I’ve just read a few highlights from an interview with Ray Kurzweil. Ray is a guy about my age who’s been one of the leading lights in computer technology from the very beginning, he worked on the very first multi-million dollar, size-of-a-house computer ever built. In his book, ‘The Singularity Is Near,’ he lays out his observation that the rate of development of todays technologies has passed the knee of the Bell Curve and is heading straight up at an ever-accelerating clip. This seems to me indisputable even though there are still some scientists who have not jumped on the hyper-speed bandwagon. 

I remember seeing a robotics expert on tv only 6 or 7 years ago saying that humanoid robots were no less than 50-100 years away from becoming a part of everyday life. Well, this very day, at some hotel in Tokyo, a humanoid robot is functioning in the role of concierge; smiling with a supple face and making polite conversation…and…she’s learning on the job. Indeed, AI (artificial intelligence for you tech cretins) is becoming exactly that…intelligent. 

So, back to Ray…the subject of this interview is the role technology is playing in extending life. He predicts (and he has made many accurate predictions over the years) that what he calls ‘longevity escape velocity’ (the point at which, for every year that you’re alive, science is able to extend your life for more than a year) is only 10 to 12 years in the future for the average citizen. Nanobots (little tiny-wee robots) will cruise through your body taking care of all the things your failing immune systems can no longer do, such as repairing tissue and regenerating diseased organs, sharpening up your brain and spicing up your sex life. 

Woo-hoo! 

Given all of this it is easy to believe that technology is, in fact, replete with nanobots and AI, about to invade our very own minds, or at least what we think of as ‘mind’…our thinking process, from random monkey-mind chatter to brilliant flashes of insight…all being informed and/or influenced by an external hard-drive…living, not on Cloud Nine, but in it. 

Just imagine it. In the future one of our big tech security issues will be ‘mind-hacking’…“Don’t believe a word I say, man. My mind has been hacked…I’m not sure who’s in control.” Aagghh! 

Well, that’s the dark side. 

On the other hand, we would all have perfect memory, and be able to access endless information just by asking a mental question. And we would all be ‘linked’…we would all know each other. We would become ‘Humanity’, a single entity, a great gestalt ( a unified whole having specific properties that cannot be derived from the summation of it’s parts). 

This would solve a lot of problems would it not?  Just think, if we all really knew each other, had access to each others thoughts and feelings, we would love each other. We would be incapable of attacking in any way simply because we would immediately recognize that ‘the best solution for all concerned’ is, in fact, the only thing that would actually work to keep us all happily trucking along through this brave new peaceful world. 

Heaven…Utopia. 

Could it be possible that we could create that? 

Maybe. 

But we’d all have to want it… 

And there’s the rub