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And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey,
Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath
The frown of man; and tortured to his will
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,
And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms
Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves,
He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe;
And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;
and music lifted up the listening spirit
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound;
And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,
With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,
The human form, till marble grew divine;
And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see
Reflected in thei
He told the bidden power of herbs and springs,
And Disease drank and slept, Death grew like sleep.
He taught the implicated orbits woven
Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun
Changes his lair, and by what secret spell
The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye
Gazes not on the interlunar sea:
He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,
The tempest-winged chariots of the Ocean,
And the Celt knew the Indian, Cities then
Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed
The warm winds, and the azure aether shone,
And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.
Such the alleviations of his state,
Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs
Withering, in destined pain: but who rains down
Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while
Man looks on his creation like a God
And sees that it is glorious, drives him on,
The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth, The outcast, the abandoned, the alone?
Not Jove: while yet his frown shook Heaven, ay, when
His adversary from adamantine chains
Cursed him, he trembled like a slave…
Who is his master? Is he too a slave?
From Prometheus Unbound by Percy B. Shelley
“The experience of the last 150 years has shown us that life is subject to the same laws of nature as inanimate matter. Nor is there any evidence in a grand design in the origin or the evolution of life. There are well-known problems in the description of consciousness in terms of the working of the brain. They arise because we each have special knowledge of our own consciousness that does not come to us from the senses. In principle, no obstacle stands in the way of explaining the behavior of other people in terms of neurology and physiology and, ultimately, in terms of physics and history. When we have succeeded in this endeavor, we should find that part of the explanation is a program of neural activity that we will recognize as corresponding to our own consciousness.
But
as much as we would like to take a unified view of nature , we keep
encountering a stubborn duality in the role of intelligent life in the
universe, as both subject and student.
We see this even in the deepest level of quantum physics, “[1]
The Titan Prometheus
("forethought") fashioned man and brought fire from
In Genesis, Adam and Eve are created in a pristine
blissful ignorance, all needs, eternal life provided for in the womb-like
Garden of Eden. Eve takes knowledge for herself, encouraged by the evil
rebel Satan. In fact
God created a world, beings and circumstances that made these events
inevitable, and therefore in His own omniscience, He certainly planned to make
things go just this way.
Man, even in Genesis, was intended to have knowledge and all its
consequences. If in biblical tradition
knowledge is Satanic in Greek lore, it is Promethian,
heroic. Both agree that man, in acquiring knowledge and thought becomes god-like.
Surely experience teaches us that knowledge has good and evil
consequences.
In former generations man's level of expertise grew
almost linearly. There were distinct limits in our ability to know. Men in
other times were bound to the earth.
They knew nothing of what they saw as they stared into the sky, the true
extent of the cosmos, of other galaxies just our own Milky Way, that contain
hundreds of billions of stars. Earth's
gravity limited them too. Only recently
have men been able to fly and even to occasionally escape earth's gravitational
field. And knowledge was very limited in other ways, about our own makeup, and
how it might be changed, about the basics of biology and the biochemistry of
genes and how genes can be altered. Also
knowledge was once province of the relatively privileged few, while today it is
democratized. Everyone with a computer
and this will be just about everyone, will feed at the trough of knowledge as
libraries as we know them, become a thing of the past. The quantity of knowledge more than ever, is
growing exponentially, explosively. And
so mankind is escaping all limits all bounds, as in the past, but the likes of
which, quantitatively we have never witnessed before. On the brink of the twenty-first century we
have, ladies and gentlemen, Prometheus Unbound, not freedom only, that would be
relatively trivial, but knowledge and possibilities beyond bound.
What will happen when we truly are aware that we've
escaped finally the limits and gravity of the earth, that we gaze upon the true
magnificence of the cosmos, that once and for all we've thrown off the fetters
of our own biological limitations? No
one knows, nor can predict.
In previous chapters I explored biological and
neurological mechanisms that lay the foundation for our humanness. As useful as these mechanisms are, we have
found them wanting. Section one dealt
with various states of consciousness, unconscious and altered states of
awareness. Consciousness is a composite function involving various specialized
modules tied together by an executive. The anatomical location of this
kernel-integrating unit is unknown at present and the executive function cannot
be described given our current level of knowledge. A complete accounting of the
miracle of consciousness will require a basic revolution in our mode of
thinking. In section two we looked at vision as a model for sensory
perception. Again we had the
advantage that more is known about the physiology of vision than any other
sense. In Section three I explored
memory, as the simplest mental faculty, would be more difficult to describe,
given our current state of knowledge. Memory is far more complex than one would
imagine, as it is linked with other cognitive abilities. Finally the fourth
section dealt with executive function as an extension of motor or efferent
function. In all cases there was a lot
of very useful knowledge, yet there was the sense that mechanistic explanations
were far from adequate. The deeper we
got into physical explanations for neural function, the more we had to
learn. Any scientist would acknowledge
that they can't explain a lot of phenomena, but most would maintain that this
is only due to the deplorable state of our current knowledge, that given time
and enough hard work, "brute force" utilizing the scientific method,
scientists will slowly tease out the answers to all of our deepest mysteries.
