Is Technology Blaspheme?

I came across this video about a month ago and since then it has been causing some interesting synaptic associations in my brain and I have reached a point where I need to air them out to make more sense of it all.

WARNING!!! IN THIS POST I COME TO NO CONCLUSIONS AND MANY IDEAS AND THOUGHTS MIGHT NOT BE FULLY DEVELOPED AND MAY BE DISCONNECTED

In this video Jaron Lanier frames the theory of the coming Singularity, a prediction by Ray Kurzweil, as a new religion made possible only by our own technological advances.

Click here for part 2

If you are not familiar with Kurzweil's Singularity prediction take a few minutes and let him explain it to you:


This notion of technology and religion has had me thinking of a few other parallels. First, lets consider some key attributes most western religions ascribe to God. Primarily, according to most monotheistic religions God is omnipresent and omnipotent. In other words, God knows all and can do anything. Consider the internet and how we have been increasingly giving it eyes to see and ears to hear. First it was motors, then it was transistors, later it was microchips, today it is sensors that are propagating through the technosphere giving what Kevin Kelly refers to as the One Machine the ability to have senses. Whats more, we have been deploying these sensors and feeding the data they collect through mobile technologies that most of us carry with us.


So, we have over a billion computers currently networked to create the Internet and now it has the ability to sense much of what is around it. It is predicted that soon we will have enough microchips networked as part of this "One Machine" to equal or surpass the number of neurons in the human brain. Already the number of links between websites surpasses the number of synapses in the human brain.



Kevin Kelly also presents technology as the seventh kingdom of life:


If I follow this line of thought, through building this "One Machine" and giving it the ability to sense it's surroundings we have essentially created a synthetic life form within this 7th Kingdom with god-like omnipresence. And, since "The Machine is Us" (to quote Mike Wesch) we draw closer through our use of the psudo-omnipresent machine to the ability as a species to be psudo-omnipotent.


Juxtapose this with the latest development by Craig Venter's research team where they were able to create actual synthetic life forms in the lab with their own programmed DNA and imagine the convergence of the technological with the biological:


It is usually explained that Apple Computers took their company name after Newton's Apple but perhaps it was really Eve's apple that was the inspiration. After all, in that Biblical story Eve's apple represented forbidden knowledge and by taking a bite Adam and Eve would be able to know what God knows. Or perhaps it was both. The bite out of the apple in Apple Computer's later logo suggests that this Biblical reference theory might hold water.


Of course, why limit the analogy and parallels to Judeo-Christian theology? The company Promethean is a little bit more explicit about their namesake naming their company after the Greek god Prometheus who is credited with bringing technology (fire) to people on Earth.


So, what does this all mean? I don't know. Is this a new religion? I don't know. What I do know is every day I pass an Amish farm on my way to work as a technology integration specialist and every time I do it causes me to ponder these kinds of thoughts. Perhaps we have constructed the most incredible golden calf.
Or maybe not.

Science Fact or Science Fiction

This morning I introduced my Web Design students at Goodhue HS to the idea of Web 3.0 and the Semantic web. I presented the idea as a nebulus concept that no one can currently agree on what it is, much less what it looks like. I showed them this documentary to both give them a sense of what it might be as well as demonstrate the degree to which really smart people can't currently agree on what it is exactly:

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

I then asked them to contrast that with the predictions/vision of Ray Kurzweil regarding the singularity he believes will happen by 2045:



Of course, most of my students said that Mr. Kurzweil was off his rocker if he thinks technology will soon exist that will allow him to live forever or that within their lifetimes they will voluntarily merge their biological bodies with technology. However, as skeptical as I am about many of Kurzweil's predictions he has been extremely correct in his predictions of things that have now come to pass. It also makes me think about technologies we currently have that would have been unimaginable just 10 or 20 years ago including things like GPS, live streaming from mobile phones, free international video conferencing (ex. Skype), Wikipedia, YouTube, etc.

Or, were these things imagined? I think they were. In fact imagination has power that I think we underestimate. I contend that everything that exists as a product of human creation is the result of imagination. To imagine something is to will it into existence. Once birth has been given to concept it is just a matter of time before concept becomes reality.



Ok, so where is the proof of this? Why old science fiction films of course. Lets take a look at a few examples:

1. 2001 A Space Odyssey & the iPad



2. Star Trek Communicator - No need to link to modern equivalent here. Actually this is a case where our contemporary equivalent is far superior to what was imagined back then.


3. Invisibility Cloak


I could go on and on of modern technologies that first made their appearance as figments of SciFi imagination. In fact, I believe one reason SciFi is such a strong predictor of future technological advancement is its power as a self fulfilling prophecy. When I was young I was a huge Star Wars and Star Trek fan (still am) as were countless other young people. Those young people are now scientists, inventors, researchers, engineers, and teachers and I know most of us secretly have that ultimate goal in mind to actually develop that one cool device they saw at the movies as a kid and wished desperately they had. I am convinced that by the end of my lifetime we will have holodecks, hyper-speed space travel, ability to manipulate time, the ability to regenerate lost limbs, and be able to slice open Taun Tauns with a beam of highly concentrated light.

Of course, there is a dark side to this theory of imagination=reality. While we can imagine things that are good we also have an incredible ability to imagine things that are horrible:









So, "imagine=will exist" must also apply to these technologies too.

What other modern technologies can you think of that once were just science fiction? What scifi technologies would you like to one day see become a reality?