The Director of The Future Planet Research Centre- David
Hunter Tow predicts the emergence of a new reality- Reality 2.0, based on a
combination of advanced Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence and the
creativity of the emerging human Superorganism
by 2040, as an essential step in helping avoid the potential destruction
of human civilisation.
A schism is emerging in the fabric of reality from a human
perspective.
This is not a rending of the spacetime continuum, but a
radical shift in the reality of human perception and existence.
On the one hand is our existing notion of reality- Reality
mark 1.0, governed by the four forces of
nature- gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism, that
have shaped our world since its birth four and a half billion years ago and in
which we as the modern human species have evolved.
Since our civilisation took off around 15,000 ya we have harnessed
many forms of energy – water, wind, steam, electricity and nuclear. At the same
time we have reaped the riches of the electromagnetic spectrum, using probes of
all wavelengths for communication and the exploration of our universe. This has
eventually enabled us to conceive a richer reality, to expand the old limits
limits and begin to throw off the shackles of Reality 1.0.
And then about fifty years ago something changed – something
profound; the arrival of computers that enabled humanity to digitise, process,
store and disseminate the information substrate of our world – both natural and
man-made, eventually guiding it through networks to a multiplicity of
destinations.
Eventually this networked information infrastructure morphed
into the global Internet and its acolyte the Web, enabling the emergence of the
current ubiquitous information world and a new reality- Reality 2.0.
Within this new reality things have been moving at lightning
speed. Basically our civilisation is rapidly taking a new form- becoming
increasingly digital. All human processes and procedures encoded as algorithms
and knowledge have been systematically digitised and at the same time have
become largely dependent on the Internet- the primary driver of our digital revolution.
We are in fact, through our social networks, smartphones,
tablets and future glasses, watches and wearable electronics, being rapidly linked
in a giant multidimensional network as one living system, co-dependent - sharing
a common computing/communication resource as one organism – a Superorganism.
And now the new Superorganism is starting to flex its
muscles, to create its own world, shaping it to its own needs. And our reality
will never be the same again.
The major enablers of Reality 2.0 include all forms of digital and virtual reality including-- Augmented
reality, Simulated and Artificial reality as well as Artificial Life and
Artificial Intelligence – all based on the power of The Intelligent Web Mark
4.0.
We may now have the genesis of a radically different Reality,
but it is still immutably coupled to our original Reality 1.0, because both are
governed by the same laws of physics embedded in the wider Universe.
If Reality 1.0 fails – so does Reality 2.0 and any future
realities, like a set of dominos – because the laws of nature such as Thermodynamics-
governing entropy and the conservation
of energy and information demand it. Our realities are small beer in the
overall cosmic enterprise, centred around one small rocky planet of which there
are probably millions in our galaxy, rotating around an average sized main
sequence sun along with 10 billion similar others in one of 100 billion spiral galaxies
in our universe, which in turn may be just one of a trillion others capable of supporting life.
So it’s early days in our evolutionary trajectory, but
already an extremely significant shift has begun for every human being.
This might suggest we are heading towards Ray Kurzweil’s
fabled Singularity- an unlimited technological nirvana in which our control
over the universe and its unlimited power will be itself unlimited. But reality
is never that simple.
Along the way there’s been a complication- Global Warming. And
global warming is about to put a giant spanner in human hubris.
Two thousand years ago there were less than 100 million homo
sapiens on planet earth. One thousand years ago still less than 300 million; a
hundred years ago a billion inhabitants and now the world’s population has
exploded to 7 billion, heading towards 9 billion by 2050.
Our use of fossil fuels has also increased, over 50 fold in
the last 200 years since the industrial revolution; but particularly over the
last fifty years-and that’s when things started to really get out of control. The
level of carbon in our atmosphere has
now reached the apocryphal 400 parts per million, most of which has been
generated by use of fossil fuels, the highest since early humans walked the
earth. And still our appetite for oil and gas and coal continues to soar.
Global warming or more euphemistically Climate Change
continues unabated, despite all the good works relating to renewable energy,
sustainable and conservation technologies. In addition according to the latest expert
analysis, we are depleting our planet’s resources such as food varieties,
productive soil, fresh water, clean air, animal and plant biodiversity and many
minerals, at a rate equivalent to 150% of its sustainable capacity.
There’s not much you can seriously plan for without
factoring the impact of global warming into the equations and models of the
future- whether it’s war or peace, food and water security, human migration, education
and health, engineered infrastructure,
social institutions and democracy. But many Governments and fossil fuel
producers still blandly play out scenarios which largely ignore or downplay its
impact.
As a result Reality 1.0 is rapidly becoming unsustainable
for human survival with the inevitable collapse of our civilisation likely to
be getting very imminent by 2030; just in time for the next generation, when
the cycle of growth in the major economies of the world will likely come to a
grinding halt and then go backwards.
In addition, climate change together with hyperfast
environmental and technological change is at risk of being amplified at the
social level by The Darwin Factor or Evolutionary Thrashing
Evolutionary thrashing is the sting in the tail of Darwin’s
Theory of Evolution.
Evolution only works when the system that is evolving, has
adequate time to adapt to its changing environment; by mutating its DNA in the
case of biological systems or by changing its planning and production models in
the case of manmade systems such as cars, in response to its customer’s needs.
Either way if the system doesn’t adapt quickly it usually dies or goes out of
business- which it regularly does.
In other words, evolutionary thrashing occurs when evolution
doesn’t have time to do its coping thing before the next wave of change occurs.
