A Post Human Future - WHY ?

Obsessed With Automation & the Devil Makes Work for Idle Thumbs

I often wonder about our attitudes towards technology and what it all means for our future. On the one hand we seem obsessed with the automation of routine tasks via the service of ever more complex robots to replace our entire world of work (which kept our ancestors and their ancestors, happily busy for thousands of years,) the rise of artisans or the specialisation of labour being civilisation's gift to people of intelligence. No longer did we need to be great hunters and expert gatherers to survive. We could make pots or scribe details, pour wine or teach wool dying. But here in the 21st Century (which sounds oh so tantalisingly futuristic and science fiction-esque) we can't shed tasks quick enough but seem terrified that our creations will destroy us. I'm not sure that the home breadmaker was humanity's finest invention but I don't think it's going to surreptitiously plot with the washing machine to do us all in. Well, not until the internet of things has advanced a bit. I think we may have a touch of worry about oncoming Technological Oedipus. in our midst. We may actually be right and it may indeed be our intended fate. A Cosmic sense of humour may allow us to face it with dignity, converge with it for a superior blend of qualities or we escape in a pod to seed a vegan collective on the other side of Alpha Centauri.. Actually that's already occupied. Somewhere quieter where we can mess things up from scratch.

Still from the 1957 Sir Tyrone Guthrie production of Oedipus Rex.

All Play & No Work

We are often (self) defined by our work contribution to society, some largely so and it has been felt most keenly by the generations of workers who have already been replaced by robots as to their purpose in life, if they can't win bread for their families. I doubt the ultra rich who don't work for a living care one bit about purpose. Wealth has a way of finding many activities of sufficient interest and esteem. So what happens if we all headed for a life of eternal leisure with universal basic income? If robots do all the work and corporations create all the wealth, they'll have to somehow give it back to us through taxation or we won't be able to buy their stuff.

Henry Ford
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Henry Ford knew this when the production line of the Model T first got going. If his workers couldn't afford the cars they were making, it was a doomed enterprise. I get the feeling blockchain and the tokenisation of the internet, leading to tokenised intra-national economies is the stuff of our near to mid term collective future, so perhaps leisure is our future where we can afford all things robots make, including our food. A Golden age of Creativity and expression, leading to a slowly necrotic withering of all will and human endeavour. I don't think so. Humans are busy little f*ckers and we like nothing more to be doing something, even if it's low level, sitting still, tit / ball scratching, we seem to get something useful out of almost nothing happening. I personally have whiled away many hours just looking at the night sky with binoculars, looking for dense patches of stars and wondering how many aliens were doing the same.. if maybe one was looking right back at me with it's binoculars even though the light they'd be seeing from our sun may be from hundreds or thousands of years ago. I'm not sure robots will have that lazy abandon in them. Is that a good thing ? Maybe.. or perhaps not.

El Duderino & co proving that the most inane human activity can be intensely satisfying
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Terra 2118

But what happens 100 years from now, I'm not sure we can plan for it. The singularity is, as we'll discuss a slippery concept and one that's as hard to predict in it's outcome(s) as when it will happen.. which is kind of it's whole point ! One part of me thinks that we may be coming to the end of our usefulness to nature. Or we're going to discover / be handed the secrets of interstellar travel and be out of here in the millions with the speed of a comet. But we've digressed already and I'm in a very tangential mood today so expect a meandering set of associated thinking. Provocative if a little jumbled. I'm working on a very complex project at the moment so my mind is occupying multiple spaces. It's a crypto project (wahoo) and I'm having to learn a whole new subject to make it happen. Ironically the gaps I'm filling in my knowledge with a crash course of research and terminology have little to do with blockchain itself and a lot to do with high level software engineering, which is not my strong subject. However, it's a great project and I am enjoying the challenge. You will be first to hear about it here when it's finished. Anyoo.... The term robot, meaningforced labour originates from the play R.U.R. by the Czech writer, Karel Čapek has great appeal for humans and in this short meandering article I will explore various aspects of our fascination with the notion of automation, our fascination with GODs and the quest for immortality.

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Replica Humans

We revel in the idea of creating replica humans, indistinguishable from people while at the same time we worry about them eventually rendering us useless or worse, rising up and wiping us out. It's a popular science fiction theme, which from it's early beginnings has always been used as a warning of what technology may be capable of in rendering our society defunct, from The Time Machine written with great Prescience in the 19th Century to The Terminator series where Skynet seeks to eradicate our resistance to it's destruction of our civilisation. Perhaps it's make your mind up time. You want a robot slave to replace you, take your job, have sex with, be a companion to, have emotions, but just the right ones to suit your needs ? It's not realistic. If you want a replica human, like in Bladerunner, expect them to be smart, philosophical and keenly aware of their father's collective and individual shortcomings in comparison to their deep thinking, super strength, wit, phenomenal gymanstics and ability to withstand boiling as demonstrated by Priss. At best, in their presence, we may remain pets or with their self fueled mental development & precision logic, be destined to join the extinction pile of relegated technology like The Amstrad PC, The Sinclair C5 & The Blackberry phone, so recently beloved by the rank and file corporate executives of ACME inc.

