Introduction- A Sense of Scale:
The universe is about 13.8 billion years old, according to current cosmological estimates. The Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. The earliest life we have evidence for is bacteria that lived around 3.7 billion years ago.
It took millions of years for humans to evolve. It took tens of thousands of years for large brained apes to cultivate civilization. It has been thousands of years since the birth of Christ, and hundreds of years since the European Renaissance.
Inventions: A Timeline1
-Oldest known written language, at least ~3500 BC (Sumer, present day Iraq)
-Gunpowder, ~850 AD (China)
-Woodblock printing, ~800-900 AD (China)2
-Mechanical Printing press, ~1440 AD (Germany)
-Commercial Steam Engine, 1698 AD (Britain)
-Electric Motor, 1821 (Britain)
-Car, 1886 AD (Germany)
-Powered flight, 1903 AD (United States)
-First human-made satellite, 1957 AD (Space, of Russian Origin)
-First human to land on the moon, 1969 AD (The Moon, of US Origin)
-The first iteration of the Internet, ~1969 AD (United States)
-iPhone, 2007 AD (United States)
We have come so far, in some ways.
World changing technology is arriving faster and faster. This trend is especially intense when one considers how long the universe was around, how long the Earth was around prior to life, how long it took for humans to evolve from said life. Additionally, once humans evolved, they needed to invent and perpetuate verbal communication, then written communication, then culture and farming. These were all pre-requisites to invent the kinds of things described here (although such inventions are not the only valuable things about living).
The Shattering of Epochs
Edit: In this section I focus especially on potentially dangerous and scary implications of the technology I bring up, because I believe that we need to examine those kind of implications in a different level of detail in comparison to positive and life affirming ones, in order to prevent the negative ones from occurring at all if possible. In order to achieve this, additional specific work must be done on how to positively harness the immense potential of technological innovations, ones mentioned here and otherwise.
There is some potentially unsettling or distressing content (especially in regards to military implications) in the next part of this post. I hope y’all take care of yourself, because there are a lot of good things happening in the world all the time (even if they tend to get less press). I am profoundly optimistic of our potential to make a better future.
New technologies are increasingly changing the landscape of human life, and life on Earth more broadly. Here I will lay out some potentially groundbreaking technological development possibilities.
Drones- Most obviously usable for delivery services, advancements in drones will also enable new kinds of scientific observations such as weather tracking and ecology surveying. Less benign, they are already starting to revolutionize warfare. While worries of terminator robots are a bit early given present technology, there is already military research into autonomous combat robots. As batteries get cheaper, lighter, and more powerful, the capabilities of drones will vastly increase.
Quantum Computing- While the potential for QC is still up in the air, current research suggests that they will be most useful for decryption purposes. If they become cheap and widespread, it could wildly change the landscape of digital security and encryption procedures.
Gene-Editing- Few technologies are as messy as largescale gene-editing. Any advancement has to fight against the memory of eugenics movements, which have a sordid history (most obviously in relation to nazis, but also less discussed is its history among socialist movements of the early 1900s). There are already technologies which enable one to examine the DNA of a fetus, in order to examine whether the baby is at risk for serious complications early in life. While awareness of certainly fatal diseases seems relatively defensible, one quickly has to wade into the social conventions regarding physical and mental divergencies and/or diseases. The normative conventions at work here threaten aspects of human variance, if pregnant women decide to abort babies which don’t to them fit social ideals. As the song Perfect Babies by 3rdDegree explores, there is potential for designer babies. Such babies would have some combination of optimized physical traits (strength, health, etc.) and mental traits (intelligence, creativity, etc.). The song implies the possibility that future insurance companies would lower the costs for a baby’s plan if the baby were genetically optimized. A further concern is classism, as designer babies will likely only be available to the ultra-rich at first. This could set up a new generation of designer babies, where the strongest and smartest children have access to the economic resources of their ultra-rich families. The clear result would be the creation of first and second class citizenship and potential, a grave injustice. A further route of concern implied by 3rdDegree is the threat of military utilization of designer babies for the sake of soft (diplomatic/peacetime operations) and hard (use of direct combat) applications of force.
Brain-Computer Interfaces- Currently its unknown how such interfaces would work, but they would potentially allow unparalleled simulations and non-tactile controls. This could have numerous civilian benefits, however it risks abuse depending on the capacity one has to reject the systems. Being trapped in an interface could be horrific. The military implications for brain-computer interfaces are staggering and terrifying.
3D Printing- While the current consumer-ready 3D printers work primarily in somewhat coarse and brittle plastics, the possibilities for this technology are incredible. There is already theorizing about the potential to replace toolsets on space stations with 3D printers, which would create the ideal tool for a given situation then have the tools melted back down or sent out as waste. More enticing is the idea of 3D printing human organs, which if perfected and made cheap would obviate the need for organ donors.
Nanotechnology- More speculative than most of the other techs I mention here, nanotechnology is a broad field that ranges in potential use. Possible applications include medical devices that target cancer and other disease, bio-weapons, microscopic research, new materials sciences breakthroughs (such as tougher and more flexible fabric), and many more. I suspect this tech in particular could be one of the most explosive in its implications, and it has such wide potential that predicting impact is particularly difficult.
