands Missile Range: Keith Gaudet, “The Cultural History of Los Alamos and Nuclear Matters,” Atomic America: Technology, Representative and Culture in the 20th Century, University of New Mexico. http://www.unm.edu/~abqteach/atomicamerica/00-01-01.htm

  “an inconspicuous movement”: Jon Katz, Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho (New York: Broadway, 2001). ISBN: 0767906993. Cited by Burkeman, “The Virtual Visionary.” Excerpt: “Post-Nerds, Part I: The Geek Ascension,” July 1, 1997, HotWired.com. http://hotwired.wired.com/synapse/katz/97/26/katz1a_text.html

  “an avant-garde seismic engineer”: Lanier interview, May 9–11, 2003.

  a postage stamp honoring him: Burkeman, “The Virtual Visionary.”

  “the connection I lost”: Ibid.

  “It’s such a gizmo outcome”: Lanier interview, May 9–11, 2003.

  “The universe doesn’t provide”: Ibid.

  in 1986 published a book: James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games (New York: Ballantine Books, 1987). ISBN: 0345341848.

  They are serious and determined about getting that outcome: Flemming Funch, “Finite and Infinite Games,” World Transformation. http://www.worldtrans.org/pos/infinitegames.html

  “Life, liberty, and the pursuit”: Lanier interview, May 9–11, 2003.

  If you treat a computer like a person: Peter Leyden, “Around the World of Ideas: A GBN Interview with Jaron Lanier,” Global Business Network, September 2001, page 26. http://www.gbn.com/public/gbnstory/downloads/gbn_world_ideas.pdf

  We model ourselves after our technologies: “What Keeps Jaron Lanier Awake at Night: Artificial Intelligence, Cybernetic Totalism, and the Loss of Common Sense,” interview with Alex Steffen, Whole Earth magazine, spring 2003. http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/111-5.pdf

  “It shuts down the game”: Lanier interview, May 9–11, 2003.

  Will a bot ever get to know you: I am indebted to Adrienne Cook Garreau for providing this example of her experience with Royal Thai Tailors and Cleaners of New Baltimore, VA.

  “slow suicide through nerdification”: Lanier interview, May 9–11, 2003.

  “the religion of the elite technologists”: Jaron Lanier, “One Half of a Manifesto,” Edge.org, no. 74, September 25, 2000. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier/lanier_index.html Also published in Wired, December 2000. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.12/lanier_pr.html

  “computers are becoming . . . a successor species”: Lanier interview, May 9–11, 2003.

  You’re making this up: Lanier is not making this up. See, for example, Roger T. Hanlon and John B. Messenger, Cephalopod Behaviour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). ISBN: 0521645832. See also Eric Scigliano, “Through the Eye of an Octopus: An Exploration of the Brainpower of a Lowly Mollusk,” photography by Jennifer Tzar, Discover, October 10, 2003. http://www.discover.com/issues/oct-03/features/feateye Roland Anderson and Jennifer Mather, “Octopuses Are Smart Suckers.” http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/smarts.html James Wood’s Cephalopod site has scientific articles, a wealth of information about different species, and excellent FAQ pages. http://www.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP For more hard-core cephaloscience, go to CephBase. http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu

  “nation of shopkeepers”: “England is a nation of shopkeepers,” Napoleon, Napoleonic Guide. http://www.napoleonguide.com/maxim_britain.htm “Let Pitt then boast of his victory to his nation of shopkeepers,” Bertrand Barere before the National Convention, WorldofQuotes.com. http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/England/1 “To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of shopkeepers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers,” Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776), Giga-USA.com. http://www.giga-usa.com/gigaweb1/quotes2/quautsmith1adamx001.htm

  “hero stories . . . have survival value”: Personal communication, March 1, 2004.

  “I might exterminate you”: Jerusalem Bible, Exodus 33:3.

  Six hundred thousand families: Exodus 12:37.

  kvetching and wailing: See, for example, Exodus 16.

  spend forty years: Exodus 16:35.

  “That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing”: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, Authors National Edition, 1884), pages 277–79.

  the ragged human convoy: I am indebted to Mary Luti for this observation. See Mary J. Luti, “Muddling Through (II Kings),” The Christian Century, September 23–30, 1998, page 859. http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=629

  “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing”: Quotations Database. http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/2313

  Genghis Kahn’s Mongols killed nearly as many people as did all of World War II: See, for example, Colin Mcevedy and Richard Jones, Atlas of World Population History (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, 1978). ASIN: 0713910313.

  streets . . . “greasy with the fat of the slain”: The words of an eyewitness with a talent for detail cited in Felipe Fernández-Armesto, “Steppes Towards the Future,” The Independent, March 12, 2004. http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/story.jsp?story=500264

  a third ramp exists . . . of increased connection between people: See, for example, “The Evolution of Everyday Life: Cooperation has brought the human race a long way in a staggeringly short time,” The Economist, August 12, 2004. http://www.economist.com/finance/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=3084745

  “I’m serious about that”: Personal communication, March 4, 2004.

  “buy a telephone for less than $10 and you expect it to work”: Joab Jackson, “DARPA Takes Aim at IT Sacred Cows,” Government Computer News, March 11, 2004. http://www.gcn.com/cgi-bin/udt/im.display.printable?client.id=gcndaily2&story.id=25240

  “planet of the help desks”: Lanier, “One Half of a Manifesto.”

  In 1950, in the article: Waldemar Kaempffert, “Miracles You’ll See in the Next 50 Years,” Popular Mechanics, February 1950, page 112.