Science is a temptress at once beguiling us as layers of knowledge are peeled
away, but when it comes to understanding of ourselves our fondest wish may
never be fulfilled or at least our deepest questions will not be solved solely
by the scientific method. As far as
humans are concerned there is more than meets the material eye.
Scientists are in the best position to appreciate
the limitations of science. Layman or non-scientists see science from afar.
Wowed by practical technological advancements and having limited understanding
of scientific techniques and methods, they tend to view science as an all
powerful extraordinary undertaking.
Scientists on the other hand, aren't anxious to give up their admiration
even majesty and mystique. With the
deepest respect for the scientific method,
I have come to the conclusion that there is far more to human potential
than will ever be revealed by science.
In this chapter we will make
a more advanced argument. Here we will
ignore the fact that scientific explanations are necessarily incomplete. We
will begin to observe that humankind has already ventured past biological
bounds. Previous chapters have scanned abilities and connected them with
neurological and physical principles.
Mental capacities are deeply embedded or immanent in biology. But biology does not explain all. Some
capacities transcend biological mechanisms, typically the works of modern man
in recent centuries and especially of recent years. This may be the very reason
that these capacities have yet to be appreciated for what they are, beyond or
transcending biology. One of the pivotal
concepts of theology is an immanent and transcendent God by which is meant that
the spirit of God is at the same time deeply situated in the world and hovering
above it. Leaving theology aside here, I borrow this useful concept for the
idea of humankind, embedded in (immanent) and at the same time, transcendent
upon biology, science, matter, mechanics.
A reasonable question is what drives a species to
explore new territory. Answering this question gives us a better handle on
human exploration, the desire to explore possibilities outside of the current
range. Is exploration of surroundings
beyond our own a purely biological
imperative which we fulfill so eminently merely because of the size of our
brain and use of superior mental tools also provided by biology, or is there
something more to it, a striving that is outside over and above what is
provided by biology?
To answer this we need to examine what keeps an
organism in a particular habitat and what are the forces that drive it to
explore other environments, from whence comes wanderlust? A given species of plant will survive and
compete best at a particular altitude within the dense lush growth of a rain
forest. It is well adapted there. Where there is abundant speciation, this
range of habitat can be extremely narrow.
On the other hand when competition is limited the range can be quite
large. Pines and maples compete
successfully within a certain latitude describing a particular temperature and
humidity ranges or alternately within a given range of elevation above sea
level. It is not as if maple trees have
not dropped seeds above or below this level, only that other species compete
more successfully because of more or less cold or heat or water adaptation or
due to different relationships with animal fauna.
Hominid forebears of humans adapted away from
apelike ancestors fit for life in trees.
Hominids favored the savanna and later the desert as bipeds. Pelves became
shorter and wider, the lumbar or lower spine longer, the arms shorter all in
preparation for a bipedal existence rather than a knuckle walking. According to new evidence, it was not a new
hominid line that separated from the rest of the apes, chimps, gorillas and orangs between five and seven millions of years ago.
Rather, chimp and human lines formed their own branch for a time separating
from other apes. It is said humans share
98 percent of genes with the
chimpanzee, our closest living relative,
but this depends on the method of reckoning for what constitutes an identical
gene. There are striking similarities and differences between the two species
not to mention the most obvious, that our brain is about 1350 cc. Compared to
the chimp's 400. A bigger brain of course comes into the world through its
mother's pelvis. She needs to be able to
walk as well as to give birth. Eve's curse for eating of the tree of knowledge
of good and evil "I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy travail; in
pain shalt thou bring forth children" is
literally due to bringing forth children with large enough brains apprehend
this knowledge. Our offspring matriculate in the real world. Since a pelvis capable of a reasonable ambulation
can give birth to a neonatal head with a
brain of not more than about 350 cc. and the adult brain of 1350 cc is some
four times this size, the other necessary accommodation to the excessive size of the adult human
brain is a prolonged dependent childhood, fostering the brain's physical as
well as mental development[2].
Men, apes and indeed all species fill their own
ecological niche. Time saw a progression
of proto-human forms such as the Australopithecines, still later Homo habilis, Homo erectus and finally Neanderthals and modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens.
