Where My Demons Hide

"No matter what we breed
We still are made of greed
This is my kingdom come
This is my kingdom come"

~ Imagine Dragons, "Demons"

 

I've been spending time lately diving deeper into the psyche of the villain. My novel, eHuman Dawn, is the beginning of a trilogy about the beauty and pain that are possible in a future transhumanist society. Thus understanding power and control is key to completing the trilogy in a meaningful way. Technology is making progress in leaps and bounds, not in baby steps, and it's entirely possible that in my lifetime I will have to make a choice between dying or living forever through the aid of machines. What exactly that will be like, I can only imagine. But what I do know with all my heart is that such a "transhumanist wager", as author Zoltan Istvan has coined it, is a very serious wager indeed.

To rely on technology in order to live forever and achieve total health is to rely on those who own the technology to consider our lives as precious and important. This means that business and government leaders need to care for each and everyone of us in a way that considers human consciousness and life as valuable and worthy of investment and protection.

Take an honest look at the leadership in our society today--can we trust them with our lives? With our dreams, desires and hopes? NSA surveillance, drone attacks on innocents, dictators approving genocide, business leaders willing to take risks that leave millions without an income, jobs shipped overseas, goods made in sweatshops, children forced into slavery, mountaintops blown off to heat our houses. Yes, there are great things our leaders do, but more and more we are discovering that often our leaders in business and government act without empathy, without fear and without care for humanity and the world as a whole. Their personal interests come first, and if some people suffer, so be it. Sacrificing the many for the benefit of a few has been a theme in the story of domination for centuries.
   
What sort of a person would make such cold and unfeeling decisions? Who is able to shut of their empathy to such a degree that the enslavement of children in order to manufacture goods more cheaply is considered a brilliant business decision? Who manipulates others and markets for their own advantage? In the clinical world there is a name for such a person: the psychopath--a distinct subset of humanity who supposedly can't feel love, empathy, shame or compassion. People who operate for their own advantage, to the detriment of all around them.
   
The psychopath is real, known and well documented. That many of our leaders share traits with the psychopath is not surprising. As the modern philosopher Charles Eisenstein writes in his most recent book, "Living in a system that rewards psychopathy, it is not accident that the psychopathic rise to the top, and that the psychopathic tendencies in each of us rise to the surface. It is a mistake to blame the psychopaths for our present condition; they are a result, not a cause."
   
In a world that rewards the cool, calm and collected human being, is it surprising that our top 1% seem to be distant and callous? For the rest of us, it's no coincidence the use of anti-depressants in America is at an all-time high--we all want to numb ourselves and be distant, detached and level-headed. When our story as a society is that being tough is king and feeling anything at all is for the weak, are we surprised that a businessman might be capable of shipping our jobs overseas in order to make more money for himself? It's the American myth to be independent, self seeking and self-fulfilling. To admit we need each other to grow and learn is to admit defeat.
   
Eisenstein goes on to explain, "Given any cultural trait, there are always some people who embody it in extreme form, holding up a mirror so that we can recognize it in ourselves. These would be the psychopaths."
   
At this moment in history, we are in a place of transition between the story of domination and the story of interconnectedness. The path between the two world views is not straight, it's more like a maze. There is a way out, but in order to find it, we must see the bigger picture. Many look to technology to fix this. I would agree with them, but with a bit of caution.

If we develop the technology to live forever before leaving the story of domination, then the possible future could be one of power and manipulation unlike anything we've ever seen. The ability to own us, program us and abuse us would be very great, and extremely tempting to the psychopaths in charge. The machines would hate us, outsource us and eventually render us useless, because their creators saw humanity through those eyes first. Eisenstein suggests this is because, "…our current story facilitates the rise of psychopathy and empowers the psychopath."

But what if we change our story? What if we see that we are one and begin to look upon the connections between us as powerful, rather than as a weakness? What if we begin to see that humanity with all it's knowledge and wisdom is like the internet--connected, open, free and full of possibility? Would we settle for leaders who disdain us? Would we create machines to dominate us? Or would we create a more beautiful world, where technology serves us and the planet, in harmony with the web of life that surrounds us?

