Turn and face the change

Well, that holiday seemed to fly! As with last year, it had its share of awful disasters – a roof collapsing on an ice rink in Germany and an explosion under the earth in Virginia. But thankfully, there were no tsunamis or monstrous earthquakes. Let us hope that things will continue thus for 2006.
The New Year is a time when people look forward rather than back. In most cases, their preoccupations are to do with foreseeable time frames and obvious issues. Will the property market sustain? Will our economy keep on booming? What will happen in this sport or that? What about the avian flu? Fundamentalist Christians dream of the Rapture. And so on.
All are important, that’s for sure. But we may be missing a number of points. One concerns the environment. People have been speculating about Aer Lingus’ deal with Gulf Air that will open up long haul flights using Dubai.
Well, this may be good for air travellers, but it’s bad for air. Each flight spews out vast quantities of greenhouse gases. In Hurricane Katrina we saw how violent the world is becoming as a result of rising temperatures. And that’s just the start.
So. Sure, this new deal and the development of our airports and new routes by the big carriers all open Ireland up. But at a cost. And we rarely link the two.
But the biggest point we’re missing concerns technological change and in particular biotechnology. When you realise that in perhaps five or six years, developments in computer chips will mean that an i-pod will be able to hold all music ever recorded, you can see how amazing the level and complexity of technological change actually is.
And while most of us have been seeing it in our various MP-3s, game consoles and broadband, others have been beavering away at myriad frontlines all the while. What is emerging is both fascinating and scary. It’s time we all started to notice...
Inventor and futurist Ray Kurtzweil penned a piece for the New Scientist last autumn, examining what’s happening out there. In his view, change isn’t taking place slowly and steadily, it has picked up speed. We are, he says, ‘making exponential progress in every type of information technology’.
Kurtzweil is a hugely important figure and you ignore what he foresees at your peril. Google him and you’ll see what I mean. His own website is www.kurtzweilai.net.
In his New Scientist piece he predicts that ‘in the not too distant future we will reach what is known as the Singularity’. This is the time ‘when the pace of technological change will be so rapid and its impact so deep that human life will be irreversibly transformed’. He predicts that we will be able to reprogram our biology, and ultimately transcend it. The result will be an intimate merger between ourselves and the technology we are creating.
Ultimately, in his view, everything of value will become an information technology.
Some of this is wonderfully upbeat and exciting. He suggests, for example, that by 2020 we will be able to meet our energy needs by using ‘very inexpensive nanotechnology-based solar panels’.
In other spheres it is a little more unnerving, like gene therapies and technologies. The idea that we could regrow our cells and tissues (‘therapeutic cloning’) offers fantastic hope to people suffering a wide range of illnesses and conditions. This is part of what Kurtzweil calls the ‘G’ revolution, which has already started.
But our biology can only go so far, and Kurtzweil also predicts the ‘N’ or nanotechnology revolution which will, he says, have reached maturity in the 2020s. Just around the corner! This, he says, will enable us to go beyond the limits of biology ‘and replace your current “human body version 1.0” with a dramatically upgraded version 2.0’, providing radical life extension’.
Think of it like this – nano-robots can do all your body’s housework, maintenance and repairs. And as old bits wear, they can be replaced.
The final transformation is the ‘R’ or robotics revolution or ‘strong AI’.
One is both fascinated and freaked. These changes are profound. They change the nature of what it is to be human. They change and challenge the nature of how we live.
Every assumption is up for grabs. They raise the most fundamental questions – for example, who will have access to the various technologies? Already there is a clear technology gap. You find it both within and between societies and it’s growing. There is a real prospect that the changes will concentrate in both countries and classes that have no particular interest in equality of access or participation. If you think the word is divided now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Well, that’s what’s coming down the track. We can’t say exactly when it’ll arrive, but arrive it will. For now, we need to start informing ourselves and thinking about it all.
Happy New Year!