/Saturday interlocutor/ The 14th of June 2008,“KV”
Recently the world was shocked by the sad story of quite an ordinary South Korean schoolboy. After spending 72 hours at a computer game, the teenager died at the monitor (it seems from a hemorrhage in the brain). “Here! We warned!"- screamed those who had previously shied away from the computer too, seeing in it almost devil's gift. Well, let it be a gift, but what’snext? Wild fire is also a huge disaster, but does anyone suggest to giveup from flames?
Natalya KUROLENKO
«KIEVSKIE VEDOMOSTI»
There are people who rather relish the idea of a look into the future. My interlocutor has two higher educations (philosophical & pedagogical) and also secondary medical. However in his recent projects, oddly enough, just the latter of diploma received begins to help him more and more.
BEES IN OVERALLS
“How did I get on the wave of prognostication? The question is not entirely correct, says Kiev philosopher Emir ASHURSKY. - Just don’t know how to do anything else, for namely such I was born with my mindset. Perhaps you have ever come across the term “metaphysical intoxication”? This is when children since almost the very diapers begin to reason about high matters...
- And which did you imagine our future from the cradle by, Emir Emmanuilovich: probably, the bright and beautiful?
- Oh, just the opposite because I am a convinced pessimist. I'm sure, average in 300 years (although some people think that even earlier) long-awaited “big jump” will happen, i.e. transition of quantitative changes to qualitative ones. It will fundamentally transform both the entire earthly community and the surrounding nature, however, to an even greater extent - its “master". More precisely, the upcoming changes in the human phenotype will inevitably, of course, affect the structure of society. By the way, many people now for some reason think that evolution supposedly has already exhausted itself: talk, some well-known American scientists have even proved this in well-sponsored biochemical experiments. But nevertheless, expressly into their muzzle I declare: evolution has ended for the vast majority of living creatures, except for (!!!) Homo sapiens. If we talk about the new post-human race expected by many after the “big jump”, then at once several castes (the mostnoticeable of which should obviously be hackers) will structurally stand apart in those variegated ranks.
- Um... But why exactly them?
- Well, this word is basically pronounced with a kind of negative subtext implying all sorts of crackers of bank accounts and passwords. But I am referring here to a wider group of people (including, by the way, virtual-preoccupied youth whose typical representative was discussed in the very beginning of the article). In short, as a result of rapidly growing evolutionary shifts, hackers will even in their appearance significantly change. So, in vain the forecasts of pre-war science fiction writers seem for some people as caricatured-naive, for our distant descendants will indeed have a huge skulls and atrophied limbs. At least, some part of them which I now conditionally call gamers and hackers.
They will begin to live as separate units (with a well-established tight interconnection through a system of electrochips embedded in the brain), being completely devoid of the usual individual “Self” - not to mention genuine free will. That is, such a unit, it turns out, is akin to a single organism, ie. more likely to resemble a swarm of working bees (who if somehow would different from each other, then perhaps by overalls or special identification tags, but by no means quite natural for us appearance).
- And what will these hackers or gamers do?
- Well, needless to say, that about any computer games, virtual sex or hardcore-porn (as it is practiced at them now) here can be no question! That is, in the most severe discipline they'll lay oneself out hard on the domestic economy (and, possibly, for the whole inhabited cosmos). But since most of the terrestrial surface will already turn into an abandoned ecological desert by then, the newly-minted futuroids would go to live underground. for to work day & night there in special cells with maximum sterility.
POST-MEN & POST-WOMEN
— But I hope, they will have families, won't they?
—In no case! Although I tend to think that women as such will stay. However their appearance would hardly be distinguishable from a male (about the same as it is now at active bald-headed lesbians). And, naturally, they already won't have any love sympathy or drive for each other anymore. And even if something like that would begin to manifest, then will be immediately terminated (either hormonally or surgically).
But, on the other hand, women aren't, if you look at it, only aesthetically attractive: they reason not as globally as men, and besides their life values are somewhat different. In particular cases, their logic is yet even more effective than males. And by the way, they are also better adapted to needlework, which is directly connected to more precise movement coordination. So representatives of the former fair sex, I think, will still be preserved, though it might seem from the first sight thatthey, in principle, are not so necessary for such a closed in itself society.
— Oops, you reassured me: at least in some way the future generations will need us! But what distant prospects do you predict for these “children of the underground”?
— I am convinced that in the minds, dreams and realities of all posthuman castes, the Space expansion will come first. The spread of earthly (and indeed any!) reason in cosmos will be above all for them. Another caste will be involved in this too, namely those whom I call "epi-men". True, many futurologists disagree with me on that issue. Most of them believe that there will be no epi-men, and humankind will split into two branches: hackers and some god-seekers running away from digital community to the remote corners for creating their settlements. If, of course, similar corners still remain: after all, the computerized society will expand.But if there is enough room for such hermits, then evolutionary they will reach the caste of meditators. It won’t be many of them, but they would be the ones to preserve the appearance as close as possible to modern people.
