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Progress ...
and progress came from science.
Fascinated by technological marvels
Technological advances have colossal potential for both good
and evil
The humanoid characters, in most cases, think and act like we do.
The Cynics any prediction anyone makes now will be either impractical or uninspired
When someone, first mentioned the microchip – he prophesied that ‘it will change all our lives’. The rest of us hadn’t the vaguest idea what he was talking about. |
Look through an old album of sepia photographs from the early 1900’s. There they are, our forebears, most usually posed in front of some cardboard Arcadian scene, doomed to manual or social drudgery and a rigid code of conduct and thought. Those placid, distant faces stare into a world, invisible and unknowable to us, of toothache, outside toilets, stale sweat and certainty. ‘The past is a foreign country,’ mused L.P. Hartley in The Go-Between, ‘they do things differently there.’ Yet the mid-20th century British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, looking back over a long life to his Victorian childhood, once reminisced that the great watchword of the turn of the century was ‘progress’. Progress – social, economic and above all scientific – was perceived as just that, the forward march of the human intellect, from which we would reap only benefits. And progress came from science.
In the 1950s the scientist knew everything. He (always he) was characterized in television advertisements as the white-coated authority, condescending to endorse ‘scientifically’ the latest washing powder. The very fact that there was television at all transformed not only people’s lives but also the way they viewed the world beyond the confines of their own community. The chirpy, capped, short-trousered schoolboy of that era, voraciously swotting up endless facts that ‘every schoolboy knows’, was fascinated by the technological marvels of the Festival of Britain and the new world that science was making possible. Meanwhile penicillin was rescuing many from misery and early death, whilst the contraceptive pill, no longer just a pipe dream, was about to revolutionize the outlook of, and for, women.
But the 20th century has surely taught us, among much else, that everything comes with a price; every schoolchild now knows that scientific and technological advances have colossal potential for both good and evil. Although the public have been aware, ever since Hiroshima, of the need to try to understand the implications of new scientific discoveries, it has only been in the last few decades of the previous century that the alarm bells have grown deafening. GM foods, mad cow disease and brain-scrambling mobile phones have compelled the most ostrich-like technophobe to question what might be happening in the remote and rarefied stratosphere of the laboratory. For science is increasingly not just on our minds but at the heart of our lives, encroaching upon everything that we hold dear: nutrition, reproduction, the climate, communication and education…The impact of science and technology on our existence, in the future, is no longer a whimsical excursion into science fiction.
Those sci-fi images of yesteryear now have an enchantingly amateurish glow. The Daleks in pursuit of Dr Who, the politically correct crew in Star Trek – even that ultimate icon, from Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001, the psychopathic computer, HAL – are as far-fetched and unthreatening as the tin-foil outfits and staccato jerks of the marionettes in Thunderbirds. The human and humanoid characters, in most cases, think and act like we do. They have similar sets of values and expectations, and the bulk of the appeal depends on a good guys/bad guys plot. And that is how most people used to see the future - not chasing bandits around the galaxy so much as still being human in a world of souped-up, high-tech gadgetry- a gadgetry perhaps of interest to some anorak-kitted nerds, but for the majority of us reasonable everyday fold to be taken in our stride.
But now we face a future where science could actually change everyday life any day soon; many think such transformations are already under way. Yet there are some – let’s dub them, without much originality, The Cynics – who do not see any point in dusting down the crystal ball. The chances are, glancing at the track records of our predecessors, that pretty much any prediction anyone makes now will be either impractical or uninspired.
Moreover, just because a technology is up and running doesn’t mean to say it will become central to the daily grind. One late-19th-century prediction of the future, for example, was that everyone would travel around in hot-air balloons. And on the other hand, unknown, unimaginable technology can catch us unawares: a picture of a domestic scene ‘in the future’ drawn back in the 1950s shows all manner of gleaming appliances, but no computers, let alone anyone surfing the web. Even a glimmer of the priming technology just wasn’t part of normal existence; it would have been a fairly impressive intellectual leap to conceptualize our 50-emails-a-day lifestyle from the standing start of clunky, expensive and essentially mechanical computers whirring and churning in their remote rarity in custom-made rooms of their own. And I remember a summer afternoon in the 1970s, lounging after a heavy lunch on a lawn with friends, when someone, a physicist, first mentioned the microchip – he prophesied that ‘it will change all our lives’. The rest of us hadn’t the vaguest ideas what he was talking about.
