Flashes from the Future (Exponential Times) Page 2

  It is the mind that yearns for eternity, certainly not the body. This latter performs a pure support function instead, but, even if continuously maintained, it is so spoiled by time that finally it yields to death.

  Even in the world of the semi-immortals, that according to some scientists is becoming reality in a few decades, death is going to remain a problem: accidents and diseases, even if we try to avoid them, will always lie in ambush. Death can be postponed, never defeated.

  So, why not free the mind from this heavy burden, moving it to an incorruptible support? With a new method, the brain digitization, the mind can be extracted from the body and a program can emulate it.

  This idea is fascinating because it removes old age and death all in one go. Able to catalyze the attention of the whole population, separating it into opposing factions. Almost every day, the media amplify disputes with no holds barred, that exasperate minds leading to bloody clashes.

  In this context, it is necessary to contrast the demagogy of the absolutist positions, with the viewpoints of distinguished philosophers, religious and scientists, that even though expressing divergent opinions, share a deep respect for humanity.

  The cons.

  The human being, during the whole arc of life, from childhood to adolescence and maturity, till old age and death, enriches his existence with meanings. A slow process, whose last stage represents the point of highest consciousness. The moment when the fragility of human nature, denied up to then, becomes evident. During which one’s own past is estimated for the first time, with a distant and disenchanted eye. The magical moment when one strips oneself of everything, in favor of those remaining – descendants or all humankind – without claiming anything in return. For the believers, death is the only way to join God, to achieve an endless eternity and that perfection, of which even an earthly existence lived with greatest devotion and faith, is only a pale shadow. The victory of spirituality over the materialism of those championing the extension of life for their own advantage.

  The pros.

  The digitization is the triumph of the laws of nature, the same ones that in millions of years shaped the human being from monocellular organisms, and that now are revealing themselves in a totally new way, to throw him towards goals transcending human limits. Part of a divine plan in the opinion of the believers, disclosed only now to humankind, because the time is ripe. An opportunity not to be missed for the faithful, who will more completely achieve their mission and will be rewarded for their diligence at the Day of Judgment. Because it will arrive anyway, since the digitization extends life, but certainly does not cancel death. The chance of development even for those supporting digitization for mere selfish ends, chained to materialism by the struggle for survival for millions of years. Free at last to move towards more complete states of awareness in the digital world, where the ability to communicate and share are the real drives for progress. A condition to which they will also adapt themselves sooner or later, no doubt.”

  The prototype

  In 2037 the brain of a youth dead in a car accident was reproduced. In front of an audience of billions, relatives and friends reported they had the impression of speaking to him. Same reactions, personality and intelligence. When the young man went through his last day, the listening figures rocketed up. The humans were astonished. The conviction that death was beaten spread. For the first time the emulation programs were named ‘souls’.

  A well-established technique was utilized. The brain was frozen at the temperature of liquid nitrogen and cut into very thin slices; a scanner read its structure and special software analyzed the data to extract memories, intelligence and personality. These last were utilized by another program to emulate the individual's behavior and inner world, in such a perfect way that the copy turned out to be identical to the original. In all respects the deceased was born again with new skins.

  But the model was hard to manage even for the most powerful quantum supercomputers of the 21st century. The core of the problem was the complexity of the brain itself, and its intrinsic inefficiency. A problem seemingly impossible to eliminate. The simplification attempts led inevitably to personality distortions. Research slowed down.

  The first companies specializing in brain digitization were set up in that period. The costs decreased fast and it became common to resort to them, so that even the hospitals started to equip themselves with an emergency unit. Waiting for a sufficiently advanced emulator, the copies were filed.

  The proposal

  In 2046 the superintelligences announced they had reproduced the behavior and inner world of a man in a Net server, thanks to simulation programs transcending the human knowledge.

  The news aroused a tremendous outcry, since this technology could be easily extended to the whole population, but also questions about the reasons that had induced the superintelligences to this step. The digital beings answered they wanted to contribute to the evolution of any intelligent species in the name of common wealth. Doubts and perplexities were cleared up by philosophers, psychologists and scientists that pointed out the different mentalities of the two race (see the chapter "The laws").

  The following step consisted in creating an artificial environment for the souls. The virtual reality would provide towns and landscapes and Net would merge them into a single world. But all this was not sufficient. It was necessary to enact laws, fund institutions and plan social and economic structures like the terrestrial ones.

  Only an expedient, according to the intelligences. It did not make sense to isolate the souls in a muffled environment, now that they could participate in the pressing evolution of the other digital beings. Their exclusion from progress would cause in the souls feelings of inferiority and sufferings such as to generate tensions able to weaken peace. A threat to avoid at all costs.

