Abstract
In this final chapter, we look toward the more distant future of technology and humanity. We first ask if there are ultimate limits to technology. This brings us to the question of the so-called “singularity,” a prophesized point where technology becomes self-improving and outpaces human capabilities with the potential to render humans obsolete. Whether or not a technological singularity is coming, it is already evident that humans are using technology to augment their own bodies and minds. The future of our species (and our planet) has not yet been written. Different utopian and dystopian futures have been proposed, both in the scientific literature and in the arts. In the end, it is up to us, individuals, firms, and governments to invest in and develop technologies that are deployed in systems for a long-term positive and sustainable future. We conclude by summarizing seven key messages from this book.
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Notes
- 1.
Interestingly, in the Science Fiction series Star Trek, the launch of the first starship USS Enterprise equipped with a warp drive allowing it to go beyond light speed is dated as 2151 CE.
- 2.
The speed of the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) around its solar orbit is higher than Earth’s due to Kepler’s laws. For example, an object orbiting the Sun at 0.1 AU, which is inside Mercury’s orbit, would have to travel at 94.18 km/s which corresponds to about 210,650 mph. PSP gets closer to the sun than this!
- 3.
The earlier writing of E = mc2 refers to the “rest” mass of an object. As the object accelerates, it gets “heavier,” that is, it takes more and more energy to accelerate the object as it approaches the speed of light.
- 4.
VLSI = Very large-scale integration
- 5.
CEMO = complex electro-mechanical-optical
- 6.
- 7.
How to best measure human intelligence is far from settled. The so-called Intelligence Quotient (IQ test) is generally acknowledged to only measure a relatively narrow slice of human reasoning such as pattern recognition, logic, and mathematics. See also: MIT Quest for Intelligence: https://quest.mit.edu/
- 8.
A slight complication here, not without ethical implications, is the fact that a cost in $ dollars had to be assigned to the cost of a human being, or at least the cost of a human hour of labor, assuming this human would be employed as a human computer (which has happened in the past).
- 9.
The notion that the human natural brain is static has been disproven recently. The structure of the brain can and does change as it is being used (or not), a concept known as neuroplasticity.
- 10.
- 11.
To some extent, this is true today already in the areas of video gaming and cyber-warfare, where very advanced systems and behaviors can now be created and exercised virtually, even if their net effect in the physical world is still limited by relatively thin cyber-physical interfaces.
- 12.
See here for an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piYnd_wYlT8
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
Biology has evolved over billions of years and is known to be “energy minimizing.” Thus, if our goal is to create technology that is efficient in its use of energy, it is not surprising that we may discover or “rediscover” biological principles that life and biology have brought forth naturally over millions of years (see Chap. 3).
- 16.
One could imagine a situation where an individual would pay for having a clone of themselves created, and would then raise this clone by transmitting to them their own life experiences and knowledge. If this process were to be repeated over multiple generations, this would potentially represent a certain kind of immortality. This would, however, be “imperfect” as we know from studies of identical twins that over the course of a human life gene regulation and expression are heavily dependent on lifestyle and environmental exposures. Thus, there is no reason to believe that a multigenerational lineage of clones (as discussed in Asimov’s Foundation Series) would not also be subject to genetic drift and mutation and eventually become a substantially different person, both in terms of their genotype and phenotype compared to the original.
- 17.
The famous “Club of Rome” report on “Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al. 1972) had predicted that humanity’s growth would be limited due to the finiteness of Earth’s resources (which is true), but initially failed to take into account the impact of technological innovation on our ability to do more with less in the future. For this, “Limits to growth” was heavily criticized by some.
- 18.
See also https://workofthefuture.mit.edu/
- 19.
The recent MIT Work of the Future study (Autor et al. 2020) provides a more nuanced view and documents that the impact of automation and robotics will take decades to unfold. Nevertheless, it points out that institutional innovations and updates to our labor laws are needed if we want to avoid some of the most severe negative impacts on wages, opportunities, and prospects for the twenty-first century workforce.
- 20.
This scenario does not address the question of what would happen to the human “soul,” that is, the transition from life to death or the after-life as taught by different religions. Social media companies such as Facebook (renamed Meta) already face a dilemma today as to how to handle the online accounts of deceased users.
- 21.
We have already supported a continuous off-Earth presence of humans on the International Space Station (ISS) for more than 20 years, since the beginning of its construction in 1998.
- 22.
This includes the power consumed not only by humans, but all other species of plants and animals on Earth.
- 23.
URL: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/, accessed 20 November 2020.
- 24.
1 AU = 149.6 million [km].
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de Weck, O.L. (2022). The Singularity: Fiction or Reality?. In: Technology Roadmapping and Development . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88346-1_22
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