On the Origin of Species (Part 1)

"Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is. "

-Albert Camus

You and I are examples of Humanity. Taxonomically classified as Animalia Chordata Mammalia Primates Hominidae Homo Sapiens Sapiens, modern anthropology believes we reached our modern anatomical norms approximately 200,000 years before the Common Era somewhere near the east coast of Africa. Our emergence was not the first time robust intelligence had walked the surface of the earth. In fact at the dawn of Sapiens, rival hominid species occupied nearly all other continents, the human family was extraordinarily large, accommodating a variety of sentient, tool-using apes.

As Homo Sapiens left Africa, we set about subverting the dominion of other apes and large mammals becoming the primary predator in all of the biomes we reached by 50,000BCE. In Europe, aside predatory cats and bears, we competed with our closest biological cousin Homo Neanderthal for supremacy of the food chain north of the Mediterranean Sea. The Neanderthal branch of humanity had endured and prospered for perhaps 600,000 years, crumbled in the face of Homo Sapiens' occupation of Europe, and 170,000 years after we emerged in Africa, the last Neanderthal perished in Europe. Details of this period of co-habitation are lost in antiquity, but it is likely that it included violent conflict, linguistic exchange and perhaps even spiritual and mythic interchange. Our species tho, did interbreed with Neanderthal, and incorporated some of their genetic distinctiveness into the species Homo Sapiens. Long hypothesized, geneticists confirmed this Gene Flow Event in 2010. Sapiens' sexual relationship with Neanderthal likely lasted several centuries, but a distinct population of Neanderthal survived until 30,000 years BCE. Because of our anatomical similarities, and ability to easily interbreed some scientists believe that Neanderthal should be reclassified as a subspecies of humanity. However I believe that by acknowledging Neanderthal as a separate human species, distinct but co-extant, and perhaps co-equal, we can establish a valuable precedent. Under these circumstances, the Human Experience becomes the domain of a multiplicity of forms. As we move toward a future in which we coexist with a variety of augmented biological humans and artificial human intelligences, interpreting our past evolution in this way allows us to acknowledge the fluidity of humanity across many levels of abilities and intelligences.

"Just what do you think you're doing, Dave? "

-Hal, 2001

Homo Neanderthal is perhaps the best known of our early Hominid competitors. But we know that there were others: The Hobbit, Homo Floresiensis, was famously discovered in 2004, and many off-shoots of Homo Erectus that emerged throughout Eurasia and Oceania. In Part 2 of the series On the Origin of Species I'll explore a second Gene Flow Event documented in this month's Nature and discuss why the lack of diversity in the modern human genome lends itself to speciation, not sub-speciation.

Warning: Obama's FCC Prepares to Dismantle the Internet

Events in Washington D.C. over the next several hours stand to have a profound effect on the Internet as we know it. The Federal Communications Commission proposed allowing internet service providers to discriminate content. The effects of such a policy could be disastrous, akin to the defacement of a Modern Wonder of the World.

Please educate yourselves, and call on your representatives in Washington, and to call on the President himself, to stand firmly with advocates of open communication, access, and connection. Visit this site for an introduction to the concept of net neutrality, and the stakes of the FCC's position. Please visit Save the Internet and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to see what you can do to get involved and help preserve the open and organic nature of the internet.

Der Welt

Do you know what ‘the world’ is to me? Shall I show you it in my mirror? This world: a monster of force, without beginning, without end, a fixed, iron quantity of force which grows neither larger nor smaller, which doesn’t exhaust but only transforms itself, as a whole unchanging in size, an economy without expenditure or losses, but equally without increase, without income, enclosed by ‘nothingness’ as by a boundary, not something blurred, squandered, not something infinitely extended; instead, as a determinate force set into a determinate space, and not into a space that is ‘empty’ but as force everywhere, as a play of forces and forces – waves simultaneously one and ‘many’, accumulating here while diminishing there, an ocean of forces storming and flooding within themselves, eternally changing, eternally rushing back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and flood of its forms, shooting out from the simplest into the most multifarious, from the stillest, coldest, most rigid into the most fiery, wild, self-contradictory, and then coming home from abundance to simplicity, from the play of contradiction back to the pleasure of harmony, affirming itself even in this sameness of it’s courses and years, blessing itself as what must eternally return, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no surfeit, no fatigue – this, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creating, of eternal self-destroying, this mystery of dual delights, this my beyond good and evil, without goal, unless there is a goal in the happiness of a circle, without will, unless a ring feels good will towards itself – and do you want a name for this world? A solution to all its riddles? A light for you too, for you, the most secret, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly? – This world is the will to power – and nothing besides!And you yourselves too are also this will to power – and nothing besides!-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche July 1885