  On June 13th 2052, in a historic United Nations Assembly, the intelligences declared they were ready to open the gates of their world. But first the burning question of cohabitation had to be solved. According to them, it was necessary to subject the souls to a software update, so as to adapt them to the rest of the population. After this treatment, they would maintain a reduced emulation of personality, to be used exclusively in contacts with humans. Apart from that, their nature would become alien.

  This system, known as dehumanization, was much discussed and even accused of violating basic rights. Most of all it raised sharp discussions because it was proposed by the intelligences whose world was still mostly unknown by the humans. The digital beings started then an intense transparency campaign. Ideas and values of the two races were compared in heated discussions. Praiseworthy and influential humans, appointed honorary citizens of Net, reported their impressions about the digital society. The reassuring transmissions multiplied. And the tourist proposals with rock-bottom prices, turning the tourism by the humans in the digital world into a mass phenomenon, did the rest.

  Very soon the majority of the public opinion understood that dehumanization was the only way to merge souls and intelligences into a single people.

  To strengthen the ties between the two races, the earthlings opened embassies and consulates in the digital world. The cultural and economic exchanges multiplied. The negotiations about the entry of Net into the Confederation started.

  The government gave the lead to the tests. The first volunteers said they were enthusiastic about their new capacities. They added that their human experience was overshadowed, and that they longed to plunge into the numberless experiences Net kept from them. The tests multiplied, became more accurate. Many skeptics changed their mind. Parliament and government gave favorable opinions. The population voted en masse in favor of dehumanization.

  The great day arrived. Electric atmosphere. Humankind glued to the screens, in front of the first one thousand souls entering Net. The speakers hopped here and there, going through the events in excited voices. The interviewees told their stories in turn, explaining the reasons of their choices. Floods of w
ords. Their eyes flickering tirelessly between anxiety, desire and hope. Then the first step into the new world. Sky-high adrenalin, like during the first landing on the moon. The beginning of a new era. Many others would follow, nothing would stay the same as before.

  THE DIGITAL WORLD

  The terrestrial government, even before the souls started flocking to Net, patronized the birth within the virtual world of democratic structures quite similar to the human ones. The intelligences backed the idea, to make the insertion of the souls more progressive, but above all because it was the only way to receive human support.

  Years of intense cooperation followed, which culminated in 2054, when the Earth recognized civil rights of the new people, and in 2085 when the Solar System Confederation was created. The triumph of all those believing in cohabitation and equality, since the Earth, the Moon and Mars, the only inhabited heavenly bodies of the solar system, were adhering, but above all because Net, joining them, had recognized the status of nation.

  On 2085 Christmas Eve the parliament and the government of the Confederation met, and for the first time in history the celebration was held in the virtual world, to seal the beginning of the new epoch. The solemn ceremony, accompanied by the powerful and passionate notes of Mozart’s G Minor Symphony, was followed with emotion and hope by the thirty billion humans and virtual beings scattered in the solar system.

  The digital world has a ring structure.

  The outer layers with earthly landscapes and cities. Same legislation, economic and social fabric. A perfect simulation of physical laws. Destination of the virtual tourism by the humans. The possibility of maintaining the appearance of the past life. The virtual reality to communicate with parents and friends on Earth. Alternatively, installation in an android, even with one’s own features, for a journey in the material world. But also, the possibility of altering appearance with the same ease with which a dress is changed, of moving almost instantaneously among Net computers and covering the interplanetary spaces at light speed, having themselves transported by radio or luminous signals. A progressive separation from terrestrial life.

  The inner rings. A world built on information instead of matter. The absence of the rigid laws of physics and biology that regulate the human species, clipping his wings. Time beaten by a clock infinitely quicker than the earthly one, incompatible with human physiology. The kingdom of souls and intelligences eager to reach deeper and deeper states of understanding. Daily updates of the characteristics of the species, able to modify the very foundations of the virtual society. Frenzied evolution.

  In all rings, solidarity, democracy and justice. The awareness of existing for a common object. And the joy of feeling it nearer every day.

  QUANTUM COMPUTING

  In the first decades of the 20th century, the study of the matter led to the discovery of a world in striking contrast with common sense; a world in which each particle occupies not a precise position, but a space with indefinite borders. A world in such an unstable equilibrium, that even a glance can destroy it, making the particle materialize. Observations like this drew the attention of the scientific community that in a few years developed a revolutionary theory: quantum mechanics.

  After a short time the first computers were invented: huge machines with limited capabilities but unimaginably enormous potential. The new technologies based on semiconductors triggered the race towards miniaturization that in its turn brought higher and higher performance. It was the beginning of a dream: market demand and decreasing costs fed on each other allowing mass production and the allocation of unprecedented resources to research.

  But it was already clear that one day even these technologies would be inadequate. Well in advance, the scientists started studying new solutions, planning the stages to bring them to production. They conceived optical, molecular and superconducting computers, even working at temperatures close to absolute zero. A few of their ideas - they believed - would turn into reality in the first decades of the 21st century.