After Australopithicus, the genus Homo separated on
its own evolutionary branch from other apes. The first upright hominids were
more adapted to life on a sparsely treed grass plain with their upright posture
and built better fo
Somewhere along the course of human evolution, the familiar
menstrual cycle replaced the standard ape estrus cycle. This meant women were sexually receptive most
of the time rather than only about twice a year during a brief period of
fertility. And the enlargement of the male penis and testicles, adapted for
increasingly frequent copulations. Sex was a bigger deal. These changes sponsored far more enduring
cultural ties, perhaps long-term commitments, and stable family relations
(either monogamous or polygynous). The growth of cultural relations in general
was probably the most potent stimulant for brain growth. The development of culture implies a
meaningful tradition is passed down and is in a communal repository to be built
upon and improved. Homo Erectus dating from as long ago as 1.8 million years ago
has been found as far afield as Java
Current evidence is that at
least the later forms particularly the Neanderthals, successfully radiated all
over the map, through the
But they were human in a lot of respects.
Neanderthals were extant from about 200,000 to 35,000 years ago. Their brains
were slightly larger than ours up to the 1500cc range, though we have no
knowledge of their brain's microscopical anatomy or synaptic relations between
cells and we can only conjecture even about the size of individual lobes,
Broca's and Wernicke's areas involved in language and therefore social function
. They were tool makers more advanced
than H. erectus, founders of the
Mousterian (for Le Moustier on the
As much as Neanderthals were thick boned and thick
muscled with big brows, modern humans
are thin boned or gracile. Our skeleton
and body are much lighter; there is more marrow, cancellous or latticed bone
and less heavy calcium with smaller muscles.
The earliest modern humans, are recognized by their gracile, thin-boned
less brutish skeletons, especially a thinner brow ridge, due to the fact that
the skeleton is what is left of them. Well before the invention of writing,
some form of culture probably spread out of
On the basis of expectations of only a finite number
of mutations in a small circle of 37 genes that is part of mitochondrial DNA
over tens of thousands of years of human generations you have an internal clock
in a sense which ticks in divisions of time, so many mutations per 10 thousands
of years. Observing DNA taken from current humans all over the world, one can
compare the variation in DNA which could only have accumulated through
mutation, and draw important conclusions, about the age of last radiation of
humans from their starting point wherever that might be to all other
habitats. The two important facts are
that the amount of variation between mitochondrial DNA between modern humans
would seem to place the date of modern human worldwide migration fairly recent
within the last 200,000 years. Another
very surprising fact is that the mitochondrial DNA of indigenous Africans
varies much more than the racially diverse DNA of all other locations -there is
more variability in
Most probably there were multiple separate
radiations of proto-humans over the
Enter gracile man, maker
of bone tools of many varieties, bead and stone necklaces, Lascaux cave, user of wood and of fire, cave dweller and
human art only some of which done for a practical end. Modern man radiated
throughout the known world. 40,000 years ago they went as far as
There are competing forces at work. Firstly there is
crowding and competition. We may reproduce until there is no more carrying
capacity in the environment. This holds for inefficient hunter-gatherers in
particular. A given habitat is capable of supporting only a small number of
persons occupying the pinnacle of the food chain. Ineffective hunting methods
with limited implements may allow capture of only the most vulnerable prey, the
slow the sick and the old of animal species that are themselves overpopulating
their habitat. Competition for food and mates may drive away members of the
community who will be forced to make their way in a remote location. The bulk
of adult males may wish to strike out on their own, forming an new family unit,
founding a new people because of, or in spite of, the competition. The great bulk of geographic radiation
results from the experiment that each individual of a species ultimately
is. Each person is like an individual
seed that falls from a tree. He will
land on a habitat and either survive or not survive, bear fruit or wither, much
as does the seed of a tree (perhaps with a higher probability of survival than
a plant seed).
Animal or plant, all organisms naturally radiate to
fill their niche. They are always testing the limits of that niche. Where there
are many species, as in a tropical rain forest, competing for lush resources
but trying to make a living in the same way, the size of the ecological niche
will necessarily be very small, but out on the tundra where less species
compete, the niche will be geographically larger. This is exactly the same
situation as competition in an economy between start-up companies[3].
The company in an economy is analogous to the individual in a ecosystem or
possibly a small social group, or better, a species. A crowded field will
produce many superspecialists, a phenomenon which we
see in computer or bio-tech fields in
Figure
1: Four species of antwrens forage
in tiny habitats in a lush Amazonian forest at specific heights above
ground. 10 species can occupy a single
locale[4].
Humans are unique as a single highly sapient species
that fills an enormous range of habitats and are distributed worldwide. Though
he may rarely choose to do so, a Scandinavian may easily breed with a
Hottentot. More importantly, as vividly illustrated by Jared Diamond[5] in his book The Third Chimpanzee although some human groups such as the
Australian aborigines may have been isolated and have had no exposure to modern
culture and technology, their intellect
will allow them to integrate into modern society within a short time and even
to fly our jet planes or operate machinery. Admittedly it may take them
generations to fathom the meaning of the new technology they have easily
mastered, which is the reason for so much war and strife in countries recently
given their own autonomy with decolonization but they may take advantage of
technological advances nonetheless. We are one species, the differences among
us are literally skin deep. Genetic
studies show that we have separated and differentiated only quite recently in geologic
time. Think of what might happen if the world were peopled with two or more
sapient species especially if both were as self-serving and bellicose as our
own. Or is it inevitable perhaps that sapiens should exist as a single
biological entity? It is quite possible that once we had close rivals,
Neanderthals or others that modern humans took out of the competition. Or
perhaps circumstances, a long chain of accidental circumstances led to our descent are so unique on earth, or
even in the universe. This is the stuff of the anthropic cosmological principleY . We are unique.
