reply to post by outatime
I suppose I have just reached my limits. There is only so much doom and gloom one can handle. I have thrown up my hands and I embrace the change.
This, however, I do agree with. To quote Samuel Clemens: "I've seen a heap of trouble in my day, and most of it never came to pass." Michael
Crichton said in a speech that there is nothing more sobering than a 30 year old newspaper. Pages upon pages of faces unrecognizable, names forgotten,
and concerns once of the utmost importance completely relegated to the dusty corners of forgotten history. Life moved on.
This isn't to say that we shouldn't be concerned about the future, but that we shouldn't work ourselves up into a frenzy of fearful inaction or be
too quick to make reactionary jumps at illusionary phantasms on the wall.
I firmly believe that humanity is getting ready for a cosmic kick in the pants up a few rungs of the ol' evolutionary ladder.
We? I'm not sure about that. I don't think evolution works the way you think it does. Technically, humanity cannot move up or down the evolutionary
ladder - if such a thing were even vaguely correct in it's description. Were humanity to move up or down a rung, then we would no longer be humanity.
Evolution itself, I think, will gain a substantial boost however. We are the first intelligent race with an imagination capable of simulating the
future and then working to create that future. We are in the process of building life (both mechanical and biological) which also has that capability
- as well as rebuilding ourselves.
I believe we will come to a point when our creations no longer rely on our explicit design to advance. Indeed, the process is starting already with
the advent of Genetic Algorithms. Life will experience an explosion in diversity similar to what happened after the advent of sexual reproduction.
This time, it will not rely solely on the harsh environmental selection and eons of time - but within a single generation. Multiple times per
generation. The life that advances from pretty much here on out will be that which can recognize the limits of behavior and morphology to it's
environment, and actively change itself to the environment.
I don't think what the future holds is anything close to what you're predicting. I don't think anyone has the slightest idea of what this will
ultimately mean... which is why it's called the "singularity". The point at which our conventional models for gauging trends break down.
[edit on 10-2-2009 by Lasheic]