The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (58 page)

R
AY:
Well, you can leave. It’s like hanging up on a phone call
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Assuming you still have control over the software
.

R
AY:
Yes, we do need to be concerned with that
.

S
IGMUND:
I can see some real therapeutic potential here
.

R
AY:
Yes, you can be whomever you want to be in virtual reality
.

S
IGMUND:
Excellent, the opportunity to express suppressed longings . . .

R
AY:
And not only to be with the person you want to be with, but to become that person
.

S
IGMUND:
Exactly. We create the objects of our libido in our subconscious anyway. Just think, a couple could both change their genders. They could each become the other
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Just as a therapeutic interlude, I presume?

S
IGMUND:
Of course. I would only suggest this under my careful supervision
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Naturally
.

M
OLLY
2104:
Hey, George, remember when we each became all of the oppositegender characters in the Allen Kurzweil novels at the same time?
³⁷

G
EORGE
2048:
Ha, I liked you best as that eighteenth-century French inventor, the one who made erotic pocket watches!

M
OLLY 2004:
Okay, now run this virtual sex by me again. How does it work exactly?

R
AY:
You’re using your virtual body, which is simulated. Nanobots in and around your nervous system generate the appropriate encoded signals for all of your senses: visual, auditory, tactile of course, even olfactory. From the perspective of your brain, it’s real because the signals are just as real as if your senses were producing them from real experiences. The simulation in virtual reality would generally follow the laws of physics, although that would depend on the environment you selected. If you go there with another person or persons, then these other intelligences, whether of people with biological bodies or otherwise, would also have bodies in this virtual environment. Your body in virtual reality does not need to match your body in real reality. In fact, the body you choose for yourself in the virtual environment may be different from the body that your partner chooses for you at the same time. The computers generating the virtual environment, virtual bodies, and associated nerve signals would cooperate so that your actions affect the virtual experience of the others and vice versa
.

M
OLLY
2004:
So I would experience sexual pleasure even though I’m not actually, you know, with someone?

R
AY:
Well, you would be with someone, just not in real reality, and, of course, the someone may not even exist in real reality. Sexual pleasure is not a direct sensory experience, it’s akin to an emotion. It’s a sensation generated in your brain, which is reflecting on what you’re doing and thinking, just like the sensation of humor or anger
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Like the girl you mentioned who found everything hilarious when the surgeons stimulated a particular spot in her brain?

R
AY:
Exactly. There are neurological correlates of all of our experiences, sensations, and emotions. Some are localized whereas some reflect a pattern of activity. In either case we’ll be able to shape and enhance our emotional reactions as part of our virtual-reality experiences
.

M
OLLY
2004:
That could work out quite well. I think I’ll enhance my funniness reaction in my romantic interludes. That will fit just about right. Or maybe my absurdity response—I kind of like that one, too
.

N
ED
L
UDD:
I can see this getting out of hand. People are going to start spending most of their time in virtual reality
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Oh, I think my ten-year-old nephew is already there, with his video games
.

R
AY:
They’re not full immersion yet
.

M
OLLY 2004:
That’s true. We can see him, but I’m not sure he notices us. But when we get to the point when his games are full immersion, we’ll never see him
.

G
EORGE
2048:
I can see your concern if you’re thinking in terms of the thin virtual worlds of 2004, but it’s not a problem with our 2048 virtual worlds. They’re so much more compelling than the real world
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Yeah, how would you know since you’ve never been in real reality?

G
EORGE
2048:
I hear about it quite a bit. Anyway, we can simulate it
.

M
OLLY 2104:
Well, I can have a real body any time I want, really not a big deal. I have to say it’s rather liberating to not be dependent on a particular body, let alone a biological one. Can you imagine, being all tied up with its endless limitations and burdens?

M
OLLY 2004:
Yes, I can see where you’re coming from
.