The natural tendency is for any species to radiate,
to expand its geographic and ecological base. This will make possible an
increase in population and make the species less vulnerable as well. A wide
base is more difficult to push or topple over.
Species spread out over a larger geographic area unless pushed out by
other competing species or if they are simply unfit for a different habitat or
if a boundary such as a large mountain of body of water prevents spread.
Perhaps mankind, able to compete in many directions is sort of a jack of all
trades while some other specialists may out-compete mankind in some limited
sphere of endeavor. Human genius overcomes most habitat limitations. We are
able to survive in the tundra or the
Humans, by virtue of their ability to adapt to
environments without having to make biological changes, with the aid of the
brain in other words that makes them infinitely more adaptable, were able to
survive in all kinds of climates and habitats.
They are widely successful because of not being limited by their biology
alone. Then there is the wanderlust, which is an intangible, the sense of
wonder about what lies over the next hill or the further horizon, curiosity
breeds success.
We can only theorize about what gave one group an
advantage over the other. They migrated o
Over the last 200 or so thousands of years, forebears of modern men radiated into diverse
climates very possibly emerging out of Africa, spreading the fertile crescent
and thence into Asia and earlier than 50 thousand years ago, into
Australia. This latter journey was
undertaken quite possibly on makeshift floating structures resembling boats by
inordinately courageous folks driven into discovery of new lands that would
support them.
Carbon and Silicon Wed:
Carbon Silicon
Figure 2: Schematic of
Carbon and Silicon atoms not
drawn to scale.
With Chemistry being a distant memory and unnatural
subject for most of us, few appreciate
the implications of the elements Carbon and Silicon. Carbon and Silicon on the
Periodic Table are in the same family of elements. Both have 4 electrons in
their outer shell. Electrons don't haphazardly encircle atomic nuclei as
planets orbit their sun. A star may have almost any number of planets of
different sizes. At the level of the atom we are in the quantum world. In the ordinary macroscopic world
You can easily see that that for Carbon with 6
electrons, four will end up in the outer
shell which is the same as for Silicon with 14
( Figure 2). Silicon has 3 shells in comparison with
Carbon's 2. Silicon is a larger and heavier atom with electrons furthe
In consideration of their unfilled outer electron
shells one of the things both Carbon and Silicon frequently do is bond with
four other atoms. In so doing Carbon or
Silicon will share an electron with each. A perfect atom to bond with is
another copy of itself, Carbon with Carbon or Silicon with Silicon each
achieving the happy status of 8 electrons in its outer shelly . Either Carbon or Silicon will form a perfect
crystal by latticing in this way as can be seen in Figure 3.
Figure 3: The crystal lattices of Carbon and Silicon are
similar- By sharing electrons each element gets
8 elecctrons in its outer shell.
Carbon is a social element. It bonds with itself extensively and most
importantly not as a crystal lattice structure as illustrated above but in
chains of double and single bonds Carbon also associates extensively with
other elements, particularly Oxygen, Nitrogen, Sulfur and so forth, even with
metals such as iron in hemoglobin.
Carbon's repertoire of covalent bond association is truly amazing. This is organic chemistry of course, the chemistry of life. It's important to
realize that all of this, all life, is made possible by chemistry and physics,
the quantum properties of the element Carbon.
If Silicon is the same as Carbon, then why is there
not Silicon based organic chemistry, Silicon life? This is the stuff of science fiction. Maybe somewhere on our planet, perhaps on
other worlds there might be organisms based on Silicon chemistry. Well, Silicon is not the same as Carbon.
Silicon can form chains with itself but partly owing to the larger size of the
silicon atom, Silicon-Silicon chains are unfortunately not very stable. By
virtue of its being a larger atom and because of other properties of
chemical bonding Silicon life does not appear to be possible.
Just one example is in the way Silicon bonds with Oxygen. Carbon and oxygen associate extensively and
in a variety of ways. The simplest
relationship is Carbon dioxide, a gas whose properties are taken advantage
extensively in organisms in energy storage and respiration. CO2
is cycled by plants which fix it in sugars that store energy for
almost all forms of life and produced in the respiration of animals and
plants. SiO2 , Silicon
dioxide, is totally different. It is a solid, not fit for any respiratory
cycle, a crystal, the formula for glass, sand, and quartz. Carbon dioxide has a
double bond between Oxygen and Carbon, Silicon Dioxide a single bond and it
forms another stable crystal lattice (Figure 4).
