last byte

Future Tense, one of the revolving features on this page, presents stories from the intersection of computational science and technological speculation, their boundaries limited only by our ability to imagine what will and could be.

DOI: 10.1145/1467247.1467273
Joel Garreau
future tense
Radical evolution
Technologies powerful enough to modify our minds, memories,
metabolisms, personalities, and progeny are powerful enough
to transform our own evolution.

in 1913, the

U.S. Government prosecuted Lee De Forest for telling investors that his company, RCA, would soon be able to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic. This claim was so preposterous, prosecutors asserted, that he was obviously swindling potential investors. He was ultimately released, but not before being lectured by the judge to stop making any more fraudulent claims.

With this legal reasoning in mind, consider the scenarios I describe here. They are not predictions but meant to be credible portrayals of possible near-term futures, factually grounded in computer-enabled technologies, all unquestionably under development today.

Flash forward 15 years. Look at the girl who is today your second-grade daughter. Imagine she is just home for the holidays. You were so proud of her when she not only put herself through Ohio State but graduated summa cum laude. Now she has taken on her most formidable challenge yet: competing with her generation’s elite in her fancy new law school. You want to hear all about it. But the difference between this touching tableau and those of the past is that in it, technologies designed to modify our minds, memories, metabolisms, personalities, progeny—indeed, what it means to be human—are now pouring onto the market. She is competing against all those with the will and wherewithal to adopt them.

“What are your classmates like,

honey?,” you say.

“They’re all really, really smart,” she says. How, she wonders, does she explain what the enhanced kids are like? She knows her parents have read about what’s going on. But actually dealing with some of her new classmates is decidedly strange. These enhanced students have amazing thinking abilities. They’re not only faster and more creative than anybody she’s ever met but faster and more creative than anybody she’s ever imagined. They have photographic memories and total recall. They devour books in minutes. They’re also beautiful, physically.

They talk casually about living a long time, perhaps forever, always discussing their “next lives.” One mentions how, after he makes his pile as

What really matters
is not how many
transistors we
connect but how
many ornery,
cussed, imaginative,
unpredictable
humans we connect.

a lawyer, he plans to be a glassblower, after which he wants to be a nanosur-geon.

Another fell while jogging, opening up a nasty gash on her knee. But instead of rushing to a hospital, she just stared at the wound, focusing her mind on it, triggering a metabolic cascade that caused the bleeding simply to stop. This same friend had been vaccinated against acute pain so she didn’t feel it for long anyway.

They always seem to be connected to one another, sharing their thoughts no matter how far apart, with no apparent gear. They call it “silent messaging.” It seems almost like telepathy. They have this odd habit of cocking their heads in a certain way whenever they want to access information, as if waiting for a wireless delivery to arrive; inevitably, it does. They don’t sleep for a week or more at a time and joke about getting rid of the beds in their cramped dorm rooms.

They are unfailingly polite when your daughter can’t keep up with their conversations, as if she were deficient in some way. They can’t help but condescend, however, when she protests that embedded technology is not natural for humans.

They’ve nicknamed her “Natural,” which is what they call all those who could be like them but choose not to be, referring to themselves as “ Enhanced.” Those with neither the education nor the money to consider keeping up with the exploding augmentation technologies [ContinUeD on p. 110]