paulchefurka | Humanity appears to be in the grip of a
global system - one that we originally created, but
which is now shaping our lives independently of our
wishes.
I've recently begun to suspect that humanity is at a
point of endosymbiosis
with our electronic communications and control
technology, especially through the Internet. In a sense,
we humans have incorporated ourselves as essential
control elements of a planet-wide cybernetic
super-organism. The precedent for something like this is
the way that mitochondria migrated as bacteria into
ancient prokaryotic cells to become essential components
of the new eukaryotic cells that make up all modern
organisms, including us.
To expand on the "super-organism" concept a bit, it
looks to me as though what humanity has done over the
last few centuries is built ourselves a global
cybernetic exoskeleton. Although its development started
back with the emergence of language and the taming of
fire, it's most visible in the modern world, and
especially in the last two decades.
Transportation systems act as its gut and bloodstream,
carrying raw materials (the food of civilization) to the
digestive organs of factories, and carrying the finished
goods (the nutrients) to wherever they are needed.
Engines and motors of all kinds are its muscles. The
global electronic communication network is its nervous
system. Electronic sensors of a million kinds are its
organs of taste, touch, smell and sight. Legal systems,
police and military make up its immune system.
Human beings have evolved culturally to the point where
we now act largely as hyper-functional decision-making
neurons within this super-organism, with endpoint
devices like smart phones, PCs and their descendants
acting as synapses, and network connections being
analogous to nerve fibers.
Just as neurons cannot live outside the body, we have
evolved a system that doesn't permit humans to live
outside its boundaries. Not only is there very little
"outside" left, but access to the necessities of life is
now only possible though the auspices of the cybernetic
system itself. (For example, consider living without
a socially-approved job. It's barely possible for a
few people, but essentially impossible for most of
us.) As we have developed this system around us,
we have had to relinquish more and more of our autonomy
in favor of helping the machine continue functioning and
growing.
While we can no longer survive outside our cybernetic
exoskeleton, in return it can't exist without our input.
I realized over the last month or so that this means the
symbiosis has already occurred. If I had to put a
"closure date" on it, the period where it transitioned
to its current form was around 1990 (plus or minus a
decade or so). We didn't even notice it happening - to
us it just looked like our daily lives going on as
usual.
I realize that I'm re-visiting an old, familiar
science-fiction idea. In reality it seems to have
happened through a quiet, "natural" process of
coevolution driven by the mutual amplification effects
of human ingenuity, electronic technology and large
amounts of available energy - rather than through the
drama of a Borg-like assimilation of humans into a hive
mind, or Ray Kurzweil's eschatological vision of a Technological
Singularity.