To me, the greatest threat to our race is our self-loathing. Ironically, I share this in common with the villain in my novel, Edgar Prince. Yet here's how he and I differ--He thinks humanity is unable to rise up and respect one another, therefore we must be controlled into behaving. I believe we can do it, because it's what we were born to do. Where he sees weakness, I see tremendous potential.

This is a personal development issue and yet, because we are connected, it's a global one as well. To look at ourselves and one another with respect and dignity is a place to start. From there we take it, person by person, all the way to the top. And perhaps, as a result, when we get to the top we'll discover that we aren't a pyramid at all, rather we're one large web of humanity, co-creating a future of possibility, health, beauty, and most of all, mutual respect and honor. Because when we look into the mirror of the story of interconnectedness, we'll see the light of humanity in one anothers' eyes.

Can You Teach a Computer Common Sense? .PART ONE.

"In your case, most likely, a small app would have been downloaded to your 

CPU to erase your previous few days of memory. You see, eHuman
software is really very easy to manipulate.”
~Alrisha, Lead Hacktivist for the Resistance

Artificial Intelligence. It's everywhere these days. Especially in the theaters. Last month saw the release of the movie, "Her", in which the lead character falls in love with an operating system. In addition, a trailer for Johnny Depp's new movie, "Transcendence" is now available on YouTube. Depp's portrayal of a genius espousing the future of a mind greater than all the minds that have ever been on Earth is chilling.

Can this be? Can we create Artificial Intelligence that is smarter than we are? I don't mean faster, or with a better memory. Can AI have common sense? Can it foresee complex patterns? Can AI be programmed to have our ability to sense what's wrong and make choices based on instinct and past experience? What is intelligence without consciousness? Is it possible for us to create an AI that is truly evolving, truly learning and truly greater than all of us combined?

In my novel, eHuman Dawn, the AI is Neuro, a complex operating system that organizes and guides eHuman life. The eHumans are themselves a blend of AI and their own consciousness. The ideal Transhuman solution. But is such a solution possible? Or would this technology be the end of humanity?

Two readers sent me articles this week, both discussing this theme of AI and the scientific mind. Two things stood out for me: First, our computers are only as intelligent as the engineers who program them. And second, solving the complex issues of life requires more thought than passing the Turing Test or executing a mere Google Search.

Let's begin with the first idea--just how much better can our AI be than ourselves? In "The Closing of the Scientific Mind", David Gelernter voices his thoughts about leading singularity scientist Ray Kurzweil's work:  (For more on Kurzweil's mission, see my blog post, "Can Google Stop Death?")

"Whether he knows it or not, Kurzweil believes in and longs for the death of mankind. Because if things work out as he predicts, there will still be life on Earth, but no human life. To predict that a man who lives forever and is built mainly of semiconductors is still a man is like predicting that a man with stainless steel skin, a small nuclear reactor for a stomach, and an IQ of 10,000 would still be a man. In fact we have no idea what he would be."

True confession: While writing the eHuman trilogy this exact thought has crossed my mind over and over again. Are Adam Winter and The Dawn of eHumanity still human? I want them to be, but what exactly are they? The eHuman is a product of the best of science, blended with human needs and desires. Yet those needs and desires are completely under the control of the scientists who created them. Is that a real human existence?

Remember: software is only as excellent as the people who make it. Honestly. So if we want to know what AI will look like in the future, let's consider the way science has been used to meet our human needs for the past forty years.

Do we trust the scientific mind that will cut down rain forests at unsustainable rates in order to raise cattle for our fast food chains? How about the scientists in Big-Agriculture, whose minds can only create products that kill insects and weeds--forgetting about and thus possibly destroying the very insects needed for crop pollination by inadvertently causing a global colony collapse for the honey bee? Do we trust a scientific mind that can't see and understand the web of life around us, to create the web of artificial intelligence that will guide us into the future?

Many of our stories are prophetic. They tell of a future time when our AI takes over and destroys us. Why would that be? Why would we create AI that hates us and competes against us rather than cares for us and meets our needs? Why wouldn't our AI serve us and improve our lives and make things cleaner, more efficient and better for everyone? Why must our machines eventually kill us?