Meanwhile as epi-men will develop further. By the way, this is purely my idea (and not even an idea, but rather a dream!). That is, the descendants of the current Homo sapiens who would join to neither digging in the ground neo-friars nor zombified techies will become a clear illustrative incarnation of epicurean development vector, where evolutionary emphasis is on the improvement of real human capabilities but not the ill-fated fusion with the computer. As you might remember, thoseancient Epicureans known to all of us preached exactly the pleasure obtained when the genuine social values were being realized - unlike gluttony, fucking or, say, listening to music (cause all that is quite base, alas)…
— But if even music, in your opinion, is the lowest need, then what can be attributed to the highest?
— Satisfying cognitive instinct! Well, of course, enjoy an interesting, full of impressions life as such, including own outer beauty or spiritual perfection and also the night stars, the morning sun, swimming in the river… But not at all from being tickled you by slaves day and night in erogenous zones. Naturally, epi-men will be also interested in conquest of Space, and even more - this will become an additional life stimulus for themselves. Here they are, in fact, will spread the good memory about an intelligent person from planet Earth across the endless cosmic vastnesses! Moreover, if even they are ever destined to turn to frail mortal dust, it would be only because of the slide from epicurism to notorious insidiously sucking hedonism.
CUTE ONES AND... THIEVISH
- But at the same time, as I understood, they don't intend “to puff" for the good of domestic economy too much, do they?
— It goes without saying - no! Moreover, they even will parasitize by feeding on its juices. After all, by most physiological rates epi-men will be head and shoulders above futuroids - so to say, the top of natural human evolution. Whereas futuroids is the result of technical one. But since they will have certainly to interact with each other, then of course, will begin to compete for the favorable ecological niches that have survived on the planet. Unlike meditators, who will try, apparently, to find a common language with futuroids: they will be atoning for elder “aristocratic” brothers’ sins before idols and deities, eating crumbs from the master's table. While epi-men representing a freedom-loving nature will not even think to look for such contacts: it will be quite within their power of getting anywhere and taking anything for themselves - due to well-developed abilities for levitation, hypnosis, etc.
— To thieve? But, in your words, they are so perfect and wonderful, how can they?!
— I guess, their moral level will be high enough (otherwise they would have died out) but just slightly different. Well, why not, tell me please, expropriate good things or delicacies from futuroids? After all, latter aren’t humans but perverts, a kind of product of fundamentally immoral way of development!
Epi-men themselves will be fully enjoying their live: particularly, care about appearance and also travel, cognizing the world around in all its variety and colorful palette. Though it will not do without current momentary problems either. Perhaps they will even have courts and punishments (up to the death penalty if necessary). But, if desired and behaving well, they will be able to get close to a happy unlimited longevity. And as for futuroids, everything can happen with them in different ways. Their supervisors will also be practically immortal, but there will be hardly more than a couple of such people. The rest (especially those who will have to come up to the polluted surface) would soon die out like pathetic insignificant may-butterflies.
For the sake of Space conquest (i.e. colonization of other planets) posthumanity will have to be able recreating its own kind. While, naturally, this will be doing without the help of notorious intercourses: let’s say, through mirror cloning. It is the way of replication of ready-made adults using an alive matrix and saving all the parental memory (i.e. avoiding any fuss with nappies, schools and kindergartens).
— Well and you think all these horrors will come on Earth already in 300 years?
— O, frankly speaking, that historical course of events is not very acceptable to me either. So I see the salvation only in the epicurean vector of planetary progress (because, though meditators seem to be also opposed such a depressing scenario but do this somehow passively, sluggish and inconsistent, as they are too far from science).
Now, summing up, I would like here to add a few words of own justification to avoid possible following attacks. Unlike sci-fi writers who catch their ideas out of thin air or performing simple linear extrapolations, I try to approach the analysis of the future with strictly scientific methods. To wit, I analyze evolution in detail from the point of natural systems. Because if you correctly transfer phases of development of nucleon, atom, molecule, gene, etc. on a man or even human society as a whole, you can see in the end what will happen to us in many years. This is precisely the peculiarity of my worldview. Therefore, if sci-fi writers have thousands of hypotheses and options, then I have only one,but 100% reasoned!
Reference from the “Kievskie Vedomosti”:
Ashshursky Emir Emmanuilovich is a philosopher, director of Kiev Institute for Scientific Prognosis, academician of MABET.
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