I'm not at all surprised that scientists at the University of Chicago have found strong evidence that the human brain is still evolving.
I was surprised to learn is about two variant genes. One emerged at a time that coincides with the spread of agriculture, settled cities and the first written language. The second appeared along with the emergence of art, music, religious practices and sophisticated tool-making techniques.
They have the aura of the singularity about them. The Singularity is defined as a predicted time in the near future (say the next 20-30 years) when, according to Wikipedia,
technological progress and societal change accelerate due to the advent of superhuman intelligence, changing our environment beyond the ability of pre-Singularity humans to comprehend or reliably predict.
I recently read Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau, who says we are riding a curve of exponential change that is unprecedented in human history and is transforming no less than human history. Garreau explores what's coming out of DARPA where studies into human enhancement provide the competitive edge to our military. We know about night vision goggles but most don't know about exo-skeletions and drugs that provide photographic recall, vaccination against pain and working without sleep. It's "Be all you can be and a whole lot more."
Garreau calls them GRIN technologies - genetic, robotic, information and nano processes.
These four advances are intermingling and feeding on one another and they are collectively creating a curve of change unlike anything we humans have even seen,"
The key element is that it's fundamentally out of our control. Will it be be a transcendent event issuing in a Heaven that Ray Kurzweil envisions? Or a hell of unexpected consequences? Or will we somehow muddle through and prevail? Garreau explores all three.
What made me believe that we will muddle through and prevail was his writing of World War II as a hinge in co-evolution because the war was won with devices that did not exist when the war started - radar, code-breaking computers and the atomic bomb. It was done using minimum information, solving one problem at a time. We decide on a solution and try it. If it works, we go on. If it doesn't try something else. The new is routinely created not by individual geniuses but by faceless teams of ordinary people.
And by the way, that myth that we use only 10% of our brain is just that, a myth. Even Snopes knocks it down.
Posted by Jill Fallon at September 16, 2005 1:31 AM | Permalink