A Comment on Era Transitions vs. Transformations

My friend T lends us his thoughts about the state of the era we're in. He also has some thoughts on hosting a good story.

“Writing about the rapid change of the era in which we are now has become almost trite these days. It was 1970 (the year of this author's birth) when Alvin Toffler put his finger on the idea that people are more behind the times than ahead of them in his book Future Shock. That was 34 years ago, and the pace of change that he was writing about is nothing compared to what has been happening since then. We all know the times are in rapid change. Fine.

A more interesting thought, is that not are we merely in the throes of all this change, but the true era change many talk about is only just approaching mankind. I would contend that what we are going through right now is merely the staging time for the era change that is about to rock the world in the next 15 to 25 years.

The reason that I write this is that we are in a time when we are starting to complete the technologies (or at least evolve them to such a level as necessary for the revolution) that enable the era change that is to come. With the abilities that we have been developing over the last 150 years, with the revolutions in metallurgy, biomedicine, communications and computational power, we are setting the stage for such things as the bio-technical and nanotech revolutions. Not only have we evolved the technology to support the coming massive leap, we are developing the mental/psychological necessities to do so.

It's been a long road. From developing a system of government, economics, security, mass production, distribution, transportation, communications, information management we can support the kinds of research that will bring sweeping revolution. We have moved beyond a time where we can only know what our god given senses limit us to. Now that we can measure the unseen, we are able to think far beyond our human condition.

The changes that we have seen to get us to this point will be, upon future reflection, small compared to how the human condition will change after the nanorevolution. The radical changes to human life will go far, far beyond the changes that we have recently seen. When achievements start rolling in from such fringe fields as biotechnology and nanotechnology, life will be almost so different as to be unrecongnizable from today. Hold on! We're just getting started!”

Now, we both think we're in an era transition. But we have a subtle disagreement on what really constitutes the era transition. T thinks it happens when a host of revolutionary technologies come on-line. I think it really happens before then, and the revolutionary technologies are the effect, not the cause, of the era transition.

Now, if I'm right, the era transition may have already happened and this is a moment of stasis before an explosive (and probably very difficult) period of near-chaotic change - as surely as Reformation followed Renaissance. Note that this period of stasis may be measured in decades (or may not, if we're especially unlucky), and the changes to follow will be spread out over many more decades. This, admittedly, is a pessimist's viewpoint.

T, on the other hand, is more of an optimist. He's talking about the cool stuff - the stuff that lets us be something more than we our today. And he believes that we're developing the mental and psychological facilities that will allow us to move beyond the flesh-and-blood limits of our current condition. And, in his view, that's the real transition - to what amounts to a posthuman age.

Some other very smart folks - like Vernor Vinge and Bill Joy - believe the same thing but interpret it in a way that makes me sound like a pollyanna. Vinge pulls no punches:

“Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

The implication is that we ordinary humans get replaced - very swiftly - with some super-intelligent post-human. I can't buy that. I think an era transition will be messy, dangerous, and difficult. But no more so than the original Reformation. And it'll probably be even be less hazardous than, say, the Black Plague of the mid-14th century (which harmed China and Islam even more than Europe). I think we'll transition into post-humanism in stages, and we'll bring most everyone who survives the wars/plagues/pogroms/riots (which will be a large majority) along.

I like what Bruce Sterling writes about a post-human future:

Posthumans aren't content with human achievements. They're better at posthumanity than we are...[But] The posthuman condition is banal. It is astounding, and eschatological, and ontological, but only by human standards. Oh, sure, we may become as gods, but the thrill fades fast...By the new, post-Singularity standards, posthumans are just as bored and frustrated as humans ever were. They are not magic, they are still quotidian entities in a gritty, rules-based physical universe. They will find themselves swiftly and bruisingly brought up against the limits of their own conditions, whatever those limits and conditions may be.

A condition that sounds so...human.