And if this keeps happening in accelerating
mode then the system will never be able to reach an accommodation with its
environment; which generally means it’s doomed.
In the meantime on the technological front there’s no
shortage of fixes for rapid fire climate variation, including new types of
renewable energy and more efficient methods of utilising existing energy
sources- even fossil ones.
All these fixes are largely now dependent on the ubiquitous
power of the Internet/Web and here’s the problem. This jewel in the crown of
our civilisation is now under heavy fire not only from trashing due to the
violent tantrums of global weather, but from criminal gangs and autocratic
regimes seeking to hack its vital knowledge. Without access to this massive
global computational/knowledge powerhouse, increasingly globally distributed
through Clouds and mobile technology, most of the R&D and production technology driving today’s applications
and services- from engineering to
manufacturing, to construction and
agriculture and communication, will falter and eventually implode.
Previous analysis in this blog has predicted the potential
risks if the imbalance between the needs of society and available computational
capacity widens. If global warming continues on its upward trajectory and the
cost of repairing the damaged infrastructure, both physical and social, continues
to escalate, eventually most of the earth’s remaining resources will be
depleted just in the struggle to survive and we will be left without the means
to overcome the basic problem.
It’s a vicious circle. Humans need to get global warming and
cyber sabotage under control in order to avoid its capacity to trash our
ecosystems and infrastructure, or else we lose the capacity to maintain the
core services of our fragile civilisation. But to get the impacts of runaway
warming under control and maintain our standard of living, we need to utilise
every advance in technology and creative computational power at our disposal, which
is primarily dependent on the Internet and World Wide Web.
So if Reality 1.0 is rapidly becoming unsustainable, how do break
out of this catch 22 and transition to a better life in Reality 2.0. How do we
prevent the quagmire of Reality Mark 1 from sucking the life out of our planet
and us.
The answer is very carefully, using the most advanced technology
and human innovation we can muster, from a meta vantage perspective.
Roman generals did the same thing. When they needed to get a
true picture of the progress of battle they stood on the nearest hill not down
in the chaos of the fighting.
Which brings us to the centrepiece of the Reality problem
and perhaps its solution.
Firstly we have no choice in this transition as a society. Our
current reality has been irredeemably damaged and is provably unsustainable.
This is not our planet’s problem- it’s our mindless stewardship of it.
So our attitude has to change. There is no alternative. If
we don’t reduce fossil fuel consumption a Venusian sauna climate will make life
a living hell for future generations. Our economic mindset also has to change.
It is locked into a perpetual growth/profit cycle which is demonstrably
suicidal. So our transition to Reality 2.0 needs to be radically but delicately
managed through a new meta medium and a new mindset.
This new medium or layer of social and technological change
needs to act as a buffer, allowing us to remediate Reality 1.0 without being
swept up in its carnage, while at the same time transitioning to a new level of
cognition.
That extra layer will be a combination of advanced forms of Virtual
Reality and Artificial Intelligence combined with human ingenuity and
compassion.
Artificial Intelligence- AI, is already embedded in
thousands of processes and algorithms including – the diagnosis and treatment
of human diseases, the optimisation of the design and production of artefacts -
whether electronic, biological, mechanical or chemical, with the capability to
become automatically more flexible through self-adaptation. AI technology is
increasingly based on many processes that are innate in nature including-
evolutionary algorithms, rule based cellular automata, neural networks, the
human immune system and insect search and foraging techniques.
At the same time a quantum leap in the range of the Internet
is about to explode through the Internet of Things in which any object equipped
with an intelligent interface such as a sensor or actuator and even a
brain/computer interface can be connected to the Web and managed as easily as a
Personal Computer or phone.
This will be a major step in connecting the world- our
original reality, with the emerging one.
Virtual Reality is also making great strides in creating simulations
of natural organisms and events from viruses to dinosaurs as well as
increasingly life-like gaming, providing a potential escape hatch in the form
of parallel worlds. It means we can already visit and explore the wonders of
this world without impacting its sanctity. It can enhance our ability to apply
intelligent solutions to simulate and manage the weather, harness the sun’s
incredible power, design exotic materials based on super-strong grapheme and
invisibility optics, perform remote surgery and space station repairs,
manufacture organs using 3D layering techniques, use virtual money and understand
mass human behaviour through analysis of social network data. We have also
started to create virtual life through the medium of cyber-agents, robotics and
synthetic cells.
In other words we are beginning to create a simulated
reality of our world and life based on the power of the Web and human
creativity.
By 2040 the power of Reality 2.0 will be hugely amplified by
the mind power of the emerging Superorganism – the connected brain power of 8
billion cooperating humans linked to the computational capacity of a quantum
Internet as well as an Internet of trillions of intelligent objects.
This may just provide the breathing space and intelligence
we need to remediate the damage we have caused to our pristine planet.
But it’s very easy to forget that all this promise is
contingent on the successful and ongoing reclamation of Reality 1.0 – the
avoidance of a hollowed out planet. It’s not a one-off. This will remain a
monumental challenge for future generations.
All our technological and social progress will be lost in
the blink of an eye if destruction from an out of control planet, short term
greed or ongoing conflict continues to dominate out future.
These are not sci-fi fantasies. Humans are quite capable of
destroying their future and have come perilously close to it many times in
their short history. It’s basically just luck that we’re still here.
But if we can finally extract ourselves from the day to day confusion
and focus on regaining the long term potential benefits of a sustainable and
peaceful world, eventually our two realities will seamlessly merge and our
future descendants will thank us.
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