Are We Slowly Adapting and Conditioning Ourselves in Becoming Machines, Next Step in Evolution?

Outside of your daily life, ask yourself if you really have got any need to remember any information about any random subject? I think in many cases, many would say no.

In the age of the internet, we have a web of unlimited information regarding unlimited subjects. With unlimited, I mean too much information that any human could ever absorb in the course of their lifetime, regardless of it may be useful or not. And what information is really that useful to sustain life, I would hazard to say that at least 90% of all information on the internet is useless when talking about sustaining life. We didn't need it a thousand years ago, but maybe it's important in furthering advancement of our societal structures and evolutionary pathways. But I digress.

Well. My maint point is that we no longer have any need to store information in our brains, the internet is slowly taking over that task. Sure, we have to look something up almost daily, but as the information is forever stored on the internet, we have no need to remember it for any longer than the specific information is needed. So, because you know the information is available to you at any time, you may be inclined to forget it after a while.

Is this a sign that we are slowly adapting and conditioning ourselves for the next step in evolution? Are we all getting ready to get plugged in to the system where we aren' any longer in need of the information, but where we ourselves _are_ the information?

I wrote this post as I was searching the internet for the meaning of life.

Disclaimer: The post is based on assumptions and written for the sake of argument, simply just to spur debate.

reply to post by Droogie

From a personal stand point, I love all the info you can get from the net. I have a hard time remembering things and I would forget my head if it wasn't attached to my shoulders lol. I am waiting for the day they can put a tiny flash drive in my head so information will actually stay in there for more than a few min. Who knows, when they do, maybe it will have wifi.

reply to post by Droogie

If I understand your argument correctly, it goes like this:

1. Thanks to technology, people do not need to memorize as many things as they used to.
   
2. Therefore people are remembering fewer and fewer things.
   
3. Therefore people are turning into machines.

That doesn’t make sense. Is there some part you’ve left out?

yeah.. it's gotten pretty strange. I'm not saying it's all terrible, but I definitely think there are bad aspects about it, both seen and as-of-yet unseen.

If someone had been frozen only as far back as 2003, let alone 1997 or so.. and were awoken now, I think they'd be pretty shocked at how far we've come (or gone?) in just that short amount of time.

I bet, what with the significant recent activity of the sun , that at some point our 3G/cellphone/GPS/internet grid will be compromised, and it'll make people realize how dependent we've become

reply to post by Astyanax


There may be shortcuts in logic in the OP, but what I'm saying is that it might be hinting at the first evolutinary step that the machines are starting to take over certain tasks our brain usually perform. And that humans may eventually become machines themselves, take that either philosophically or literally.

Why complain about machines doing thinking for us? That's good gives us other more important things to do. No one ever complains that machines are doing our heavy labor now do they?

It doesn't matter anyway, in the future our brains will sync with the Internet or something along those lines so anyone can know anything they want.

Our next step of evolution is going to be us becoming machines. We will have so many nano machines in our bodies keeping us in good functionality that death will become a thing of the past.

People say they only want to live to 100...ask them they day before their hundredth birthday and I'll bet they wouldn't mind an extension.

I for one cannot wait for this technology, which we are beginning to play around with, it will make any disease a thing of the past.

Pred...

was just thinking more about it.. and the GPS thing in particular has gotten pretty out of hand. I was just on a tour with a band that depended ENTIRELY on their Garmin/TomTom/GPS thing, and though of course it often made certain things easier, there were times when the GPS voice would be telling them confusing (and often wrong) directions to find a Panda Express or something, while they were busy getting frustrated, I'd just look up and say "there it is, ahead on the right"

Also I had a friend who lived in Los Angeles for several months, and relied so heavily on his iPhone for directions the entire time that one time it took him somewhere only a couple blocks away from home, his phone died while he was there, and he couldn't find his way back because he had no recollection of how he'd gotten there. Ridiculous!

reply to post by predator0187


I agree with what you're saying, that's most likely where we're headed, and I'm not complaining. Some scientists say it's within our generations reach in becoming immortal, or at least far, far older than our predecessors, who doesn't find that exciting?

not really mechanical machines, but definitely an upgrade that will make us seem superhuman? our brain is sort of like a radio that picks up signal, since we are in galactic night-time aka the dark ages, we pick up and see matter which is part of being in the 3rd density, when the frequency of earth gets higher and the galactic day time comes, our brain will switch signal and our pineal glands will be more active with the merge of the 4th and 5th dimension, my goal will be to seek more knowledge from other spirits and how to achieve my powers such as telepathy and telekinesis

I think we are already machines. Biological machines. Cognitive sciences are suggesting that from 95% to 98% of what we commonly consider to be a person, a self, is really patterned behavior, repeating behavior loops that are unconsciously thought upon or acted out.

Our main concern should be the on/off switch and who controls it. For millions of years our major on/off switch has been the sun. Switch it off and we deactivate, turn it on again and we spring to life, well maybe not spring.

Look at a crowd of people in a large city, waiting for a traffic light. The light switches and the crowd surges, it switches again and the crowd stops.

A burger joint pumps that friendly fun food fragrance out into the street, our noses twitch and we are hungry.