Alas, the answer might just lie within our own hearts, within our own intelligence, and the way we educate our children. Remember, software is only as good as the mind that creates it. If the current scientific mindset that has controlled technology for the past century is any indication, we're in trouble. Gelernter puts it this way, "Many scientists are proud of having booted man off his throne at the center of the universe and reduced him to just one more creature—an especially annoying one—in the great intergalactic zoo." AI may kill us, but only because it will mimic what its creators believe.

Artificial Intelligence can't save us from ourselves, it can only become what we are.

Therefore if we want AI with common sense, we must hire software engineers with the most common sense. If we want AI that will lead us into a prosperous future, we need scientists to care about humanity, and the planet we live on, as a whole. If we want AI that will inspire us and grow with us, we need the business community to stop caring only about profits and instead care about life in all of its complexity.

The best of humanity must take part in this quest. Not just the smartest.

Imagine an Earth where machines and people live in harmony, rather than in competition. Is that possible? Perhaps we first need to learn to live in harmony with ourselves, each other, and the world we live in. Then we can create the machines.

To be continued...

Sex in the eHuman City

 

 

 

"Miranda was gone.
    She’d been his companion for almost fifty years. He thought it should be easy to let her go, but it wasn’t. It was every bit as hard as the last time a companion had Jumped. And before that—well, it was the same old story. The vow, 'Till death do us part' disappeared the day
humanity took a bite from the apple of immortality. " 

From eHuman Dawn

 

eHuman Dawn opens with a  breakup. Some might find that a strange way to begin a science fiction novel about the merging of man with machine to achieve everlasting life, but for me, it seemed the most natural, and important, place to begin. For at the heart of our humanity lies our sexuality. The opposite is true of machines--which rule the domain of logic and rationality. As science marches ever closer to bringing us together, I find myself wondering, where in this effort to stop death do we take a moment to consider birth? Or love? Or desire?

One of my previous blogs, In Defense of the Senses, touched on the idea that writing about love and attraction in a world without flesh wasn't always easy. I had to find a way to express desire without the beating heart, the sweating palms, or the steady insistence of our reproductive hormones. While writing the novel, I discovered that the issues of romance and sex went much further than figuring out how to fulfill our desires for one another in electronic bodies.

In a society where we've united with machines in order to live forever, sexuality itself becomes completely redefined.

Imagine a future, post-singularity world that hasn't completely abandoned the flesh, but instead some sort of implant that reverses aging has been invented. We can still have sex the good old fashioned way, but what does that mean if we live forever? At what age would we marry? Why would we marry? "Till death do us part" doesn't make much sense if we're never going to die. Given the fifty percent divorce rate in western societies, truly living together FOREVER is romantic for some, but torture for others.

More importantly, would we continue to procreate in such a world? What would we do about population control? Imagine it, at age thirty we take an implant that allows us to live forever. That means no one dies. But if people continue to be born, how do we manage that as a society? What would the balance be for our species? How would we deal with an ever increasing population on our planet? I can't help but wonder what we'd do about children if we could live forever and keep our reproducing, carbon bodies. The possibilities are fascinating--and terrifying at the same time.

In the end, it's impossible to take on death without discussing birth and sexuality. Considering the sexual implications of any scientific advancement is worthwhile. Asking questions is the place to start. Would I trade physical sexual pleasure to live forever? Would I give up the ability to procreate in order to live forever? Would my feelings even matter if I could be programmed to forget them? When considering a future society where the ultimate goal for health is immortality, we shouldn't forget sex, love or romance. Yet I rarely see them mentioned on any of the singularity and technology websites focused on the topic of machine based immortality and health. 

Immortality brings a whole new element to the story of romance. One that will completely change the definition of what it means to be human. Perhaps love, in its universality, will adapt and evolve and find new ways of expression that we can only dream of now.

It's The Question That Drives Us

Like many sci-fi fans, one of my favorite movies of all time is, "The Matrix." There's a scene where Trinity, the beautiful hacker female, approaches Neo in a nightclub. This is the moment of invitation, an event that forces him to wake up to the world around him--a world where something just doesn't feel right. In many ways, stories are our real teachers, and the dialogue in this scene calls for us to wake up to the true purpose of learning in our modern age.

Trinity: It's the question that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did.
Neo: What is the Matrix?
Trinity: The answer is out there, Neo, and it's looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.