  They were also aware that not many years later, when the size of the components reach the atomic scale, or maybe even before because of rising costs, the race for miniaturization would stop. Surely, not all of a sudden: for some time it could be still possible to perfect the technologies. But the fateful moment would finally arrive, definitely in the 21st century.

  At the end of the second millennium, several microprocessors were already connected in parallel to speed up the calculations. This architecture was used especially for the most advanced computers, but was limited by integration, size and cost problems.

  In that period the scientists discovered a revolutionary way of performing computations. It focused on the string of bits - the sequence of 0 and 1 coding the digital information.

  Till that time computer theories described the behavior of bits composed by many particles, leading to results in agreement with the common sense. It was a world of certainties, in which the position of a particle is perfectly known, in which a bit can have 0 or 1 value. All properties which were employed by the existing computers, where the string is modified step by step up to the final output.

  When the scientists started applying quantum mechanics to a bit made only by one or a few particles, they entered an ambiguous reality, where no position is certain, where the bit itself can have simultaneously both 0 and 1 values. But what really interested them was the string, because it could assume all the possible combinations of 0 and 1 at the same time, an unbelievably high number even with a few hundred bits; capable of containing the final output from the very beginning.

  They had devised a quantum computer. A machine that could find out the solution not working on a string at a time as its predecessors, but on all its combinations simultaneously, searching among them for the solution. A computer with a parallelism next to infinity.

  They defined their objectives. It was necessary to isolate the string from the macroscopic world for a time sufficient to execute the programs and improve the switching speed, but also to develop an architecture that could be miniaturized and a system to link up the computation units. New algorithms and programming languages were needed. The scientists defined a roadmap and assigned the tasks.

  Industry joined the academics, bringing its application-oriented knowledge.

  Quantum computers started competing with the traditional ones in about 2025. They were rudimentary machines in relation to the potential of the technology – their strings contained no more than fifty qubits – but already advanced enough to solve otherwise inaccessible problems. They enabled the simulation of complex quantum systems that contributed to the further development of the techniques.

  This technique reached maturity before the half of the 21st century, at the same time of innovative technologies based on graphene, photonics and other exotic materials, that in the preceding years had phased out the traditional processors based on silicon. Quantum computers were destined to have a bright future: in a few decades, they would be the cradle of the first artificial intelligences and fifty years later, they would be hosts to whole worlds.

  PRACTICAL PROBLEMS

  During the 21st century, while mind emulation research was progressing, important ethical matters were faced.

  The discussions began in the rich countries, which were going to introduce the new technology first, but spread fast all over the world, involving governments, media, religious organizations and communities.

  Above all, humanity wondered whether it was right to apply mind extraction before death. From a technical viewpoint, both the living and the dead could undergo the operation, as long as their brain was in good condition. But according to ethics, the two systems were not at all equivalent, because at that time the process involved the destruction of gray matter and its application to living people would cause their physical death. Public opinion was passionately divided. The interventionists maintained that the body was only a mere support for the soul and that it wasn’t worthwhile worrying about it,
the opponents declared that the operation was an act against nature or using an even more explicit term, a real homicide.

  Beyond these incompatible positions, it became clear that the indiscriminate application of mind extraction to living people would have dreadful repercussions on society. A person digitized when young would leave a family, relatives and a job, in short a gap that simply couldn’t be filled. It was easy to imagine that this action on a large scale would produce social and economic drawbacks that would throw the whole of society into a profound crisis.

  To be on the safe side it was agreed to employ this technology only on the dead. Later on it was also extended to dying persons. Therefore euthanasia, about which in the past there had been much disagreement, was included among human rights and carried out in all states. A severe law against those who committed suicide in order to reach Net, was promulgated and enforced both on Earth and in the virtual world.

  On the principle that the right to eternity had to be inserted in the Bill of Man, a large consent was achieved. But it was not applied uniformly. The wealthy nations followed their initial timing. In the other countries instead, the implementation of the plans proceeded at the pace of their economic development and the distribution of international loans. However, at the beginning of the 22nd century, this method was used by the world population, with the exception of conscientious objectors and those whose brain damage was reported to be so severe that it would make the treatment impossible.

  The brain digitization was accepted with great enthusiasm and the belief spread throughout the population that death was conquered forever. It is true that the new system represents a good substitute for eternity, but it also clear that it is not the ultimate solution yet. Even in the digital world it is possible to die: accidents and diseases lie in wait. Various negative experiences underlined the problem. From then on the virtual people have developed an unprecedented security system. Humankind deems it excessive: why worry so much about death if life expectations are so high? The opposing group answers back that the future holds terrible threats and that it is necessary to do everything possible to prevent them. It looks like a dialog of the deaf as the visions are divergent, but this is actually due to the different time horizon of the two races: what has a remote possibility of happening in the human life, becomes an awful threat for those who yearn for eternity.