Transhumanism:
Well, the king of Internationalist agendas, Klaus Schwab, wants to take us to the amazing new world of Transhumanism. Crudely, this means augmenting the human brain directly to the internet.
Kind of like..."Just close your eyes and you will have a cellphone appear in front of you. You can press the icons via your will alone".
The theory's not unsound. It is in fact partly demonstrated. There have been successful experiments where monkeys have learnt to manipulate images on a screen, quite accurately, with their thoughts alone. How it works: The computer reads the monkeys brainwaves, which then achieves the actuation. The monkey learns to control its brainwaves (though unconsciously, of course) and therefore develops an interactive 'language' with the computer.
Ok. The problem with brain-to-machine interfaces that use only brainwaves, is they're extremely low-fidelity - they have a huge noise-to-signal ratio. So, there's no promise for making brainwave-based interfaces more efficient than communicating traditionally, via your fingers or tongue. But that can change. If we install a biologically-friendly electrode into your brain, loaded with hundreds of hairy nanowires, then the signal-to-noise ratio can increase incomparably. And indeed, you should expect the brain to rapidly learn to communicate via the electrode interface, especially if the brain is young. In a highly plastic (baby) brain, neural clusters should quickly grow around the electrode, making the link intensely automatic.
The result? Let's put it this way. If you wanted a McDonalds coffee sent to you via a driverless micro-car, then you wouldn't need to talk with imagined words as commands (Note, words are not thoughts, they're only expressions of thought). The electrode can read your thoughts directly. Hence, you can just will a McCoffee be posted to your door, and it's done. Slobtopia? Yes.
To clarify: This is the same kind of communication people report on, who go through a near death experience (NDE). Like in an NDE, we can just communicate by thought alone. Using electrodes and an internet, there's no reason why the human brain can't learn to do this and bypass a spoken language. Our brains, if implanted from birth, would learn an automatic code via associative learning that can do away with the need for a conscious language. Our brains could also learn to manipulate robotic machinery as effortlessly as we manipulate our legs and arms. Indeed, in this model the internet becomes a direct extension of our nervous systems.
Is there a catch? Yep. A hole in your head, and almost certainly unintended consequences from so diabolically contradicting natures way. It might just make us all mad, especially if big brother overrides the off-switch. Exotic experiments like this can be a great idea for quadriplegics and the like, but I think the rest of us should be asking that they "keep it in the lab". It's not like we really need this technology just now. We're already a little too sedentary, don't you think?
Biological replacements:
Nature throws away anything she doesn't need. Every organism is stripped back to only what is needed for its optimal survival. In humans, we can see the progression clearly with a simple example. When humans mastered the ability to make clothing we lost our fur, and this provided some substancial advantages. It meant less lice, disease, and most valuable of all it gave us efficient temperature control.
Ok. Now look at modern technology and where it's taken us. Already we can see that we no longer need a mouth as we know it. Like a baby, we can survive by sucking on smoothies alone. So, in principle we should throw away our toothy mouths, and enjoy the reduced infection risk and absence of tooth decay. Our mouths should become a mere nostril for a straw, with no jaw, and we can chirp like a bird to communicate.
But that's just the beginning. Obviously we don't need legs anymore, so we should be rid of those silly things too. In fact, we don't even need our arms in the age of mobile robotics.
So how far can we actually go, given our technological status? Well, we could almost go to the level of a floating brain. And that's just it. The creature that's closest to that 'ideal' is not a human, but an octopus. The octopus has a huge brain in proportion to its size, with masses of neurons that run down its tentacles, and it is in fact an amazingly clever animal.
The octopus is a perfect candidate to evolve (with our help) to become a co-dominant species of this earth. It also has the perfect physical structure for space travel, which is its greatest value. Its biological needs are very humble and it can float in a perfectly protective liquid, supported from virtually anywhere. Its ultra-dextrous tentacles can seamlessly integrate with an army of mechatronic controllers, to manipulate the outer world/s with ease. Humans, by comparison, are a ridiculous and expensive mess to support and maintain.
So hear me, Klaus. With a touch of genetic engineering so to mix some human genes into the octopus, you would be better off leaving us humans alone and instead focusing on building Superpus: An octopus with human-like mechanical intelligence, that can then help manage and develop our planet and beyond. You'll get better results. Shrinking humans to their brain would take too long and the politics is awkward.
Humans can still be the gods of superpus. Superpus would be no threat. We can install a kill-switch into the superpusies brains to be sure they forever remain our anxious slaves. And then from there, life on earth can expand to the heavens via a millions-strong army of superpus-managed robots, that can terraform inter-planetary geologies and engineer new life to meet the demands of vastly different environments. And us traditional humans can go back to dreaming without the cellphones stuck in our heads.
-Andrew Atkin
