 |
| Peter Diamandis |
The July issue of Wired magazine includes an interview with Peter Diamandis, who can fairly be described as one of the more prominent
technological enthusiasts on the planet. Among other things, Diamandis is a co-founder
of Singularity University, co-author of Abundance: The Future is Better than You
Think, and co-chairman of Planetary Resources, the company that recently announced plans to mine precious metals from asteroids in outer space.
The first question Wired asks Diamandis is whether he's always
wanted to change the world.
"No," he answers.
"My first ambition was to get off the world."
He goes on the explain that
he's dreamed since childhood of helping humanity become a "multiplanetary
species." We're driven genetically to
explore, he explains, but there's more to it than that.
"I believe we have a
moral obligation to back up the biosphere, take it off-planet, and give
ourselves the safety of ubiquity."
The phrase "the safety
of ubiquity" caught my eye. It reminded me of a comment by another of the world's
leading technological enthusiasts, Ray Kurzweil.
Kurzweil is the author of The Singularity is Near, which predicts
that by 2045 humans will merge with their machines, creating a new race of immortal
super-beings. He's also Peter Diamandis' co-founder at Singularity University. Among the many fantastic
predictions Kurzweil makes in his book is this
one, on page 29:
The law of accelerating returns will continue until nonbiological intelligence comes close to 'saturating' the matter and energy in our vicinity of the universe with our human-machine intelligence…Ultimately the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence. This is the destiny of the universe.
Set aside for the moment the
presumption that we can know the destiny of the universe. The question I would
like to ask Kurzweil and Diamandis is whether they've taken a good look lately
at conditions here on Planet Earth.
If they have, I would then
hope they might be able to tell us how they can possibly look forward with
eagerness to the day when human intelligence will "saturate the universe,"
and on what basis they could describe such a state of affairs as "the
safety of ubiquity."
Photo credit: The Guardian/Andrew Brusso/Corbis
©Doug Hill, 2012
Perhaps we will discover a more intelligent race!
ReplyDeleteExcellent, pressing questions we all should be proposing at the center of discussions on what's really possible in the technological universe with an emphasis on how Techno-Utopians such as Ray and Peter give us plenty to work with in terms of sharpening and strengthening a more pragmatic and realistic assertion of what life could be like in the technoworld of today and tomorrow.
ReplyDelete