Transcript Document

“Could trans-humans be human
after all?”
Paper prepared for the Templeton Research Workshop
“Facing the Challenges of Trans–humanism:
Religion, Science, Technology”
April 16, 2007
Sander van der Leeuw
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Arizona State University
Qu i c k T i m e ™ a n d a
T I F F (L Z W ) d e c o m p re s s o r
a re n e e d e d to s e e th i s p i c t u re .
The human adventure
• Humans are both biological and social beings
– But that duality is not always taken into account
• Questions to ask
– How did the species survive?
– Why did it take so long to ‘invent’ and accelerate
innovation?
– Why did it go so fast, once we reached that point
The long term evolution of artifact
production
• Humans share with many primates that they
can invert observed causal sequences.
• A causes B, therefore if I want B to happen, I
have to do A.
• They were therefore theoretically able to
manipulate (aspects of) the material world
Acquiring dimensionality (1)
• Removing a flake from a pebble
– Can be accidental as well as deliberate
– Point-transformation, hence 0-dimensional
• Removing a series of flakes
– Like all following stages, deliberate
– Linear transformation: one-dimensional
• Removing flakes all around the edge, and
then removing big flake in the middle
• Inverting the process
– Reversibility indicates conceptual distinction
Acquiring dimensionality (2)
• Levallois: Batch preparation
– Preparing the core, so that flaking one tool off
prepares the core for flaking the next one
– Separating preparation from action stretches the
sequence of cause and effect
• Blade industries
– Preparing the core so that series of blades can be
taken off at right angles to the prepared platform
– Blades (small) are now the product, the core (ever
smaller) the by-product
– Beginnings of conceptualizing scale
The next steps
• Size reduction (Mesolithic)
– Wide range of shapes made out of small pieces of flint
– First composite tools
• Ground stone tools (Neolithic)
– First rough outline object made by removing large flakes
– Then refining by removing smaller flakes
– Pecking and grinding: smooth surfaces and total shape control
• Implications:
– Conceptualization of nested sets of scales completes total
mastery of manufacture of stone solids
– Absence of total control over results of flaking: accidents and
waste
The Neolithic
• Implies constructing solids around voids
• Work from small to big (contrary to stone)
• Corrections are possible (idem)
• Lengthen preparatory stages relative to final step
• First cultivation and settlement, implying:
• Tools for food production and storage
• Risk spectrum transformation
• Extrapolation of ‘domesticated’ spaces (houses,
fields)
• Village life intensifies information processing and
communication
• Occasional energy surplus
What is the underlying process?
• A trial-and-error process identifies transmissible
cognitive dimensions that summarize information
• The more dimensions are available, the more problems
and solutions are identified and instantiated
• An increasing range of materials and functional
domains is linked - connectivity between cognitive
dimensions increases
• To get to this point took 105 years!
Control of motion and energy
• Controlling time-space
– Settlements are fixed points in time-space
– From one- to two-dimensional spatial
representations of landscape: the creation of
mental maps and routes
• Controlling motion and energy
– People move less, matter more
– Animals acquire different function: not only mobile
stored food, but also beasts of burden
– Wind, water, wood, fossil energy …
• Control of energy took 103 years
Surplus energy and social organization
• Whilst provision and distribution of energy took most
available energy, no complex social behavior
• Once the per capita surplus exceeded a threshold, it was
possible to extend social behavior
• But this required an extensive system for harnessing major
quantities of energy
• The difference between 100 and 10.000 watts pp. has to
come from somewhere, and be delivered!
Information structures societies
• Energy and matter are subject to the laws of
conservation - they can be displaced, but cannot be
shared
• Information systems are not subject to conservation information can be shared
• Societies are held together by a shared culture, shared
ways of doing things
• They in turn provide the channels to harness the excess
energy that enables the society to exist as such
Transmission of energy and information
• Biological systems transmit information
genetically - organisms and systems cannot
learn structural reconfiguration.
• In each species, the structure of energy
networks stays the same
• Social systems transmit information through
learning, and energy and information
networks reciprocally interact
Networks and towns
• Energy is distributed from a source, through
hierarchical networks
• Information combines rather than distributes. Its
networks structure differently
• The interactions between these networks explain
many features of societal systems
• Towns are nodes in, and links between, different
networks
• People move together to solve more complex
problems, requiring advanced social organization
• Only when energy becomes external, it is no longer
the limit to the size of the network
The expansion of Rome
• Made possible by prior organization :
• Invention of cities, money, markets, roads, etc.
• Romans made these inventions subservient to
uninterrupted flow of matter and energy
• Expansion is enabled by the conquest of societies that
had accumulated surplus
• Once limits of pre-organized sphere reached, expansion
stopped
• Investment in conquered territories served to harness
more resources
• Cost of maintaining organized flows grows and advantage
of alignment on core diminish - system breaks down
Exchanging organization for
wealth (energy)
• Density and diversity of people enables innovation
• Ensures control over the flows of people and goods
• Enables long-term maintenance of informationprocessing gradient with hinterland
• Positive feedback between incoming information,
innovation, and export of structure enables
definition/creation of value
• Exchange of information-processing superiority against
resource access (wealth)
Role of cities
• Cities are the the nodes in the system where most
information-processing occurs
• They are networked, and their properties depend on
their position in the networks.
• The structure of the urban system is stable; the place of
individual cities changes.
• By bringing information from different sources together,
they stimulate transformation of inventions into
innovations
• That enables innovation cascades, and is responsible
for the recent exponential increase in innovation
The “conquest” of energy
• This could not happen without “appropriation of nature”
• “Known problems beget solutions beget unknown
problems” is what drives the engine
• The result was the “conquest” of energy in the industrial
revolution, in a cognitive sense - thermodynamics - and
in a substantive one - transforming energy into matter
and vv.
• It took only about 8 x 103 years!
Consequences for innovation
• Energy is no longer a constraint - innovation can accelerate
• We have just identified information and innovation
• Shift in the risk spectrum: as possibility space expands,
problem space expands faster
• That pushes towards ever more innovation
• The limiting factors are now communication and human
information-processing capacity
• Differentials in a society’s information pool (power, wealth)
are the main risk to society’s sustainability
• We are on the threshold of reflexive intervention in our own
systems, including information processing
Are we any less human?
• It is our human nature that generated the challenges
we face
• They are no worse than the earlier transitions
• The difference is one of a priori and a posteriori
perspective
• What are some of the changes that may occur?
• People could always ‘die’ of lack of information to
process - dying of boredom
• We are still human, and will continue to be
How will we change?
• In many ways difficult tom answer, but interesting to
think about:
– The acceleration of change
– Because information is now independent of its substrate, all
fantasy worlds are potentially possible (cf. “Second Life”)
– Increasingly, we will be driven by feed–forward, rather than
feed–back (scenario’s, constructivism)
– Will our conception of time change?
– We need to get control over innovation to avoid a runaway
situation and societal collapse
– More need for self-restraint?
– Others?