DO YOU care whether humanity survives to the year 3000? I hadn鈥檛 given it a
thought until I was invited to an extraordinary symposium in August funded by a
man who had.
Walter Kistler made a fortune in aerospace, which he now spends on getting
people to think long-term. He set up the Foundation for the Future, which every
other year awards the $100 000 Kistler Prize for research that helps us
understand the link between genetics and behaviour. This year鈥檚 winner was
E. O. Wilson, founder of sociobiology.
Kistler brought together a mixed bunch of scientists, futurologists and
environmentalists in Seattle recently to think about the future of humanity in
3000. Not that we were exactly representative of 鈥渉umanity鈥�, being mostly white,
American and male. Of the 70-odd participants, there were six women, one black
African and a handful of Europeans.
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Each group was told to work out the factors essential to humanity鈥檚 survival.
My group included Nobel prizewinner Christian de Duve, promoter of the 鈥済ay
gene鈥� Dean Hamer, and the man most associated with the race and IQ controversy,
Arthur Jensen. So plenty to disagree about.
Indeed, all the groups could agree on was that humans are in big trouble.
Take the idea of an 鈥渆cological footprint鈥濃�攖he patch of planet needed to
sustain a lifestyle. North Americans need twice as much as Europeans, and
Europeans many times more than almost everyone else. With 6 billion people on
Earth, and resources stretched, development for all looks impossible, and
widespread death likely.
But assuming some survive, what might they be in for? Genetic engineering
could change us dramatically and, knowing human nature, it won鈥檛 produce
millions of clever, beautiful and happy individuals. We could even end up as two
species: the gene-enriched and the inferior 鈥渘aturals鈥�. Enter the
nanotechnologists, with even quicker methods of modification. We鈥檒l have extra
memory chips, plug-in language modules, permanent phone connections in our
brains, and . . . stop! The arrogance of us all!
Through all these ideas runs the assumption that the future is human. But we
are only a tiny part of the evolutionary matrix spreading around the planet. And
that spread doesn鈥檛 stop with genes. We have recently created a new evolutionary
process: from language to writing to printing to the Internet, we have learned
to copy information faster and ever more accurately. So much so that it鈥檚 now
driving its own evolution.
The year 3000 could look very different indeed. Imagine a global brain with
information loops proliferating wildly, and servile humans maintaining the
infrastructure. Even with improved nanotech implants and GM, I doubt any 鈥渉uman鈥�
would understand much of what was going on: the Web of Webs would be too vast.
Or imagine avatars and their descendants鈥攑ure informational entities
living and evolving only on the Web. They, not us, would be the true space
travellers.
After four days we were no nearer agreement. But that might be the
point鈥攂y failing to get to grips with the far future, we may focus better
on the near present.