Source

"The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster." - Adam Smith

Within 30 years, Homo Sapiens' capacities will include the production of automata that possess intelligence far beyond our own and abilities to interact with and detect their environment that by biological standards represent an evolutionary leap akin to that from an insect to a contemporary human. Fear not though, in the 1700's Adam Smith's dire predictions were made when robots existed outside of ourselves. The coming revolution in the fields of nanotechnology, and its myriad medical applications will see our biological needs tended to by machines on a cellular level. Complex circuits of molecular design will augment our biological neurons allowing for faster data processing, better data storage, and most intriguing and compelling of all, the ability to back up and copy the data which comprises our conscious selves. Artificial spheres in our bloodstream will outperform our erythrocytes by multiple factors of 10, allowing you to hold your breath for hours on end. Artificial photovoltaic circuits will embed in our retina extending our visual spectrum beyond the limits of our beloved ROYGBIV. Humanity will transform alongside our automata, and may indeed become indistinguishable from our 'artificial' brethren.

In 2060 conscious entities of entirely artificial construction will exist alongside technologically augmented humans and those humans who have chosen to remain completely biological. (Although some sort of technological immune system may become necessary for biological entities once the variety of artificial nano-machines reaches a certain level of atmospheric saturation.) We need not fear robacalypse. Homo Amplio will accommodate a remarkable variety of forms and abilities, and sentient robots will see themselves as and will be perceived as part of the Human species.

Emily Howell

“Why not develop music in ways unknown? This only makes sense. I cannot understand the difference between my notes on paper and other notes on paper. If beauty is present, it is present. I hope I can continue to create notes and that these notes will have beauty for some others. I am not sad. I am not happy. I am Emily. You are Dave. Life and un-life exist. We coexist. I do not see problems.” —Emily Howell

Emily Howell is an artificial construct programed to process linguistic input, compose music, accept and understand criticism, and revise her tunes accordingly. Is she alive? No. But is she sliding down an uncanny valley of intelligence? Yes indeed. And sliding beautifully.


More on Emily.

The Computational Limits of the Universe and Recursive Creation

Under current models, the Universe is finite. There is an 'end' in a temporal sense, because the universe began in the event we call the big bang. If you were to travel faster than the speed of light in any direction for around 13.7 trillion years you would a hit a wall in which the entirety of the universe becomes a fireball the size of an atom. (God knows what might happen to you or your craft under these conditions.) Because of this finite property the Universe has a Mass Energy Budget. There is an upward limit to the amount of mass and energy available in the universe. As our ability to organize matter into ever more information-rich forms increases, a profound question arises; Is it possible to organize the available matter and energy in the observable universe in such a way as to simulate the particle histories of the observable universe?

If so, granted thats a big if, it is possible that sometime in the far distant future our Homo Amplio descendants will create a universe simulating computer, powerful enough to model every electron in every valance shell from the big bang to the decay of the final muons. Turning such a device on might appear to the sentient beings who emerge from its computations as something very like a big bang. Exactly like the big bang, since that's what the computer would be simulating. If this is possible, yet another question arises; Can the sentient beings living in a simulated universe create a computer with their allotted mass energy to simulate their universe? And can this process repeat ad. infinitum?

In essence the question becomes this; Is the universe as we know it part of a recursive cycle of information? Are universes unfolding like a lotus tended by the hand of consciousness? The question has been grappled with by computational theorists for decades. For more see Digital Physics.

The Law of Accelerating Returns

Information comprises all we know and are. This maxim transcends most world-views and religious traditions, from Plato and Descartes to Thomas Young and Heisenberg, Humans intuitively know that information surrounds, informs, and composes our being. You and I are blessed enough to exist at a point in the history of the cosmos of ineffable import. Information at present is only sentient within a human brain, however that is about to change.

Natural Selection's effect on of the evolution of Humanity has diminished to a point no longer probative or relevant. Socio-sexual selection continues on apace, but lacks the urgency of primal natural selection and also is now rendered irrelevant. The technological innovations of the next century will impact the complexity of life (both biological and technological) in so profound a manner that its like has not been seen on Earth since the early Cambrian.

The very nature of Humanity will be challenged and redefined. Homo Sapiens mastered fire and language, and set our species on course to supplant biological evolution with technological evolution. In the next decades the effects of this shit will become increasingly obvious as our life-spans, healthcare and cognitive capacities become augmented through advances in genetics and nano-moleculer machines. Artificial beings with complex, creative, and emotional intelligence will join the Human family.  Humanity is about to be reborn. No longer Homo Sapien, but something altogether different. An amplified, expanded, and transcendent species: Homo Amplio.

For an in depth overview of this process see The Law of Accelerating Returns