The Future…
One year ago, John Mauldin wrote 3 newsletters on Ray Kurzweil’s book The Singularity is Near. It’s about where technology will take us over the next 30 years:
When the Human Genome Project was started in 1990, skeptics pointed out that it would take thousands of years for the project to be completed at the speed at which gene scanning took place at the time. Ten years later, only a small percent of the total genome had been mapped. Yet a few years later it was finished. What would have taken hundred of years using late 80’s technology ended up taking less than 13 years. But it was even faster than that. One private company started with new technology and finished the entire genome in about two years! Today it would take even less time. The cost of scanning a base pair has dropped from $10 to only a few pennies. Within a decade or less, you will soon be able to get your personal genome scanned for less than $1000 done in a very short amount of time! (…)
It was easy for critics to suggest the Human Genome Project was a government boondoggle. They could simply look at the technology around them, the growth rate of the speed of new invention and extrapolate to a thousand years. They were incredibly wrong. It took the government project less than 13 years. It took Celera Genomics about 2 years. They finished at the same time. (…)
What is the singularity? Kurzweil suggests it is a future period in which technological progress becomes so rapid that it radically transforms humankind. The difference between human and our machines becomes less and less as we adapt to an increasingly technological civilization. Increasingly, out nanotech starts to inhabit our bodies. “To picture the singularity, imagine computers trillions of times smarter than Newton, Einstein and Edison inventing new technologies while continually enhancing their own abilities. Kurzweil argues that the Singularity will occur around 2045.” (…)
In the next twenty-one years we will see double the technological change that we saw in the entire twentieth century. At that pace, we will see almost four times the rate of change within twenty-five years. (…)
The human brain is a much faster information processor than even the best of today’s computers. But the regular doubling of computing power means computers will quickly reach human equivalence. Kurzweil estimates this will happen by the early 2030s. (…) The point is that over the next 20 years things are going to change faster than you now think they will. Much faster. The financial plans you are making, the business plans you project, may all have to be thought through one more time.
There are going to be opportunities which we can only now begin to faintly see. As time goes on, advances in health care, which we will visit next week, may make it possible for you to live a lot longer than you now plan. There is reason, as I will show, to think a lot of my boomer generation will make it to 100. Put that into Social Security and Medicare cost plans, not to mention your retirement plans.
A lot of what we think is science fiction is going to happen in the next 20 years. (…) Basically, the premise is that we will see as much change in the next 14 years as we saw all of last century, and that much change again in the following 7 years. In the next 21 years, give or take a few, Kurzweil projects we will see twice as much progress in human knowledge as we saw in the entire 20th century. And the pace will accelerate. (…)
Essentially, we are going to be able to re-program our DNA. The odds are quite high you are reading this on or got it from a computer. We all regularly change and update our computer software as well as new hardware. We would think it odd if we were required to live with 10 year old software.
Yet our genes are basically software transference mechanisms. We are stuck with the software of our ancestors, some of which does not work very well from our modern perspective. The fat storage gene, which once was useful as we needed to store fat because there were frequent hard times, is now creating an obesity epidemic.
But relief may be in sight. Researchers at a firm south of Dallas, now allied with Texas A&M, have figured out how to turn off the fat gene in mice. They can eat 3 times what they normally eat and not gain weight. I see a future where I can once again eat bread, ice cream and pie at will. It can’t happen to soon.
But while re-programming our DNA is one approach, it is not the only way to improve upon what Ray calls the 1.0 version of our body.
Another important line of attack is to regrow our own cells, tissues and even whole organs, and introduce them into our bodies without surgery. One major benefit of this ‘therapeutic cloning’ technique is that we will be able to create these new tissues and organs from versions of our cells that have also been made younger - the emerging field of rejuvenation medicine. For example, we will be able to create new heart cells from your skin cells and introduce them into your system through the bloodstream. Over time, your heart cells get replaced with these new cells, and the result is a rejuvenated ‘young’ heart with your own DNA.” (…)
I see this starting with nanobots in our bodies and brains. The nanobots will keep us healthy, provide full-immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system, provide direct brain-to-brain communication over the internet, and otherwise greatly expand human intelligence. But keep in mind that the nonbiological intelligence is doubling in capability each year, whereas our biological intelligence is essentially fixed in capacity. As we get to the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.” Kurzweil does not see this happening all at once. It starts slowly with a modification here, an enhanced ability there. (…)
One of the more personally troubling aspects of this seemingly relentless march of technology is how such technology is distributed. I suppose in one sense it will be no different than today. The rich will get access to life extending technologies first, and then as they become cheaper it will filter into other parts of human society. But when such treatments are available, when we are not only treating Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, but actually extending natural life apart from the fact that we have halted the progress of major life killing diseases, I think it will create a profound discomfort in society in the transition process. It is one thing to cure disease. It is another to extend life in general, or to halt the aging process.
Excerpted from John Mauldin’s newsletters:
Part 1 - The Singularity Is Near (introduction)
Part 2 - Solving an Old Age Problem (the positive side)
Part 3 - Aah, Brave New World (the dark side)
+ { 8 Super Powers backed up by science } + { Bionic People }
