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

by Joel Garreau

  “There could be herds of almost posthumans”: Bostrom interview, June 28, 2003.

  “The goal is peaceful coexistence”: Panel discussion at “The Future of Human Nature: A Symposium on the Promises and Challenges of the Revolutions in Genomics and Computer Science.”

  “societies not trying to . . . prevent each other from reproducing”: Hughes in a presentation at The Adaptable Human Body: Transhumanism and Bioethics in the 21st Century Conference, June 27–29, 2003, Yale University.

  “actually get a decrease in inequality”: Bostrom interview, June 28, 2003.

  “Man is a rope, tied between beast and Overman”: Zarathustra, page 126, cited in Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, What Nietzsche Really Said (New York: Shocken Books, 2000). ISBN: 0-805-24157-4, page 20.

  aim at becoming such an admirable posthuman: Solomon and Higgins, What Nietzsche Really Said, pages 47, 215.

  the five clear and haunting: Listen to the theme music at, for example, http://www.crystalinks.com/2001z.html

  flexibility in timing motherhood: Rick Weiss, “Procedure Could Revitalize Women’s Fertility Hopes: Process of Freezing Eggs and Reimplanting Them When Time Is Right May Allow Flexibility in Timing Motherhood,” Washington Post, March 15, 2004, page A8. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58458-2004Mar14?language=printer

  an issue once far on the fringes: Alan Cooperman and David Von Drehle, “Vatican Instructs Legislators on Gays: Backing Marriages Called ‘Immoral,’” Washington Post, August 1, 2003, page A1.

  Blaise Pascal was the brilliant: Mary Bellis, “Blaise Pascal (1623–1662),” About.com, 2004. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpascal.htm

  it pays to play the odds: Alan Hájek, “Pascal’s Wager,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta, ed., spring 2004. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2004/entries/pascal-wager/

  “Genetic engineering”: Sandel, “The Case Against Perfection.”

  Michael J. Sandel, a professor: Sandel is the author of Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambrige, MA: Belknap Press, 1996). ISBN: 0674197445.

  “humans would play God as God does”: Ted Peters, Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom, second edition (New York: Routledge, 2003). Cited in “Future Survey: A Monthly Abstract of Books, Articles, and Reports Concerning Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future, a World Future Society Publication,” Michael Marien, ed. Monthly newsletter from: World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Ave., Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA. www.wfs.org/fsseptember,-2003,item25:9/449A

  She had become a predator . . . at a distance: William H. Calvin, The Throwing Madonna: Essays on the Brain, originally published in 1983, 1991 (New York: Backinprint.Com, 2001). ISBN: 0595160492. See especially Chapter 1, “The Throwing Madonna,” which is especially remarkable in that it suggests that most humans are right-handed because women carry babies on their left arm. The infants stay quieter—not scaring off the prey—where they can best hear the thumping beat of the left ventricle of the heart, thus making the preferred pitching hand the right. http://williamcalvin.com/bk2/bk2ch1.htm See also Chapter 4, “Did Throwing Stones Lead to Bigger Brains?” http://williamcalvin.com/bk2/bk2ch4.htm

  He has been studying innovation: See, for example, Don E. Kash, Perpetual Innovation: The New World of Competition (New York: Basic Books, 1989). ISBN: 0-465-05533-8 (paperback).

  “No one person knows precisely how the organization accomplished it”: Kash interview, April 22, 2004.

  “we try sumptin’ else”: Ibid.

  “‘If you don’t innovate, you die’”: Ibid.

  “That’s.What.They. Experience.”: Kash, faculty seminar, “The Future of Human Nature,” The School of Public Policy, George Mason University, July 9, 2003.

  “we have a conceptual model”: Ibid.

  “not scarcity, it’s surplus”: Ibid.

  “how to engineer and change it. Including human nature”: Ibid.

  “there isn’t anything that God can do that we can’t do”: Kash interview, April 22, 2004.

  It points toward a gift economy: Joel Garreau, “Bearing Gifts, They Come from Afar: The Internet Offers One More Way to Connect with the Season’s Spirit,” Washington Post, December 21, 2000, page C1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A33711-2000Dec20¬Found=true

  says Lewis Hyde: Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (New York: Vintage, 1983). ISBN: 0394715195.

  “the selfless offering of value”: Jim Mason, personal communication, December 11, 2000.

