More human than human

One of my all time favourite movies is Blade Runner. In the movie the Nexus-6 series Replicant is an android designed by Tyrell corporation specifically for off-Earth work and slave labour. In order to curb the development of an individual emotional life they have a limited lifespan of about 4 years.  This of course backfires and a rebellion occurs with some replicants escaping and trying to hunt down their creator. Their mission: "I want more life fucker." as one replicant eloquently said.

Two things that strike me, the idea that our technology can out strip us and the suggestion, although not played out in this film, that the post-human could perhaps be created by humans.

Stay with me I'm going somewhere with this. Humans tend to look at time in a very linear short-term fashion. Even the most horrifying doomsday theories place the apocalypse sometime in the next thousands years or so which completely negates deep time. Put it this way our sun is only 4.5 billion years old and has enough fuel to burn for another 6 billion. Now we're starting to talk time.

Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, said at his acceptance of the 2011 Templeton Prize “It won’t be humans who witness the sun’s demise: It will be entities as different from us as we are from a bug.”

What on earth could these entities be? And do we have anything to do with it?
Two scenarios I can think of; one is that humans will become extinct because of some cock up or another on our behalf due to the fact our technology far outstrips our intellectual or emotional capabilities (really whose brilliant idea was it to create weapons that could destroy all life on earth and place it in the hands of emotionally volatile creatures?) and these new entities evolve from some other life form.

or we get all Darwinist and start evolving at a speed that perhaps compliments our technology thus creating the post-human that might see the sun's demise. Not that I think seeing the sun's demise would be some sort of an accomplishment or anything, although the party will be bigger than in 1999. At any rate humans are by nature fragile creatures. Even our intellect, our biggest weapon against all and sundry, is often marred by our emotional responses. Our bodies are designed to decay and eventually perish despite or best efforts otherwise (and unlike the Nexus-6 replicants we can't meet our creator and demand more life). If we can overcome these trifles than perhaps we have a chance at long-term survival. Although not in a form that we would recognise.

So say that we found a way to upload our consciousness to the computer. I think I saw an X-Files episode about that once, but the idea is pretty interesting. we would then exist in a space where physical demise is no longer a threat. machines can be repaired; we could back up our minds a million times over, we could live forever in a virtual reality. Some people are attempting such a feat now by throwing their "real" lives away to focus on such pass times as Secondlife, although they have not been able to find a way around the fact a flesh and blood human needs to sit behind the screen in order for this life to have life.

But then what? Will our all-too-human emotional responses see our demise anyway? Will some virtual government develop a virtual nuclear bomb to virtually wipe out all virtual life? And if we do away with such things as "emotion" and all that come with it including art and entertainment and creativity will we cease to be human? Because aside from these flesh and bone bodies we haul ourselves around in it is our ability to reason, to create, to feel that make us the creatures we are.

Is the evolution away from what makes us us worth seeing the sun die?

Take it easy!