Figure 4 Silicon dioxide is the formula for glass. sand, and
quartz. It has a hard crystalline structure in in which Si bonds with O with a
single bond in contradistinction with Carbon Dioxide which is a gas with double
bonds to O.
The Silicon crystal lattice has other interesting
properties that make it useful. It forms
the basis the current semiconductor industry, the heart of computer electronics. As we have seen the Silicon crystal lattice
is essentially the same as Carbon's.
Life does not utilize Carbon crystals, but takes advantage of Carbon
chains. Silicon crystals on the other
hand lay the basis for the semiconductor industry. Silicon wafers may be 'doped'
with impurities especially Boron, with just 3 electrons in its outer shell, and
with Phosphorus, with 5. The impurities add an extra electron freely mobile within the structure in the case of
Phosphorus doping making it negative (N-Type Silicon). Boron doping will create a deficiency of one
electron giving a free positive charge (P-type) which given the motility of
negatively charged electrons will create a semi-conductor, the basis of all
computers.(Figure 5)
Figure 5: Silicon crystal may be "doped" with
phosphorus which has a fifth electron in its outer shell, or with Boron with 3 electrons. The free
extra or deficient electron creates a negative or positive charge freely mobile inside the crystal making it a
semiconductor.
The interesting part of all of this is that P and N
type silicon are conjoined to replicate electronic components, diodes that
allow current to flow in only one direction, and most importantly transistors,
which act as electronic switches. Transistors acting as switches or gates are
always either in an open or a closed state, allowing or disallowing the flow of
current. This is the binary state as
discussed in Chapter one of the computer which processes series of 1's and
zeros in binary code, also to some extent neurons too, which at any time are
either firing or not firing. Other impurities including Germanium, and other
elements and even Carbon, can be added to the Silicon crystal lattice or wafer
which may be used to make the wafer size even smaller and enhance electrical
and storage properties. This aspect of materials science, the creation of a
better Silicon device is explored mainly in
Transistors replaced vacuum tubes, which served the
same function, during the 1950's. I
recall going with my dad to the drugstore to get vacuum tubes tested. We'd
suspect a tube was blown when a table radio or television stopped working
and a tube didn't glow. Usually we were right. When I was very young
transistors replaced vacuum tubes. Transistors were a lot more reliable and
never had to be replaced. Transisto
The very first computers were mechanical not
electrical contrivances. They were bulky
and could only do limited calculations due to errors in mechanically setting
dials and gears and the inherent slowness in mechanical gear motions. Mechanical computers are analog devices with
inherent inaccuracies. When you look at
your analog watch with hands that point at the time, you can only estimate the
exact time. Inaccuracies will multiply with a large number of arithmetic
operations in any analog mechanical computer.
The great mathematician Wilhelm
Leibniz the co-inventor of Calculus, built a mechanical computing machine in
1672 , writing presciently, "For it is unworthy of excellent men to lose
hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could safely be relegated
to anyone else if machines were used."
The first modern computers were conceived in the early 1940s used to
figure artillery shell trajectories. The Mark I used electromechanical relays
as on-off switches that opened and closed utilizing an electromagnet, a relay.
The machine was useful but slow because of its mechanical nature. What was needed was a pure electrical
device. The next advance was to replace
mechanical switches with vacuum tubes. As we have seen the ENIAC computer used
in the war effort to help develop the H-Bomb had 17,468 vacuum tubes and
weighed 30 tons. The computer size decreased, speed, power, and economy
increased with advancements of methodology and hardware. The invention of the transistor was a
revolution. Transistors are much
smaller, more reliable and generate less heat.
Next came integrated circuits in the '70s and '80s and finally the
Silicon microprocessor. Computer speed is measured in FLOP's
, floating point operations per second. The Mark one could do one operation in
3 seconds working at the speed of .3 flops whereas the fastest modern computers
work in the teraflop range (1 trillion flops). This increased speed derives roughly from product of the number of switches and the
speed of switching. Computers with 10's
of thousands of transistors became possible with the demise of the vacuum tube.
But the biggest advance was the microchip made of Silicon on which you could
place the equivalent of thousands of transistors in a small space. A simple
flat transistor element may consist of a juxtaposition of N-P-N or P-N-P
Silicon on a wafer. Complex circuits could be etched on wafers and mass
produced. Parallel arrays of Silicon be
used to create machines with incredible computing power[6].
Tiny light beams of different electromagnetic frequencies etch smaller and
smaller patterns on modern Silicon wafers and there is a race to develop and
use this technology to mass-produce smaller chips with the equivalent of
millions of flat transistors.
