Most of us are familiar with the concept of genes, which are basically strands of molecules which try really hard to replicate and, if possible, to suppress the competing genes of competing specie. Now apply the same theory of natural selection and evolution to ideas or "memes" (a term coined by Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene”). There are innumerable memes doing the rounds. They require human minds for their very existence and they replicate themselves throughout the population. Religion is a prime example of a virulent meme which replicates itself. There are many other examples, such as the ipod culture, or anti-semitism during Hitler's reign.
Today, with the rapid advance in science and technology, we are experiencing a golden period in terms of the tech solutions to the problems ailing us and society. Technological ideas and applications are termed as temes (a term that was first used by Susan Blackmore at the February 2008 TED conference).
Temes and memes are transmitted through language (spoken, written, or mathematical) and their very existence depends on the existence of humans. They replicate themselves, but only the best survive, very much like the process of natural selection in the natural world where the useless genes or the bad genes are discarded and evolution proceeds by selecting the strongest and the fittest.
Though temes right now require human minds to dwell in, the day is not far off when temes will be able to exist , develop and replicate without requiring human hosts at all. This will be made possible by artificial intelligence. In fact, the limbic system of a rat has been built artificially with modern computing systems. It is quite within our capabilities to be able to develop artificial intelligence such that it exceeds the performance of the human brain.
When that happens, temes would be able to survive in silicon processors and magnetic memory storage devices. I'm not predicting some “matrix” style doomsday scenario here, I am just saying that today, we are the dominant species on the planet and we disregard the rights of all other specie. We wipe out those that cause problems to us, and many specie have gone extinct due to the environmental damage that we have wreaked. We didn't do it intentionally, it just so happened that we needed food, so forests had to be replaced with monoculture, we needed metals, so mines had to be dug and so on. This is what is popularly known as “collateral damage”. Similarly, temes too would treat us with equal disregard once they are free of their dependence on us. Just like how genes do not care about competing genes if they are unimportant to their own survival (the case in point being the collateral damage that we have caused to innumerable specie in our quest to improve our own living conditions) temes too would not care about any of the organisms present here on our planet, unless they need the life-forms for some purpose.
This is not entirely such a bad situation. After all, the technology created by humans would have many human characteristics. The single most important factor that defines the identity of humans is the brain and the self awareness generated within it. So, it logically follows that humans will live on in the form of temes and technology as technology is nothing but the product of the human brain.
Another very probable scenario is if humans merge seamlessly with technology making one indistinguishable from the other. Artificial body parts today make it possible for the deaf to hear, the blind to see and the limbless to run. Soon, these parts would outstrip the performance of natural organic parts, because machines evolve exponentially faster than biological organisms. The blind will then be able to see in any spectrum that they wish to see in, the deaf would then be able to hear any frequency, the paraplegics would be able to run faster than automobiles.
We are all part of the technological tsunami, and we ought to be thankful that we shall witness probably within our lifetimes the dawn of the machine and the AI era.
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