  “It’s work-as-gift rather than work-as-commodity”: Richard Barbrook, personal communication, December 9, 2000.

  “Cast thy bread upon the waters”: Ecclesiastes 11:1.

  five loaves and two fishes: Matthew 14:13–21.

  “E-mail is the oddest thing”: Hyde interview, December 6, 2000.

  “The Internet has accelerated”: Joel Garreau, “Flocking Together Through the Web: Bird Watchers May Be a Harbinger of a True Global Consciousness,” Washington Post, May 9, 2001, page C1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A1132-2001May8¬Found=true

  evolution is aimed in a positive direction: Robert Wright, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000). ISBN: 0679442529. See also Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (Mangolia, MA: Peter Smith Publishers, 1997). ISBN: 084466927X, which deals more directly with Teilhard de Chardin.

  “The ability to learn faster than your competition”: World of Quotes.com. http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/Arie-de-Geus/1/

  Until you can come up with a new grand story: Kash interview, April 22, 2004.

  but the American people overwhelmingly are: An October 2003 NBC–Wall Street Journal poll conducted by the Gallup Organization with a margin of error of 3 percent found 90 percent of all Americans wanting to keep the words “In God we trust” on U.S. money and 78 percent favoring prayers in public schools, no matter what the courts rule.

  Among the most eminent: Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1993). ISBN: 0062508865; Buddha (New York: Viking Press, 2001). ISBN: 0670891932; A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993). ISBN: 0-345-38456-3.

  In 1969, at the age of 24: Dave Welch, “Karen Armstrong, Turn, Turn, Turn,” Powells.com, March 20, 2004. http://www.powells.com/authors/armstrong.html

  designer Missoni scarves: I am indebted to Sheila O’Shea of Knopf for this observation.

  the Axial Age: “Karl Jaspers,” Mythos and Logos. http://www.mythosandlogos.com/Jaspers.html

  “The search for spiritual breakthrough”: Harvey Blume, “Divine Reticence: A Conversation with Karen Armstrong, Biographer of the Enlightened One,” Atlantic Unbound, March 21, 2001. http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2001-03-21.htm

  “search for ultimate meaning”: Welch, “Karen Armstrong, Turn, Turn, Turn.”

  “If there is an axis in history”: Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954). ASIN: B00005X50L, pp. 99ff.

  an essential human need: Blume, “Divine Reticence.”

  “Human beings cannot endure emptiness and desolation”: Armstrong, A History of God, page 399.

  editor-in-chief of Skeptic: Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: Owl Books, 2002). ISBN: 0805070893.

  rationality is hardly a secret: Shermer interview, July 5, 2001. See also Joel Garreau, “Science’s Mything Links: As the Boundaries of Reality Expand, Our Thinking Seems to Be Going over the Edge,” Washington Post, July 23, 2001, page C1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A35319-2001Jul22¬Found=true

  “That’s the next Enlightenment”: Flowers interview, Jun
e 29, 2001. See also Garreau, “Science’s Mything Links.”

  an increase in happiness: I find it interesting and useful that happiness is a metric all sides of this debate seem to agree on. Leon Kass’ work, for example, is called “Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

  Seligman is president: Martin E. P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (New York: Free Press, 2004). ISBN: 0743222989.

  “That’s the Hollywood view”: John Brockman, “Eudaemonia, the Good Life: A Talk with Martin Seligman,” Edge: The Third Culture, 2004. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/seligman04/seligman_index.html

  “the exercise of vital powers”: As quoted, for example, by Timothy J. Sullivan, president of the College of William and Mary, May 16, 1999. http://web.wm.edu/president/addresses/commencement_1999.php

  “Religion isn’t about believing things”: Welch, “Karen Armstrong, Turn, Turn, Turn.”

  “Without more kindliness”: Bertrand Russell, Icarus: or, the Future of Science (London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1924). Cited in Bonnie Kaplan and Nick Bostrom, “A Somewhat Whiggish and Spotty Historical Background,” The Ethics, Technology and Utopian Visions Working Group, Yale University, 2002. http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/Syllabi/YaleHistory.htm

  “evolution moves inexorably toward our conception of God”: Ray Kurzweil, “As Machines Become More Like People, Will People Become More Like God? Thoughts on Where Technology Is Taking Us,” Talk, April 2001, page 153.