We all know
what modern computers can do. Younger persons can barely imagine life without
them. Elementary mathematics curricula
use calculators. Consequently some
children are not able to calculate without a machine. But we all depend on
computers in our daily lives. They
extend and expand our abilities. Even if
we can figure things out on our own,
especially if we can, calculators do figures much faster and free our
minds for more abstract tasks. For advanced students of mathematics the
scientific calculator is commonplace and leverages abilities. Task specific machines are analogous to other
machines which extend abilities and function as tools. A man can't run very
fast but is able to travel faster than the speed of sound in an airplane. While
our body limits us, we can only get our legs to propel us so fast, still we
dream of making past these limitations
and our will takes us so much farther in
a lot of instances. A man is quite
limited in his ability to dig
foundations but this task is made amazingly easy with heavy equipment. The
computer is no different. It's becoming an indispensable tool. Those who have
it and have more powerful than those who don't and so computers proliferate.
There are those with advantages of wealth and other comparisons of cognitive
power. There are two kinds of persons,
those who have computers and those who don’t.
The haves will outcompete the have-nots every
time. Armed with computers humans learn
faster and will undoubtedly out-compete those who don't in such diverse areas
of endeavor as learning, business and
war. Men with the most modern tools
will generally perform better in the same way that an army with modern weapons,
an air force with the latest equipment and so forth. The computer is a tool, similar
to a backhoe or a car or jet plane but with a catch.
Computers work not in the mechanical world so much
as to extend understanding. As long as
they are simple single task machines such as calculators, and graphers or
game-players, they simply extend human abilities just like any other machine. But a multi-task machines that can calculate,
search libraries of information and retrieve data, process words, recognize and
produce speech, all with great fluency and accuracy, start to look very human. The Silicon wafer has made all of this possible.
A lot of people have begun
wonder about the computer's ability to think.
Will it be possible in the future, perhaps by virtue of advanced
processing and brute force, power, increased computation speed, increased number
of Silicon transistor equivalents, parallel arrays of processors, for Silicon
machines to "think" or even become conscious beings? Today computers function merely as extenders of human capacities,
as slaves. They don’t initiate thoughts
or actions and seem unable to feel or experience. Computer characters that
function as human equivalents are by now deeply embedded in American culture,
from Hal in "2001" to R2D2, and Data in Star Trek. Spock was a
descendant of computer in earlier science fiction genres. Computers seem not even to have the will to
live, fear of death, that we know occur in the smallest brained birds o
Would humans be able to exist alongside sapient
silicon based computer beings endowed with their own free will? Inevitably each superior cognizant being would
be challenge the other for dominance. Wars would be fought. One being would
inevitably replace the other much as Cro Magnon replaced Neanderthal. And one would end up winning out, maybe
wiping the other off the face of the planet. It would be a war between the
elements Carbon and Silicon, the former sapient alive with blood flowing though
its veins, the latter made of cold sand and glass. For the foreseeable future, Silicon serves
Carbon. Silicon is a lifeless tool, incapable of strategizing, a planning
without a destiny of its own.
As an interesting sidebar, it would seem, that it
would be virtually impossible for two sapient species to exist side by side.
Endowed with free will, each would inevitably protect its own interest and
there would be wars for supremacy. This is what we’ve experienced throughout
our own history, where intolerance inevitably occurs between races and
nationalities. We’ve seen so many fights
break out between sports fans from different cities, in competition between
colleges, annihilation of populations and world wars. Smart aggressive beings will always crave dominance. What is the wisdom of actually seeking other
intelligent beings from outer space as envisioned in the SETI project? If such intelligent beings exist, and this
may be likely, they will inevitably be somewhat different than humans and we
there is certain to be an altercation between them and us. Under ordinary
circumstances, it is so difficult to see humans and aliens just sharing common
wisdom. That scenario would seem more than a little naďve.
Human expertise in creating computers is advancing
rapidly. Yet it would seem our ability to create willful sapient Silicon beings
is just as much of a longshot as our finding aware
and alive aliens in space. This is all for the best because such “Contact[7]”
is far and away most likely to be destructive for both sides.
The picture I’m presenting is the computer as a
tool, an unfortunately lifeless, car, plane, gun, backhoe, extender of human
abilities. And it's striking that as circuitry advances, as computer chips get
ever smaller and more powerful, that humans and computers begin to work as
close proximity, hand in hand, that we
have become ever more dependent and are living closer with our computers. This is an observation that seems rarely to
be made, but it is what I call the marriage of Carbon and Silicon. What has
made the intimate relationship between humans and computers possible?
First of all the tininess of the Silicon chip. Not too long ago they took up buildings o
A paraplegic patient can be made to walk. These are persons whose spinal cords are
damaged by trauma for the most part, whose legs are paralyzed. Very simply, one places electrodes over large
leg muscles. When an electrical impulse
gets to the muscle, it will contract, moving the hip, knee or ankle. A Silicon
computer device controls the succession and amplitude of the electrical impulse
in very much the way that they are progress within the spinal cord first to
anterior tibialis, then quadriceps then the gluteus maximus, then the gastrocnemii, then to the iliopsoas on the opposite side,
and so forth to produce a functional gait. Someone who is wheelchair confined
and highly motivated may be able to get up and stand, first of all, and then
walk, usually short distances. Other
persons use electrical stimulation to prevent muscle atrophy. In paraplegics lower extremity muscles
languish unused and wither away. Electrically stimulated muscles are made to
contract against resistance and can rebuild muscle mass. Here as with the
cochlear implant, the Silicon device itself isn't actually implanted, but is
carried about, outside the body.