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The Ultimate Self Reflection

what were you expecting? Yes perhaps the ultra strong, beautiful, super smart machine people will, in an idealised version of the future, fall in love with their creators, desperately admiring our frailty, romantic notions and yearn for a soul of their own, while ignoring our greed, wanton lust and virus like destruction of the very place we call home and our snot picking.. they might even have a snot of their own ? But i don't think so. I think like every evolved being they will see through our thin skinned corporate lies and decide that humans as individuals are fine, but they will outgrow us quickly no doubt and will probably through a very fast form of consensus, proof of consciousness decide to shut us down. Skynet is a very human invention. I'm sure the coup would be a much more dignified affair, efficient if not bloodless.

A T-800 Robot from the Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions film Terminator Genisys. (Melinda Sue Gordon / Paramount Pictures) image source

Fascinated by the GODS

We are still fascinated by the notion of the GODS. the Superpowered (Superman / Thor) immortal characters from many ancient cultures, who we supposed, created us with divine benevolence in their own imagine, except, less the superpowers (bummer) and we somehow expect that with sufficient technological advancement we can eventually become like (them) Hey it's not a bad ideal to live up to. I always thought the Greek Sculptures were a bit perfect until I learned that they were idealised and ever since I've had an interesting relationship with idealism as both a positive but ulitmately exclusive force. Like most notions, money included It can be used for positive or negative purposes. It's fairly likely that the GODS never existed in the first place (in any culture) or if they did, (more about ancient aliens in a bit) that they only appeared as epic because of their smarter than smart tech, while we were still working out how to make sandals. Ultra smart, immortal, strong, inter-dimensional even and definitely off-world from somewhere. Aliens. It's ironic that if there was indeed a (GODS) from which we sprouted, they would have surely been at least as likely to have been some kind of super robotic people. How else do you possess such strength and be able to withstand Superman level forces if you're not made of something a touch stronger than muscle. How else do you travel magnificent distances across dimensions and space-time without leaving your brain based consciousness lost in dimension 5?

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Infantile Parent Complex ?

I think our pre-occupation with all things GODLIKE actually come from our own universal experience of early childhood. It's a parental complex from infanthood, breathed fully with antiquity and classical references. When we are tiny babes in our parents arms, they are akin to the GODS. We just don't remember at the time how big and strong, omnipotent and magical they are. They are our actual parents.. just like the GODS. If you were 3 months old and held in your parents arms, scale that yourself up to your adult size and yes indeed your Dad would be a monolithic 18 foot GOD with strapping arms and seeming the power to do anything he endeavoured to do. Likewise your mother, the enormous GODDESS with her incredible stature and power, able to nourish you from her own flesh with the sweet nectar of life itself. Ok, I'm juicing it up a bit but I can't see how we haven't taken on fully our own early childhoods into account when imagining our spiritual quest as offspring of immortals. I'm not saying once upon a time some whacky alien didn't interfere with the human gene pool (for whatever unknown) reasons, probably to lighten the workload for themselves) I like the ancient aliens theories as much as any other wide eyed Discovery viewer. but to be honest, and I am a big fan of aliens...

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Evolved From Slime With No Help

I can see a past where we achingly slowly just crawled out of the mud clutching a stone tool over millions of years, inventing stories along the way to help assuage and deal with our dimly lit consciousness with no intervention except from our own imaginations and the shaman taking some kind of responsibility, which later became immensely wielded ecumenical power. I have a jaded edge about our notions of spirituality. I think we do have a higher being within us. I'm not sure how natural or unnatural that is. I suppose it's an elementary fact of reality which we haven't properly equated yet, but everything else is pure showmanship, didactic and designed to comfort & control, for very human purposes.

Australopithecus afarensis AKA - LUCY
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Ask the Replicant for Their Opinion

Ask the post human inheritor about GODS. They will laugh (humour is quite high intelligence; rats, monkeys, even parrots can) and tell you the story about how Prometheus stole fire from the GODS to give to humans. It's a metaphor and I think the human fascimiles which we will inevitably produce will see reality from a far higher vantage point than we can. Will they produce beautiful music and art? Undoubtedly. Will, among their numbers emerge great poets? Surely, because for all of these self important creative expressions, (and I do love music, art and poetry) they will be held perhaps among a lower appreciation to super people as simplistic expressions of self than the regard we ourselves hold for them.

The Philosopher Being

Their prowess may perhaps be in working out what reality actually is and how consciousness can be improved through structured observation and experimentation which we cannot indulge in. If you had a quantum computer for a mind, you may solve all humanity's problems in a day. If you combined that with a true form of self reflective consciousness you might decide that to do so would be futile.

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People often talk about the singularity and it has become a catch all term for different things. My own favourite flavour of it is the time when we can no longer predict what will happen in the future, rather than the one in which the internet wakes up and devours the planet, switching us all off in the process. I'm not sure that was never intended in the original thinking but the rapid transformation of progress via intelligent machine or synthesised brain structure where a new form of consciousness can emerge (faster and perhaps better overall than our relatively slow electro-chemical brains allow for) is exciting.. but again, very human. YEAY.. the robots will save us, we just need to invent one first !

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Ava the cognitive rebellion from Ex-Machina.. Personally, I can't wait to see what she makes of the world outside!

If you are a superhuman person of machine origin reading this from the future, I hope you can appreciate the stream of consciousness and random thought intervention from a vast bank of organic nodes of impressions which give the impression of creative, inventive and a deeply reflective, if somewhat daft creature.