A tv commercial pitches a dinner special from the local chicken house and all of a sudden we want white meat for dinner.

A woman pushes into a pop up bra and half of us loose all semblance of consciousness.

Cornball though it was, the idea of the Eloy in Well's "Time Machine" offers a graphic suggestion of the robotic potential of humanity. Switch on and be the Morlock's dinner, switch off and they return to normalcy.

We can go on and on with examples of our already robotic behavior. Fashion, fads and trends. Where these used to be guided by the natural turning of the seasons they are now guided by the industries that that seek to manipulate our pliant adaptiveness towards their own benefit.

Our emergence into the world of bionics , a symbiosis of biological and mechanical and computational machines presents us with this continued question. Who controls the on/off switch.

reply to post by Droogie

what I'm saying is that it might be hinting at the first evolutinary step that the machines are starting to take over certain tasks our brain usually perform.

That commenced with the invention of abacus in 2500BC or thereabouts. It’s a bit late to be worrying about it now.

Of course, in every generation, you’ll hear a few high-profile Jonahs calling gloom and doom. But their concerns usually turn out to be unsupported by much evidence.

Personally, I don’t doubt that our use of machines affects our psychology and physiology. It may even be that some of the effect is evolutionary, although it is hard to see how. All the same, it is quite clear that our use of machines has no power to turn us into machines, just into a different kind of animal.

We are already on the way.

Some predict (truthfully) that we will one day we will have memory chips implanted that will have the capacity to store the entire database of mankind.

Information is mostly useless without experience IMO. I don't think you will instantly know Kung Fu like Neo or be able to perform surgery from your memory database.

They already have implants for Parkinsons victims to control computers and for all soon enough.

The end of the keyboard, mouse and button is near.

Users will be able to control computers using only their brains thanks to chips embedded in them, researchers said.

Scientists an Intel research lab in Pittsburgh, Pa. are working to read human brain waves to operate electronics using sensors implanted in people’s brains, according to a Computerworld report.

The move could eventually lead to the ability to manipulate your computer, television and mobile phone without lifting a finger.

Article

And cyborg memristor implants made from human blood using your bloodstream as a wet wire comms system.

Indian researchers from the Changa Education Campus in Gujarat have demonstrated a memristor made from human blood and are now planning the creation of other electronic components, such as transistors and capacitors, composed of human tissue. The findings are reported in the International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics. The researchers say the development of biological electronic components will facilitate the creation of artificial eyes, robotic limbs and other cyborg implants.

Electronic Components Made From Human Blood

Welcome to your creepy future!

reply to post by timewalker

I put it to you that these development are nothing more than a further stage in our evolution as tool-using animals.

But perhaps we should define our terms first. What exactly do we mean by ‘a machine’?

reply to post by Astyanax

I agree, unless the memristors are somehow replicated in the DNA sequence??

Possibility for mutated freaks.

Food for thought.

I think we are a part of the machines now! cyborgs.
people work on the computer
then go home and play on the computer.
on line games and virtual worlds like second life.
give you a machine world to live in.
you talk with friends by computers,
when we plug are brains (whats left of it)
in to the internet. we will Never come out.
and when you learn to multitask.
you can work and play at the same time.
then your brain gets hack’t.
you become a zombie for some one.
oh! that will be the THEM!

I don't remember what thread suggested it or mentioned other's suggesting the way they want society to develop is eventually into having insured machine surrogates to do our real life work, while our bodies are just stationary laying hooked up controlling them. (I think it was alex jones)

Either way, eventually when the technology gets here that finally pushes the buttons on what people are, the defense for staying biological will fall short. I'm talking about passing genes with adaptive nano technology! People will try to defend the sanctity of the natural body, but that will face the argument of whether technology isn't natural. And since technology is just an extension of human ability, birthing technology (literally), would be looked upon similar to how a parents pass immunity to certain diseases from prior adaptive gene changes.

It's transhumanism...I'm not for it, although many are...why? I don't know. If you look at the future, you can see where everyone could be transmuted into super specimens with perfect bodies and perfect looks...(no brain ..btw) No need for one. IDK...I get a bad feeling about transhumanism.

The unknown consequences of new technology are often horrific. Witness nuclear power, for example. We are not immortal, we are a bunch of naked apes playing with toys we don't understand. One of these days we are likely to stumble upon some new tech candy that really will do us in. I'd say its more than likely. Until then, though, we have no choice but to walk through the doors we come to not knowing what is on the other side. It is not the human way to stop exploring and learning, and even though it might be the death of us, it is also what gives us life.

The thread is taking a disappointing turn. Instead of discussing the OP question, everyone's posting their opinions about whether or not it would be a good thing.

Is it really happening? Does the replacement of naturally grown parts by artificial ones mean were turning into machines? Does our increasing dependence on technology to remember things for us mean we're getting ready to turn into machines? What is a machine? What is a human being? Can one entity be both these things? What about an animal? What's the difference between an animal and a machine?

Are we machines already?

Come on, ATS. We can do better than this.

reply to post by Astyanax


a machine is created for a purpose - to be used - as a tool

are we tools?

:-)

Come on, ATS. We can do better than this.

are you sure?