We may already be more than human

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/08/2008 (6433 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For those worried about the future of mankind, U.K. author Brian Clegg has a simple message: We’re already living it.

Clegg explores our species’ evolution — biological and otherwise — in this intriguing new work of popular science.

Clegg specialized in experimental physics at Cambridge University, where he did his MA, and gained a second MA at Lancaster University in operational research. He’s also the author of popular books on math and sciences such as A Brief History of Infinity, Light Years and The God Effect.

In Upgrade Me, Clegg argues that since about 100,000 years ago, we’ve been essentially directing our own evolution.

The term Human 2.0 is a loaded one, as it’s been used by some, such as American immortality-seeker Ray Kurzweil, to mean the next version of the species, which may include cybernetics, gene therapy and organ replacement as methods to prolong human lifespans indefinitely.

Clegg argues that we’ve been “upgrading” ourselves for millennia with technologies we now take for granted, including such autonomous “tools” as dogs, artificial light, clothing, cooking, agriculture and, of course, weapons.

What makes Clegg’s argument so fascinating is the way he extrapolates developments up to the present and the future. Our ancestors picking up rocks to strike with led to an arms race that is still ongoing.

But it’s not all clubs and spears. “Writing as a technology was pivotal,” he writes, in that increased our innovation exponentially. As well, common languages such as Latin and English enable us to share knowledge, while mathematics expands our ability to think in the abstract.

Clegg writes with a good dose of humour and doesn’t fall for the futurologists’ hype over techniques for prolonging human life, such as cybernetics and gene therapy. He notes pointedly that “all purveyors of immortality are now dead.”

He also lightens the history and technospeak with pop-culture references, from the Matrix movies to Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. He’s careful to distinguish actual predictions from fictional dystopias, though talk of genetic engineering may remind some of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World.

Not all technology keeps getting better, faster. Space travel took a great leap and then plateaued, he points out; it’s scarcely easier to get to the moon today than it was 40 years ago.

And as for computer processing power, which has increased exponentially, it’s impossible to predict how long that will continue.

On the other hand, he also skewers nostalgia for the “good old days,” when all work was done by the sweat of one’s brow. People in the past didn’t revel in problems such as high infant mortality or work hazards — they tried to overcome them.

A major theme of his book is that we aren’t on the verge of losing our humanity with the next technological threshold; instead it’s “the pursuit of change, our ability to constantly enhance ourselves, that makes us human.”

This brave new world around us is the one we’ve made, for better or for worse. Clegg’s Upgrade Me is a thought-provoking look at how we got here, and where we might be headed.

 

David Jón Fuller is a Winnipeg Free Press copy editor.