. . . on Human Longevity

It is one of the most remarkable things that in all of the biological sciences there is no clue as to the necessity of death. If you say we want to make perpetual motion, we have discovered enough laws as we studied physics to see that it is either absolutely impossible or else the laws are wrong. But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable and that it is only a matter of time before the biologists discover what it is that is causing us the trouble and that this terrible universal disease or temporariness of the human’s body will be cured.

                   —R
ICHARD
F
EYNMAN

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in.

                   —W
INSTON
C
HURCHILL

Immortality first! Everything else can wait.

                   —C
ORWYN
P
RATER

Involuntary death is a cornerstone of biological evolution, but that fact does not make it a good thing.

                   —M
ICHAEL
A
NISSIMOV

Suppose you’re a scientist 200 years ago who has figured out how to drastically lower infant mortality with better hygiene. You give a talk on this, and someone stands up in back and says, “hang on, if we do that we’re going to have a population explosion!” If you reply, “No, everything will be fine because we’ll all wear these absurd rubber things when we have sex,” nobody would have taken you seriously. Yet that’s just what happened—barrier contraception was widely adopted [around the time that infant mortality dropped].

                   —A
UBREY DE
G
REY, GERONTOLOGIST

We have a duty to die.

                   —D
ICK
L
AMM, FORMER GOVERNOR OF
C
OLORADO

Some of us think this is rather a pity.

                   —B
ERTRAND
R
USSELL, 1955, COMMENTING ON THE STATISTIC THAT ABOUT ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE DIE OF AGE-RELATED CAUSES EVERY DAY
³⁸

Evolution, the process that produced humanity, possesses only one goal: create gene machines maximally capable of producing copies of themselves. In retrospect, this is the only way complex structures such as life could possibly arise in an unintelligent universe. But this goal often comes into conflict with human interests, causing death, suffering, and short life spans. The past progress of humanity has been a history of shattering evolutionary constraints.

                   —M
ICHAEL
A
NISSIMOV

Most of the readers of this book are likely to be around to experience the Singularity. As we reviewed in the previous chapter, accelerating progress in biotechnology will enable us to reprogram our genes and metabolic processes to turn off disease and aging processes. This progress will include rapid advances in genomics (influencing genes), proteomics (understanding and influencing the role of proteins), gene therapy (suppressing gene expression with such technologies as RNA interference and inserting new genes into the nucleus), rational drug design (formulating drugs that target precise changes in disease and aging processes), and therapeutic cloning of rejuvenated (telomere-extended and DNA-corrected) versions of our own cells, tissues, and organs, and related developments.

Biotechnology will extend biology and correct its obvious flaws. The overlapping revolution of nanotechnology will enable us to expand beyond the severe limitations of biology. As Terry Grossman and I articulated in
Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever
, we are rapidly gaining the knowledge and the tools to indefinitely maintain and extend the “house” each of us calls his body and brain. Unfortunately the vast majority of our baby-boomer peers are unaware of the fact that they do not have to suffer and die in the “normal” course of life, as prior generations have done—
if
they take aggressive action, action that goes beyond the usual notion of a basically healthy lifestyle (see “Resources and Contact Information,”
p. 489
).

Historically, the only means for humans to outlive a limited biological life span has been to pass on values, beliefs, and knowledge to future generations. We are now approaching a paradigm shift in the means we will have available to preserve the patterns underlying our existence. Human life expectancy is itself growing steadily and will accelerate rapidly, now that we are in the early stages of reverse engineering the information processes underlying life and disease. Robert Freitas estimates that eliminating a specific list comprising 50 percent of medically preventable conditions would extend human life expectancy to over 150 years.
³⁹
By preventing 90 percent of medical problems, life expectancy grows to over five hundred years. At 99 percent, we’d be over one thousand years. We can expect that the full realization of the biotechnology and nanotechnology revolutions will enable us to eliminate virtually all medical causes of death. As we move toward a nonbiological existence, we will gain the means of “backing ourselves up” (storing the key patterns underlying our knowledge, skills, and personality), thereby eliminating most causes of death as we know it.

Life Expectancy (Years)
⁴⁰