Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/1161
69 WWW.HPLusmAGAzINe.COm 69 WWW.HPLusmAGAzINe.COm 69 69 It all begs the question: are our modifi cations rendering us more or less than human? …by nano-Hacking Then again, there might be systemic constraints to just how far tech will take us. Charles stross' Glasshouse offers a rare perspective on the possible consequences of nanotechnology: once we all rely on computers to back ourselves up and store ourselves for interstellar transit, those computers become the targets for a new level of informational warfare. In a world where people can be rebuilt at whim, murder is effectively obsolete. No one can be killed, but everyone is at constant risk of being hacked. suddenly you wake up working for the enemy, and loving it. selective memory erasure programs saturate the network and prevent any further development from crossing communities and achieving universality. History is routinely wiped, so no new wisdom can accrue. Once again, humanity is splintered into countless isolated physical and mental regions, and some of them respond by choosing to eschew high technology entirely, living and dying on the clock of some long-forgotten world. In other words, what we normally imagine as a linear continuum might instead be a wave of progress that ebbs and fl ows, a cycle of Light and Dark Ages distributed capriciously through space-time. by Hyperdimensional intervention The idea that humankind will be "initiated" into a new and higher mode of being by some other race of transcendental entities has been circulating for thousands of years. Perhaps there is a common trajectory for the development of sentient species, and we receive intermittent, minimally-intrusive guidance by those who came before us. It is an idea that has certainly found its way into common sci-fi discourse — be it through Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 or stephen Baxter's manifold. Were we to take seriously the growing ranks of exopoliticians, exobiologists, and exolinguists, this in fact is happening. Descartes was given his famous plane — practically the emblem of rational modernity — by an angelic vision. Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the double helix) and Carey mullis (pioneer of the Polymerase Chain reaction) both admitted to interfacing with LsD when their Nobel Prize- winning fi nds came to them. Crop circles form overnight in muddy fi elds with no footprints, bearing strange radiation signatures and seeming to encrypt dense information about the structure of the quantum vacuum and the movement of celestial bodies. This pattern is almost universal among species-changing creative eruptions (or are they irruptions?) throughout history; even moses had his burning bush. In every instance, these revelations drew our species closer to what we might call transhuman. We're "getting the message," but who is doing the talking? by natural Quantum evolution One option in particular seems to get short shrift by a community that tends to believe we will lift ourselves up into a posthuman order by our own bootstraps… but if the future even modestly resembles the past, then we cannot neglect the possibility that nature will do the heavy lifting for us. recent research at uC Berkeley and Washington university has demonstrated that photosynthesis is 95% effi cient because it uses quantum computation to retroactively decide upon the best possible electron paths. Johnjoe mcFadden at the university of surrey has suggested that this very same process may have been how life emerged in the fi rst place, and other scientists have noted similar, strangely intelligent mutation responses in lab cultures. egan's novel Teranesia runs with this new model of "smart evolution," suggesting that we may see posthumanity spontaneously self-organize out of the quantum superposition of all possible futures — as if good ideas reach backward in time to organize their necessary histories. Given the uncanny prescience of some sci-fi speculation, this might not be too far from the truth. all of the above As our options increase, humanity — and whatever else might call us their ancestors — will probably continue to take every form available: fl esh, metal, and software; post-linguistic and pre-linguistic; evolution by self-mastery and deus ex machina. If it can happen, it probably will. This is the world in which we live, and every step we take into the future makes that increasingly, painfully obvious. Transhumanism, as best as I can defi ne it, is the story of "and." essayist and evolutionary theorist by day, live painter and guitarist by night, michael Garfi eld is intent on demonstrating that everything is equally art, science, and spiritual practice. Links to his music, writing, and imagery can be found at http://www.myspace.com/michaelgarfi eld.