As my birthday flies away I have been in contact with the theory of Molecular Bots or Nanotechnology. Just the thought of what could happen is very weird. Think about it for a second: Getting an injection that can make you dive without going to the surface or carry oxygen in tanks. Hendrik Shon started the whole thing even though himself was perhaps an impostor.
The cool thing, and scary by the same token, is that since this computing power is biologically based, it could reproduce on its own just as our cells do.
Economy today is not looking pretty, but I think that society is moving rapidly to a new era: the biological era. Using organic molecules to reach where the silicon chips can’t. The paradox is pretty easy to see: If we decide not to work with it we would face Moore’s law: Transistors made from silicon can get only so small before desintegration; this would lead to an ultimate catastrophy. On the other side, if we decide to use it, we could face a completely new generation of war, power, politics and life on earth as we know it.
The simple truth of thinking that the internet knowledge could be present in every human being would eliminate the system of “knowledge is power”. Obviously, the powerful would be the first to get their hands in these technologies, finally creating a monopoly of power. Hopefully power in the hands of good people.
Perhaps Nanotechnology is not currently possible and I ask myself: “Is our economic pursuit the doom of our civilization?”
We will find out the truth sooner than later.
Update in 2022
Nanotech and Biotech have moved into a new reality. We now have vaccines that actually modify our DNA and our mRNA at command. For example in the case of Leukemia (https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2022/mrna-vaccines-to-treat-cancer) mRNA vaccines have abilities not seen before. “Personalized cancer vaccines may teach the immune system how cancer cells are different from the rest of the body,” said Julie Bauman, M.D., deputy director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center.
In essence, human kind is now able to program the generation of specific proteins from cells. And therefore execute a very precise routine from the immune system.
So what is next? With the development of Artificial intelligence, and the concurrent development in non-silicon based technology, eventually the path for programming human cells with behavior that is “enhanced” will reach us. We can imagine a future where some people will have a system that is more capable than the rest of us. Whether it is a system that can resistant to sickness and disease, or a system that in essence has access to a higher “computing” power such as connectivity to digital resources would both be likely.
I can see a day when people won’t interface with technology via a phone screen, but instead through thought. They’ll be able to use artificial intelligence to make more informed decisions for example calculations or statistical inference where speed is important. For example, a human being that makes a decision about war would make such decision with access to higher intelligence and more accurate forecasting – that would mean a big difference in potentially the lives of millions of people.
In a Duke University study, (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/11/001116080512.htm) “One most provocative, and controversial, question is whether the brain can actually incorporate a machine as part of its representation of the body,” Miguel Nicolelis, associate professor of neurobiology said. “I truly believe that it is possible. ” Their study of monkeys and how the brain processes the movement of external machines and the feedback the machine gives to the brain is the beginning of the interfacing of humans directly with digital media in a non-traditional way. The monkeys actually learn and train their brain based on the feedback that the machine gives.
In the near future, people will have access to machines with much more information and computational power and interface with them as with their own bodies. Obviously, that would mean that such humans will have a significant advantage over “normal” human beings. If we add the advances in artificial intelligence in the last years, we could expect that any of this super humans would be for example able to play all of the top 20 chess players in the world and win against all at the same time. In essence, making games like these almost useless among “normal” human beings.
However, what would be the decisive factor between two “super humans?” Access to computational power. The human with access to higher trained models would ultimately win and therefore the ultimate value will be that of training data. Having the most sophisticated models would ultimately be the most valuable thing in the world. We’ll have to wait and see.