The writers of "The Matrix" advise us to ask the questions that are burning within our hearts. In Neo's case,  the question will lead him to the answer--which is something he cannot know until he voices the question. The two are intertwined, one leading to the other. Asking the question sets him off on the journey to finding the answer.

It's finals time here in my house, and that means spending hours studying with my children, memorizing, not the questions, but the answers. To tell the truth, I love this time, recalling facts I once learned long ago, being near my kids, and hearing the stories they have to tell about the historical figures, scientific theories and algebraic equations they've been learning. I'm always amazed at how deep the teachers go with their curriculum, and how little I would know about what went on in the classroom if I didn't take this time to study with my children. When we go over their study guides, they reveal details about discussions in the classroom and share with me their wonder and awe.

But if I only looked at their tests and homework, and never spent time discussing it with them, I'd assume that all they were learning was how to memorize facts--which seems pretty dry. Not only that, it seems fairly useless. In the days of the Smartphone and Google Search, why would my children need to memorize any date in history? Of course, knowing an approximate timeline or order of events is important--woe to the child who has no clue that Rome fell long before the advent of the computer. But is it necessary to spend brain power memorizing the exact date that the Vandals first sacked Rome?

Some may say yes, but I'd disagree. We don't have to wait for a future singularity event to realize that the days of knowing the "answer" are over. Tablets, Smartphones and the system of information that links them together, are changing the way we live in our world. In our house, if someone disagrees with another about a historical date, we let Google solve it. If my son wants to learn how to set up a "Let's Play" YouTube channel, he can Google it and find all sorts of people and information to aid him in his quest.

The fact is, knowing the "answer" isn't enough anymore. The intelligence we now need to cultivate is to know what questions need to be asked. And to develop the courage to ask them.

What is the question needed in any given situation? How do I ask the question in order to get the most accurate answer? How do I begin to understand the world as information all around me that is seeking to be known? How do I parse through the propaganda, to find the truth? For nothing is truly known on the Internet until the question is asked. Information is simply data stored on the Cloud, which has no meaning unless someone wants to use it. Asking the question puts the information in play.

How can we educate our children to ask questions? In reality, the educational system of the United States for the past fifty years has encouraged the exact opposite--Don't ask questions. Instead, listen to the teacher lecture, take notes, and memorize them. Questions slow things down. Questions get in the way. The authority already knows everything, you just need to receive the information. And then you'll be tested to make sure you got it all.

In today's age, to be spoon fed information isn't going to get our children very far. They need to be encouraged to ask for what they want to know. They must have a desire to understand and learn about the world around them. They need a fire lit inside of them, a passion, for asking questions. It's a vulnerable place to be, for to ask a question might make you seem ignorant. But the truth is, this is the direction our learning systems are going. As the Internet grows to mimic our own learning patterns, so will we begin to change in order to navigate this informational landscape.

Someday learning just may be a simple download. Like Trinity from the Matrix, we'll learn to fly a helicopter in moments. And yet, even in that extreme case, such learning cannot happen--unless we're confident enough ask the right question.

The Web of Life

    There is an old saying, so old in fact, that it's attributed to the ancient Egyptian mystics. It goes something like this, "As it is above, so it is below." Essentially, this statement points to a universal idiom that most modern people aren't  comfortable with: All things are linked together. What happens to me, happens to you. What happens to our families, is happening at a larger scale in our community. When one suffers, we all suffer, for all systems are woven together.

    In an HuffPost titled, "Your Brain is the Universe" by Deepak Chopra and several other modern day thinkers, put it this way,

"As is the smallest, so is the greatest has come full circle from ancient wisdom to modern science once we accept that every system is driven by feedback loops, homeostasis, and continuing self-organization. At this point, it is up to dissenters to prove that we aren't inhabiting a living universe, tied into it by the most fundamental characteristics of biological systems."

    It all comes down to one word: Interdependence. We're all linked, all one, bound by the web of life. This bothers the modern world, because everything from our healthcare to our economic system is based on the idea that we're separate, on our own, and in it for our own selfish needs. We've literally setup a thought system that traps us in our own cages, oblivious to the connections we share with the world, with each other and even with our own technological creations. We feel trapped, but essentially, the door to the prison of separation is wide open. We can walk out of the illusion anytime. The choice is up to us.

