Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
to the field of biotechnology. With his familiar eloquence, physicist
Freeman Dyson has written about the branching of humanity into several
distinct, deliberately created new varieties, some of which are superior
to existing humans and destined to live on the moons of Jupiter and other
homes in outer space.
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The fields of computer science and robotics
have spawned a number of posthuman visionaries including Marvin
Minsky, Raymond Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, and Kevin Warwick. In
their projections of where research and development in information
technology will lead, thinkers of this stripe make it clear that humans
are no longer the ultimate beneficiaries of technological development
and are probably destined to obsolescence. In the larger picture,
“progress” in the hot fields of computer science and robotics is truly
for
something else.
On the scale of outrageous fantasy, robotics engineer Hans Moravec
clearly outdistances anything the biotechnology-oriented theorists of
posthumanity have proposed to date. In
Robot: Mere Machine to Tran-
scendent Mind
, he writes, “Today, as our machines approach human
competence across the board, our stone-age biology and information age
lives grow ever more mismatched.” The growth of increasingly “intelli-
gent” computerized robotic devices, he believes, points to the creation
of both new, superior, artificial beings and new worlds to house them.
“Our artificial progeny will grow away from and beyond us, both in
physical distance and structure, and similarity of thought and motive. In
time their activities may become incompatible with the old Earth's con-
tinued existence.”
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Moravec sees the eventual replacement of humans as foreshadowed
by ongoing innovations in the business world—changes propelled by the
quest for better service at lower prices. Phone calls are handled by intel-
ligent systems of voice mail; automated teller machines take care of much
of the work of banking; automated factories increasingly handle the
work of production as the contribution of human labor subsides. He
expects developments of this variety to spread, absorbing all significant
areas of economic activity before long. Even the belief that the owners
of the means of production are the ones who will guide these changes
and benefit from them is, in Moravec's view, woefully mistaken. Before
long, he argues, “owners will be pushed out of capital markets by much
cheaper and better robotic decision makers.”
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