WE Will be the Artilects - Cultural Singularity by 2020, driven by Augmented Reality

Posted: Tue, February 12, 2013 | By: Tim Gross (Setai)

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in order to build anything you must break down what was there before- but most transhumanists and futurists tend to focus their attention on all the possible wonders of the Singularity- they don’t often consider how we get there from here- and that as we approach the view will change as we change-

with the global proliferation of the Internet by mobile devices- it is like emerging from a dense forest overlooking a wide valley- the Shining City of the Singularity now directly in view- we can see a kind of Cybernetic Dreamtime unfolding-

the human being is already a cyberorganism consisting of Ape connected to Cloud via smartphone- your cognitive enhancement is in your hand! your mobile gives you all the knowledge of Google/Wikipedia/Wolfram Alpha - all you need is a better interface- a way to make this knowledge directly stream into your awareness in as many ways as possible - the bandwidth between flesh and mobile is the bottleneck that all the research is trying to widen- driven by the pressure of billions-

this situation reveals that instead of the traditional view of a Singularity driven by GNR- Genetics/Nanotechnology/Robotics and AI in the 2040s- there will be a cultural singularity in the 20s and 30s driven by the blossoming of Augmented Reality through programmable surfaces/ personal fabrication/ and Virtual Reality combined with noninvasive Brain Computer Interfaces- all consumer technologies driven by the pressure to improve the Connected Society- this Cybernetic Dreamtime will involve fully immersive virtual realities where our minds are directly connected to all the databases and computational power of the planet - and programmable physical reality where most objects and devices materialize and reform according to our will- leading to a cybernetic network for recording/copying/uploading/sharing of memory/memes/dreams/knowledge/experience between minds/emulations of minds/ and natural/fabricated bodies- ideas like biological immortality and AI will then seem naive- we will have minds expanded into God/Genius clouds and be able to wear bodies like clothing-

with full immersion telepresence you will become a cyberswarm of your original body and extended software and hardware- your experiences fully recorded at all times- if and when your body dies you may not even notice - since everything will be archived / reconstructed/ and seamlessly shunted to your other connected software/hardware components- not “uploading”- rather expanding/ multiplying/ diversifying and then contracting- replacing parts of your expanded self - you will be truly immortal- able to add or remove bodies from your cyberswarm toolbox for the rest of Eternity -

the shift into fully connected network will cause us to expand far beyond our current concepts of the body and the self- we will each undergo this decade-long process that mirrors the evolution of single-celled organisms- to symbiotic colonies- to a multicellular superorganism- we are still cells just starting to form symbiotic colonies with devices and software in the Cloud-

we can begin to see that WE will be the Artilects- the dream of AGI is plagued by monotheistic theology and materialist assumptions- to create an Other that is greater than us and can save us- understanding that the Singularity really is when the planet becomes a singular cybernetic organism suggests that there is no need for machines to be conscious- WE can provide the consciousness of the Planetary Mind and the machines will be our new Unconscious-

by the late 2020s our world will be saturated with layers of AR from personal glass devices and ubiquitous smart surfaces- it will be the dawn of the Graphene Age- an optimal nanomaterial capable of near optimal computation- leading to universally programmable matter with graphene aerogels/hydrogels with quantum-dot shells capable of generating the complex chemical and conductance properties of any element- soon the world will be covered in graphene smart surfaces and nearly everything will be made by cheap nanofabrication using graphene dust and carbon nanotubes as their building blocks- materials made from graphene quantum dots are going to provide far more magical revolutions to our lives than anything that self replicating nanobots could ever hope to- eventually leading to ultralight indestructible materials with programmable properties capable of emulating any element in nature and elements that are not possible in the standard model- an Alchemical well-stone capable of rendering into reality any Platonic form- near optimal computing substrates - and doorways to inner and outer space-

And then electromagnetic/ultrasound BCI devices will be released by consumer electronics companies like Sony and Apple- or perhaps pharmaceutical BCI nanodrugs- directly stimulating all the senses and the limbic system- scanning regions of the brain to copy/read it precisely- for each of us this will be a personal dissolution of the Human Condition as we start disappearing into our own private Idahos - over months and years society will become very strange - each of us will see it as our own unfolding Singularity- ANY experience of space and time can be explored- very rapidly optimal technologies will be discovered in design hyperspaces as the physical world becomes programmable and blurs into the new Dreamtime state- as each of us interfaces with this new BCI it will be our Singularity- simply because we will feel the cosmic shift out of space and time and memory into the terrifying freedom of the Dreamtime - at that time the forum chatter will shift to ‘it happened’ -

this is not an alien machine singularity- but a Human Singularity where we ourselves transcend- and human culture and the full spectrum of human dreams will form the memetic seeds of new civilizations -

Hugo de Garis talks about an Artilect War between the new gods and mere humans in the late 21st century- but think about it: before that come the proto-Artilects- the precursors and pretenders- humans that have expanded into cyberswarms- not actual gods but augmented humans who live and play as gods in their own VR realms and MMO spaces- feeding their egos and the Will to Power- doesn’t that seem a more likely situation for conflict and upheaval? Gods would evolve beyond the dominator ego- but Proto-Artilects would only have some power and some wisdom- but often not enough maturity to transcend their base pathologies and desires for domination- Artilects would have the power to quickly and painlessly establish absolute control- but the early pretenders would still need to use terror and violence and faith to dominate- the orgies of creation and destruction and perversion of the Proto-Artilects would be much more spectacular and multifaceted-

there is a fear that an apocalyptic confrontation will bring a new Dark Age instead of transcendence- but the Internet/Cloud is today almost self- sustaining with thousands of telecommunications satellites in Clarke orbit and solar powered cell sites/wi fi routers and solar rechargeable smart phones/devices- the net is almost “off the Grid”- so we want the old machine to fall- we want the darkest of all possible dark ages: an archaic post-verbal return to the pre-verbal mode of animistic magic- the Cybernetic Dreamtime- we will remake ourselves with our voices and our hands upon one another- we will live in and BE the Philosopher’s Stone-

having seen these things approach we have an opportunity- after 2012 we have a whole generation who were anticipating a revolution or apocalypse- they’re asking: “what now?” - 2012 was the last gasp of the attempted Aquarian Age- so we need to harness and focus all that energy- we need to seize the propaganda machine for the Singularity and change the message from an AI/robot takeover from outside to the Cybernetic Dreamtime of unfolding AR/VR/social media/personal fabrication that allows a DIY revolution from inside-

our slogan:

“ROLL YOUR OWN SINGULARITY!”

“We have changed. We are no longer, as I said, bipedal monkeys. We are instead a kind of cybernetic coral reef of organic components and inorganic technological components.”—Terence McKenna

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