    One of my favorite modern thinkers, Charles Eisenstien, put it this way in his book Sacred Economics, "Having made nature into an adversary, or at best a pile of resources, it is no surprise that we manifest the same relationship of our bodies. The defining diseases of our time are the autoimmune diseases, the somatization of our self-other confusion. Just as the village, the forest, and the planet are inseparable parts of ourselves that we mistake as other, so our immune systems reject our own body tissues. What we do to the other, we do to ourselves, inescapably."

    Imagine it, as we cut out parts of nature in the name of progress, we get sicker as a people. When we destroy the land around us, we feel it in our very bodies, for these bodies are made from the same essence, the same set of elements. We are all one, tied together by the material building blocks of life.

    Much research has been dedicated to understanding this web of life. Our science, once set on compartmentalizing and individually naming everything in sight, has begun to see a bigger picture within our biology. Rather than running like a machine, nature operates more like a spider's web-when one strand is broken, the web starts to unravel. Our ecosystems are beginning to break down because we forgot this ancient truth that life is truly a web of interconnecting systems, each one dependent upon the other for survival.

    This web of life analogy isn't lost on me as I prepare to launch eHuman Dawn as an eBook, sending it out on the world wide web to readers that live all over the globe. Research for this novel, and the next two in the trilogy, has led me down many interdependent pathways. The physics of consciousness has revealed how interdependent molecules, waves and particles actually are. Researchers are beginning to postulate that our consciousness is woven throughout our bodies, having no central space to reside in, but rather existing in every cell, in ever piece of DNA, simultaneously talking to one another, sending data in an instant, to keep all parts of the body in synch. And when things aren't in synch, when some part of the glorious communication system shuts down, the illness is pretty obvious. We stop functioning in health.

    Does this elegant system of data transfer within the human body sound familiar? Does it mimic the world around us? Not just the natural world around us, but even our most powerful invention yet, the Internet, works this way. Data moves throughout the fiber optic network at the speed of light and travels across the globe to deliver information to millions simultaneously. There is no central place where the communication resides, rather devices by the millions embed themselves into the World Wide Web to share and receive data, perhaps not instantly, but quickly. There is nothing now we cannot know, for all data can be found, if only you ask the right question. It's no coincidence that we've given it the name World Wide Web. It's our creation, is it not? Therefore it lives and operates within our geometry.

    There's no denying it…the geometry of life, and data, is a web.

    When we use the World Wide Web and interact within its social structures, we might have the tendency to think we're alone, separated from the others by the iPhone in our hands, but in reality, we're not. What you use the Internet for affects me. What I do affects you. That we have some of the most beautiful ideas "floating" around out there alongside some of the most perverted, angry, and destructive impulses is natural. It's human nature to forget that we're all connected, and that everything we do is eventually revealed.

     But life systems seem to find a way of reminding us of our error.

     All forms of life tend towards abundance, and will create systems within its structure that expose secrets and lies. We call these the canaries in the coal mine. Nature gives warnings and hints when we've reached a place in the web of life that's broken and let's us know that the very fabric of that system is beginning to unravel. Though technically the Internet is not "life," it does have a life of its own and within the network, a system of checks and balances and a way to sound the alarm has come about.

Wikileaks is a perfect example of how all things on the internet can and will be exposed. Consider it a neural network not unlike our own, with its unique systems for monitoring health and wellness. We can call it evil and say our technology is separating our society and ruining us. Or we can see it as an organic system, created in the image and likeness of us. Our technology is as good, and as bad, as we are.

    Ecologists tell us that the plight of the polar bear just might be our plight. Using the axiom of "as above so below" the plight of the internet whistle blowers should also be of interest to us. Those who hack into the internet and make sure the web is functional, whole and clean, and report back to us when it's not, are essential to the health of the network. Their plight is our plight as well. They're the canaries in our technological coal mine. If we exterminate them, if we decide to make them criminals, then the consequences will be felt by all of us. They exist to guard the web of data that has become the fabric of modern society, just like organizations such as The Sierra Club exist to protect the natural web of life that provides us with our resources. The two are linked by the human mind.

    Nature created us in her image and likeness, and we created the internet in our image and likeness. Therefore it behooves humanity to protect them both, our data and our natural resources, so that we can live full, interdependent, human lives. After all, "as is above, so is below."