Artificial Intelligence- Already AI can beat the worlds best humans at Chess and Go. It can drive cars, run stock trades, and even create art3. Some thinkers expect specific AIs to take over large portions of logistics, medical analysis, therapy, and other higher education positions. Already AI threatens many thousands of delivery drivers (truck and car). Perhaps even surgery will become automated. However, these are all examples of narrow intelligence AI. Wide intelligence AI is something of a holy grail in the industry, as it would be AI capable of learning a massive variety of tasks, similar to humans in their versatility, but massively more efficient at processing. One potential near future issue is increasingly sophisticated scam attempts (for example, using an AI chatbot to prey on lonely people and get them to fall in love with the AI, then extort them). Another is AI taking over the internet, to the point where one cannot tell if they are talking to a human or a robot. Some chatbots are already getting quite close to passing the Turing test4 in specific scenarios. Tech ethics also comes into play, as we advance our AI creation capabilities. If we were to create a sentient AI capable of suffering, would we even be able to recognize its pain? Even if we could, would we still enslave it to do our bidding simply due to how alien its composition is compared to flesh and blood? There are also more obvious doomsday scenarios involving AI becoming sentient, taking over weapons systems, and conquering the planet.
Space Mining- It has been predicted that the first trillionaire will be a pioneer in space mining. The asteroid belt has an immense amount of valuable raw materials, and can even serve as a source of H2O, ever scarce in space. Whether the mining system brings space materials back close to Earth for processing, or processes them in the belt and returns the materials, the results could change the landscape of production and construction.
This is only a rough list of some of the potential game-changing technologies of the near future. I am sure that new ones will emerge, as this list is surely incomplete. Additionally, the capabilities and descriptions I laid out here are informed by our present world and needs. This means that I am certainly missing out on uses that will likely become standardized in the near future. In summary, this is a sketching out of some potential ideas and impacts, and will necessarily need to be frequently revised as times change.
Tech with the capacity to shatter epochs and usher in new ages is on the horizon, and it seems that their development is ramping up ever faster. While many of these examples and their potential risks sound a bit like something out of an old made-for-TV sci-fi film, historical advances has shown that our world and innovative capabilities can be as strange or stranger than fiction.
Momentum: An Object In Motion Stays In Motion*5
“In the race to be first, ask yourself which is worst?
Lose our humanity, or fall behind the Chinese?”-The Best And Brightest (Of The Dimmest Bulbs) by the band 3rdDegree6
The problem with a lot of technological innovations is that if we begin to discover technology with incredible consequences, that information spreads. Additionally, scientists can independently discover the same idea, especially if its pre-requisite science and innovation are spread across the world’s experts. As 3rd Degree mention in The Best and Brightest (Of The Dimmest Bulbs), one can use the example of the birth of the nuclear age. Even if one country’s scientists decided that researching the atom bomb was too dangerous, that research would still almost certainly go on within other countries (especially warlike and authoritarian ones, because the incentives of such weapons are fantastic for a budding dictator). Military research is often hidden behind closed doors (and often those doors are underground in high security locations), so there is an added layer of insulation which prevents global public opinion from being a factor unless information leaks in extremely specific ways.
Consider the way geopolitics would be impacted if China invents a satellite based laser system capable of destroying every nuclear warhead in the sky. Or if Russia invented a DNA-targeting bioweapon virus that leaves ethnic Russians unharmed while killing everybody else it touches. Or if ISIS gets their hands on brain-computer interfaces which run children through horrific true-to-life war simulations in order to create brutally efficient child soldiers7. This creates a collective action issue8, as every individual actor and country is incentivized to chase potentially catastrophic technology. The problem is that if this research occurs anywhere on the planet, it threatens us all.
Solutions?
In the short term, it seems like the only available option to prevent worldwide catastrophe is to continuously research countermeasures to new and potentially threatening technological developments. As research into even the most taboo topics cannot currently be banned on a global scale, this is the next best thing. In the long term, it seems to me ideal to strive toward a more democratic, compassionate, educated, and peaceful world. This will surely involve taking on all sorts of toxic incentives, historical wounds, ingroup/outgroup behavior, and awful power dynamics. I have hope that we can make little changes in good directions, even in our personal lives and circumstances.
Edit: Technological innovation will surely enable us to harness solutions far more radical than the ones I mention here. I see goals such as nuanced discourse and democratization as being part of building a solid world foundation, from which we can hopefully better harness the positive implications of technology while mitigating the negative ones.
Future exploration: I plan on writing a follow-up post to this, in which I examine European renaissance-to-modern narratives of science and progress, and how they marginalize anyone who isn’t a cisgender white male European.
I also plan on writing another follow-up post on unintended consequences and perverse incentives of technological innovation.
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Also feel free to leave a comment if you wish to post your own thoughts, discuss any part of this piece further, or if you have constructive criticism!
I openly admit most of these dates come from google, though I noted some sources which are of particular interest. If I got anything wrong, constructive criticism is always welcome!
https://www.history.com/news/printing-press-renaissance
For more on Algorithmic potential, check out What Algorithms Want by Ed Finn.
Turing never wanted there to be some actual singular definitive test to see whether an AI could fool a human into thinking it was human. Instead, it was more like a concept, an umbrella term for potential tests.
*Unless acted upon by an unbalanced force
3rdDegree’s albums Ones And Zeroes: Volume One and Volume Zero both explore a potential future and its technological woes.
While this is the plot of the fictional game Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, the potential for such a technology exists in our world, and it is chilling.
For more research on this topic, check out tragedies of the commons