A patient with intractable right hand tremor can
have a pacemaker wire implanted in his left thalamus which helps control the
hand. Tremors can obliterate normal
functioning movements and turn a dominant hand into a useless liability. A person may be unable to feed or to write. The thalamus is a bundle of
nuclei. Each nucleus in the thalamus is
an anatomical grouping of neurons. The sinus node and a-v node of the heart
each have an intrinsic rhythm and drive the rest of the heart to beat at a
specific frequency o
Physicians literally “reach into” the brain every
day. Some stupendous examples involve replacing poorly functioning brain cells
with new ones. In Parkinson’s disease
immature (fetal) midbrain cells and also cells from the adrenal medulla that
secrete Dopamine, the transmitter deficient in Parkinson disease, are implanted into the brain with some
success. Therapeutic fetal brain cell transplants are being tried in
such diverse disorders as stroke, which results in the death of brain cells,
and in spinal trauma[8].
These techniques are being tried on a practical basis, without anyone even noticing their
philosophical implications. Scientist clinicians are reaching into the brain to
treat disease and improve function. In doing so they are taking furtive steps
beyond the limitations of biology; they are unbinding the patient from his
biological limitations. They provide the
proof that the patient, and any person adds up to much more than his own
biological limitations. Though of course
the victim of Parkinson disease or stroke is unable to operate on himself, he
is the beneficiary of a communal level of knowledge or expertise.
Inevitably similar techniques will be used someday
to maximize physical and mental performance. On a rudimentary level, stimulants
and hormones increase atheletic performance in
competitions around the world every day.
Drugs, antidepressants among them, improve function in day to day living
by their chronic effect on intrinsic neurotransmitters. Silicon devices add
precision in drug delivery. Precise
fixed amount of drug is dripped into the spine using a technique that has
become commonplace today. Baclofen is delivered
directly into the cerebrospinal fluid to inhibit neurons and control spasticity
or pathological tightness, resistance to motion in muscles. Spasticity often results from spinal injury
from trauma, birth injury and such diseases as multiple sclerosis which prevent
the inhibitory controlling impulse from higher areas of the nervous system from
reaching the spinal cord. When you
give large doses of Baclofen by mouth, which causes a lot of side effects, very
little of it gets into the brain and spinal cord where it must work. It may be
excluded by the blood-brain barrier.
Given intrathecally, directly into the spinal fluid, the results can be
stunning. Suddenly a person formerly
unable to walk, can get up on their feet. Others in a bed-ridden contracted
state are finally able to stretch out and move.
Similar pumps are used to deliver narcotics to control intractable
chronic pain, to dose insulin and other drugs requiring precise titration
schedules. It means the difference
between functional vs. non-functional life.
Tiny Silicon wafer circuits have made all of this possible and for us to
begin to ask where does the living Carbon based biological system end, and
lifeless Silicon begin, proving again
that we are far more than our biological machine which is our body allows us to
be. Devices are born of a dream or a conception
but are made into reality.
Figure 6: cochlear implant device.
Figure 7: Electrodes place directly on muscle stimulate it to contract. Computers control the order in which muscles contract to produce stance and gait.
Figure 8 : A pacemaker for the brain
controls tremor[9]
We all use keyboards and pointing devices such as the mouse and trackball, and joystick. But the problem is that in order to communicate with a machine which is separate from ourselves we need to translate our desires into a form the machine can understand. A lot of steps impede the direct transfer of information. This relationship needs to be more intimate. By this I mean that what we ultimately need to achieve is full incorporation of Silicon devices into our brains to communicate electrically with the relevant tissue and improve and expand upon normal function. When we use devices to overwhelm a disability, that is just practice for situations where such devices would really be useful, namely the elaboration and expansion of normal human capacities. As we have seen computers far surpass the human brain in two important areas, information storage (memory) and speed of calculation. Memory and retrieval of information is not trivial. We have seen that memory intimately ramifies with all other areas of cognition. Libraries of data are stored in smaller and smaller space. Soon optical systems may store data in three-dimensional arrays. They will make our compact discs that already store whole encyclopedias or shelves of books on one small disc, seem large by comparison. Information will also be infinitely more accessible, easy to call up with the aid of infinitely more mnemonic "handles" than even the living brain is able to provide, not only logical knowledge categories, but by spelling and phonemic and positional classification schemes.