  “Someday after mastering winds”: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1961). ISBN: 0-06-090495-X.

  “Dignity is something people have to create”: Lanier interview, May 9–11, 2003.

  “To be in Hell is to drift; to be in Heaven is to steer”: George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy, Act Three (New York: Penguin USA, 2001). ISBN: 0140437886. Extracts courtesy of the Concept Exchange Society. http://www.sonic.net/chesters/marvin/CES/september97/abstract.html

  our first primitive enhancements: From 2000 to 2003, for example, in the United States, the number of tummy tuck procedures increased by 61 percent, buttock lifts by 78 percent, and Botox injections by 267 percent. The number of all cosmetic and reconstructive procedures increased by 17 percent from 2002 to 2003. Source: American Society of Plastic Surgeons, National Plastic Surgery Statistics, Cosmetic and Reconstructive Procedure Trends 2000/2001/2002/2003. http://www.plasticsurgery.org/public_education/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=12552

  there long will have been several means: I am indebted to Roger Brent of the Molecular Sciences Institute, Berkeley, CA, for the specifics of this scenario.

  “transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction”: Václav Havel, “The Need for Transcendence in the Post Modern World,” delivered at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 4, 1994. http://ww.worldtrans.org/whole/havelspeech.html

  Chapter Eight EPILOGUE

  “Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be”: “Que Sera Sera,” written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 remake of his 1934 film called, remarkably enough, The Man Who Knew Too Much, starring Doris Day and James Stewart. http://ntl.matrix.com.br/pfilho/html/lyrics/w/whatever_will_be_will_be_que_sera_sera.txt

  “We can only see a short distance”: This is the last line of his legendary paper proposing the Turing test to determine whether a machine has demonstrated true intelligence. Alan M. Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Mind 49: (1950), pages 433–60. http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000499/00/turing.html

  The peas of quite a few programs: See, for example, Brett Giroir, “Beyond the Bio-Revolution, Maintaining Soldier Performance,” presentation prepared for DARPATech 2004, March 9–11, 2004, Anaheim, CA. http://www.darpa.mil/DARPAtech2004/pdf/scripts/GiroirScript.pdf See also “Biological Sciences” under the heading “Technology Thrusts” in the DSO section of the DARPA Web site. http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrust/biosci/biosci.htm If the peas and the shells have moved once again by the time you read this, go to www.darpa.mil and try putting “biology” into the search engine.

  “as bold or bolder”: Although all my DARPA interviews were on the record and tape-recorded, in this rare instance I choose to avoid creating unnecessary trouble for a trusted source by not printing the individual’s name.

  is fueled by the plight of his daughter: In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration gave a Foxboro, MA, company called Cyberkinetics approval to test a version of the telekinetic monkey technology in humans. The hope was that the five paralyzed humans in the test group would be able, with their thoughts, to control machines that would allow them to move their limbs. The system is called BrainGate, and Cyberkinetics hoped that it would be commercially available in 2007 or 2008. Andrew Pollack, “With Tiny Brain Implants, Just Thinking May Make It So,” New York Times, April 13, 2004. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00D12FD355C0C708DDDAD0894DC404482

  Referring to the two men: DARPA biographies. http://www.darpa.mil

  “‘He’ll be the watchdog’ ”: Goldblatt interview, August 11, 2003.

  Cohen has received the National Medal of Science: “Scientific Advisory Board: Stanley N. Cohen, MD,” Functional Genetics. http://www.functional-genetics.com/about/sci_adv_board.htm

  Functional Genetics has developed: “Science and Technology: Our Genetic Advantage,” Functional Genetics. http://www.functional-genetics.com/sci_tech/genetic_advantage.htm

  “That’s right, it’s very similar”: Goldblatt interview, August 11, 2003.

  Acknowledgments

  Danica Remy gently but: This was five years before dot as in dot-com was voted the most useful new word in the American Dialect Society’s “Word of the Year” election for 1996, held by the Linguistic Society of America. Gayle Worland, “Coming to Terms with 1997: Linguists Pick the Words Minted for the Year,” Washington Post, January 12, 1998, page B1.

  OTHER BOOKS BY JOEL GARREAU

  Edge City: Life on the New Frontier

  The Nine Nations of North America

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint the cartoon. © The New Yorker Collection 2004 Gahan Wilson from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.

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