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The Cynics shrug that it is impossible to predict the big new scientific advances that underpin serious technological progress
They laughed at Christopher Columbus, derided Galileo, scoffed at Darwin and sneered at Freud.
Chairman of IBM:
‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.’
Yet we still have the same human brains as our very early ancestors.
For the first time, our brains and bodies might be directly modified by electronic interfaces.
'It is another one of those slippery slopes – there is no obvious place to stop.'
Another feature of future life will be conscious machines. . . .
If you can’t beat the robots, join them.
Bill Joy, began to feel anxious about the direction in which future technology was heading. |
The problem with thinking about the future, shrug The Cynics complacently, is that it is impossible to predict the big new scientific advances that underpin serious technological progress; meanwhile, how easy to be distracted by high-tech toys, the latest variation on an existing theme, amusing enough for escapist science fiction but not sufficiently innovative to restructure our entire existence and our seemingly impregnable mindset. Yet, as physicist Michio Kaku points out, the problem with extrapolating the future in the past – as with the hot-air balloon mass transport system – is that it hasn’t been the scientists themselves making the predictions. Now they are in a very strong position to do so.
However, The Cynics have long placed a trip wire on the track of human progress, even when scientists have indulged in flights of fancy. They laughed at Christopher Columbus, derided Galileo, scoffed at Darwin and sneered at Freud. A curious feature of The Cynic’s attitude is that he (and again it usually is he) thinks that science is on his side, backing up his sane voice of reason against the fantastic. In 1903 a New York Times editorial glibly wrote off Langley’s attempts at flight: ‘We hope that Professor Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time, and the money involved, in further airship experiments. Life is short, and he is capable of services to humanity incomparably greater than can be expected to result from trying to fly…’ And a few decades later, in 1936, when technology had become much more part of life, Charles Lindbergh wrote to Harry Guggenheim of Robert Goddard’s rocket research: ‘I would much prefer to have Goddard interested in real scientific development than to have him primarily interested in more spectacular achievements which are of less real value.’
Even now one of the most popular quotes for after-dinner speeches has to the the famous prediction of Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM in 1943: ‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.’ And if you had suggested to our 1950s schoolboy that one day his, or her, 21st-century counterpart would have no idea what a slide rule was, or what log tables were all about, they would have thought you utterly crazy.
But it still does not follow that this time, this century should be any different, in terms of the revolutions in science and technology that come and go. Yes, as we shall see, we may well have the technology for a disease-free, hunger-free and even work-free existence. But then, too, the values, fears and hopes engendered in a chilly, smelly cottage on a bleak hillside would have produced an outlook very different from one based on a 20th-century upbringing in a centrally heated suburbia shimmering with shiny, chrome appliances and unforgiving neon lights. Yet we still have the same human brains as our very early ancestors, who stumbled uncomprehendingly around on the savannah some 100,000 years ago.
For the first time, however, our brains and bodies might be directly modified by electronic interfaces. For a second group, The Technophiles, such a prospect is welcome. The electrical engineer Kevin Warwick, for one, would welcome the prospect of heightened senses, sensations and muscle power that being a cyborg might bring – as we will see later. And cyber-guru Ray Kurzweil is gung-ho for the intimate embrace of silicon:
There is a clear incentive to go down this path. Given a choice, people will prefer to keep their bones from crumbling, their skin supple, their life systems strong and vital. Improving our lives through neural implants on the mental level, and nanotechnology-enhanced bodies on the physical level, will be popular and compelling. It is another one of those slippery slopes – there is no obvious place to stop this progression until the human race has largely replaced the brains and bodies that evolution first provided.
Both Warwick and Kurzweil, not to mention other intellectual luminaries such a s Marvin Minsky and Igor Aleksander, along with various futurologists such as Ian Pearson and Hans Moravec, all take it as read that another feature of future life will be conscious machines. Kurzweil’s message is that our only future as a species will be to merge intimately with our technology: if you can’t beat the robots, join them. So imagine a spectrum of beings, from pure carbon-based (as we humans are now) through the cyborg silicon-carbon hybrids that we could become to the ultimate – the vastly superior thinking silicon systems that will be Masters (and again they will have to be male) of the Universe.
It was actually because he was eavesdropping on a discussion between Kurzweil and the philosopher John Searle, concerning the very question of computer consciousness, that the co-founder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy, began to feel anxious about the direction in which future technology was heading.
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