Far more sensitive input devices will be
necessary. Hopefully, cells and Silicon
wafers will make direct electrical connections as both systems work via the
transfer of positive and negative electrical charge. Presently devices are touch pads, joysticks
and electrodes placed about the eyes that sense the field of gaze in eye
movements. These may be useful for
fighter pilots for faster communication with a precision machine and in virtual
reality games. Electrodes can be placed on any electrically active surface to
gain sensitive feedback, for example in muscle where the state of relaxation or
contraction can be monitored by computer, analogous to proprioceptive input
into the brain. This data can be used to
control movements for athletic movement or to modify accelerations in machines
used to carry people. A computer
commanded by eye movements may make rapid communication possible for the first
time in patients with the locked-in syndrome (See Chapter One) who are unable
to move anything but their eyes and otherwise are awake but can’t communicate.
Some persons with severe forms of cerebral palsy and acquired neurological
diseases may benefit. Perhaps EEG
activity and distribution may be used to communicate with Silicon devices that
can easily recognize patterns and spatial distributions of brain electrical
activity. Such devices may someday be
used to stop abnormal electrical discharges such as epileptic seizures, but more importantly sense and control brain
waking an sleep rhythms on long trips such as space journeys. These devices amplify command and control,
the efferent side of neural function.
We use many devices on a routine basis to extend the
afferent powers. Infrared and other detectors extend our sensitivity to signals
and energy sources that as biological organisms we haven’t receptors for,
electromagnetic energy outside the visual spectrum. These devices are mostly used in war and for
night vision as in hunting but detectors on earth and in space have multiplied
our powers of observation. Astronomers observe today in all parts of the
electromagnetic spectrum, infrared, at radio and gamma frequencies,. analyze
and collate with the aid of computing machines. In the not too distant future
we can expect more devices to directly stimulate nervous tissue, to expand sensory
function in much the same way as the cochlear implant does, and enhance tactile
and visual function as well. Predictably
these may at first to treat the blind and sensorily deprived, but one day they
will be used to extend the sensory function of normals. We will have Silicon devices surgically
implanted, some directly into the skull
and brain. These devices will extend our
sensory abilities, improve motor
function, increase our memory and
augment cognitive function. They will
be sensory, mnemonic, cognitive, and motor enhancers and extenders..
Of course, everyone depends on Silicon devices to extend capabilities.
Silicon devices calculate, write, retrieve and store abundant information. In
selected situations as miniaturization progresses these devices may be
implanted. Carrying small notebook computer devices around with us as we do
even today is tantamount to implantation anyway. Ou
The argument that we humans are nothing more than
our biological endowment succumbs then to the power of human invention. Expansions of human abilities and
possibilities that are even now possible in the computer age. We are more than our biological endowment
allows us to be, we have become more because we have dared to imagine. Our
inventions have had us escape our own innate limitations. We have hatched out of our biocapsule.
Carbon and Silicon are ever more being tied
together. They are married. The result is an exponential growth of human
capacities. Computers have done far more
than affect our daily existence. Subtly, slowly, they have altered our
philosophy, have changed the way we see ourselves. Firstly, as I have been
saying, we are in no way limited by our own body our biological endowment. That is a tremendous realization. More than
that has changed. By some reckonings, the sum total of human experience that is
a life can be boiled down to a huge quantum of information. This is a
legitimate claim. The next time you talk
to your spouse or an acquaintance, or any other person, what you see before you
will fundamentally change from a clothed body and face that you recognize,
something material, to a package of
non-material ideas, perceptions, and actions, something immaterial in
other words. What resides in your brain
right this moment, the effects of all of the memories and experience which are
part of your life, is expressed in the form of information.
Suppose we could set all the electrical activity in
all of your brain cells at exactly settings that are there at this moment which
we designate t0 , then
recorded also the exact anatomy and array of synaptic connections, also the
placement and composition of all cells and substances such as proteins and
nucleotides within cells, this is just information, admittedly an awful lot of
information, but the point is that it can be stored in machines designed to
store mountains of data. If we have all of this data stored in a Silicon
device, we have an essence then of what a person is at that specific time t0
and presumably have a good handle on what is to happen at t1j . What's more an essence,
expressed as information content, is separable from a biological entity not
unlike a soul in religious parlance.
Perhaps more importantly the integrated consciousness that is a person and more will represented in a "second generation" inside a Silicony device. Whenever our civilization has advanced far enough, and this will not be anytime soon, all information should be carried by vessels that are non-biological. Someday we will be fully developed as non-biological beings, capable of experience well beyond our current limitations, sensitive to vibrations along all areas of the spectrum, vision in simultaneously infinite projections, enhanced tactile sense and epiphanies of emotion such as those never experienced by any one with paltry biological endowments. What is important is that we will reach this stage, and I have every confidence that we in fact will, in spite of our limited abilities and because whoever or wherever we are, we have an inner drive to reach beyond our limitations, we crave more knowledge and we