In the future there are no lungs! (and heart and kidneys etc. but more about these later).
We would not need to breathe air (oxygen) because we’d be getting the Oxygen to our cells (for whom we actually breathe) directly through an oxygen-making source attached/embedded in our bodies.
No breathing needed, is no air needed is no lungs required. I’ll not dwell on this ‘ultimate outcome’ of Genetics-Nanotechnology & Robotics (GNR), but I’d sure like to share what I believe could perhaps be the implications of this.
Ultimately we’d not be requiring our environment, as we love to call and click it, anymore. And environment is air, water, other animals & plants (the latter, again, are important for the oxygen that they make for ‘us’),‘natural sights’ (as for the last one we’d be able to create natural sights virtually and they’d be as good if not better!)
All this could actually happen as early at 2045.
Pardon me if I am making this sound too simplistic but I am just trying to summarize the key resultants of the present day technology explorations in fewest and simplest words possible.
What role does environment have beyond Survival (oxygen) and Aesthetic experience (those poetry inspiring & relaxing sights!)?
Off late it has come to acquire one more important role – Return on Investments. People are investing (these are really big people)in eco-stocks because they see our environment under extreme pressure in the medium term (those melting ice caps are a part of this). The natural outcome of this warming of the planet & melting of the ice due to our present day over-abusive industrial behaviour would be a massive clampdown on environment degrading industries.
That would be the day when eco-happy/friendly companies & industries would have their real value be acknowledged by the fuming chimneys of present day industries.
But as I pointed out earlier, this is only in the medium term (20-years) because in the long run we won’t need non-polluting windmills just as much as we do not want smokestack economies today. Computation will ultimately drive everything that is important. This primary foundation for future technology thus appears to require no energy.We'd be able to harness the information(yes!) stored in 'seemingly' dead objects like rocks and even trees. (More in 'The Singularity is Near')
That, dear reader, would be the day when our existence will surpass our environment.
10 comments:
There's a school of thought (and I am a firm believer in it) that likens the cancer in a human body to mankind in the biosphere.
Cancer cells are rogue cells within the body that are no longer working towards the benefit of the entire body but towards their own selfish interests.
In my opinion, mankind is headed in the same direction - taking the rogue path and no longer working in harmony with Gaia (the entire biosphere acting as one orgianism, as suggested by James Lovelock.)
I can't help but think that if cancer cells were sentient beings, them coming to the conclusion "hey, if we keep at this, we don't need this frail human being in whose body we reside."
Opponents (or they actually proponents?) of GNR technologies (Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics)have been crying wolf for a very long time now.
Bill Joy (founder of Sun Microsystems) wrote a celebrated and widely debated article called Why the future doesn't need us in WIRED magazine a few years ago. While the article was widely discussed and lots of luminaries actually joined the clarion call, I viewed it skepticism.
I don't believe anything in our path suggests a future where humans don't need nature or vice versa.
The logic for such a conclusion is plain simple economics. You might be able to source oxygen without lungs, but the cheapest way to do so will still be the natural lungs we are born with. Why would we expend more energy and expense and take the more elaborate route?
As sentient beings we will, hopefully not too late, realise that we cannot contnue to function like rogue organisms. The West is beginning to go Green. In 10 years time, so will the developing world. I think you're being too harsh in likening us to cancer cells. A sense of balance will be restored. It must. We're intelligent because we know it must. I hope.
We won't need lungs because lungs age and our pursuit is an ageless body.
By 2045 we would be in a position to live for as long as we want to live which is another way to say that we'd live forever.
Dealth would not be an end any more. Instead, we'd have a 'duty to die'.
More interestingly the 'we' in 2045 would not be the same 'we' that we are today. By this date we will be as biological as we are non technological today
@UberM: I am not the only one who is likening us to cancer. Here's what Deepak Chopra has to say. In fact, a simple Google search will yield many many more voices.
We will no doubt slow down and become more environmnetally conscious. But will that be enough? I am not quite sure. I am not worried here for nature - it will carry on without us.
@Saurabh: I agree, that in case of lung failure - something like these 'artificial lungs' will come in handy. But nobody still understands what happens when the body ages - and in any case, it's not just the lungs that age. Our entire body ages - we have to find some way of controlling that. (The truth is that we are nowhere near understanding what happens when we age. WIRED magazine last month put together a list of 40 fundamental questions we don't have the answer to. Why do we die when we do? was one of them.
I am quite interested in your belief that the 'we' today will not be the 'we' in 2045. Even if that were true, would we know or be conscious of that?
Let me explain. The me 20 years ago is not the same as the me today - but memory, consciousness and this elusive thing called identity connect smoothly every single moment across my entire life. So for all practical purposes, I am the me I was then. Only a bit changed, but not something that cannot be accomodated within the idea of 'me.'
So, even if we change so dramatically by 2045, we'll continue to see ourselves as 'us.' We'll not benefit from a feeling of leaving the past behind - cut away and forgotten cleanly and neatly.
In fact, for all pratical purposes, we will be 'we' even in 2045 and for as long as a common memory unites us.
Finally, since you are so confident that we'll can be immortal by 2045, why don't you wager some money on it at Long Bets?
Blaiq, a lot of people may be likening us to cancer but if you say nature will go on despite the cancer that we are, then we are not the cancer. Cancer kills the organism it is found in. Nature will go on because we will find a way to make it go on, and us in the process. Thus we are not cancer. Ouch! My head hurts :-)
By the way, great wired link. It reminds me of some of the questions edge.org raises.
I also found in this question a very interesting take on the benefits of division of labour.
Also, Iq bhai in future our identity/memory/consciousness would be like the software that we save and carry forward while we upgrade the hardware like we do for the machines that sit on our palms, laps & desks..
Our 'self' would be freed from our physical bodies..
We would actually be freeing our mind & felings from our physical structures..
@UberM: Yes, there's a contradiction in what I'm saying.
However, all cancer needn't kill. Also, Gaia might not be an organism that adheres to the traditional concepts of birth and death.
Or, more likely - Earth and us might not be the only living experiments out there in the universe. We might wipe out nature itself - but 'universal nature' will still go on.
My preferred hypothesis, however, is one of optimism - that we will survive. And if we don't, that nature will.
True. Nice discussion. Thanks for this thot Saurabh.
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