Having been told for years via a very successful advertising campaign that the future is friendly, I sometimes ponder just how friendly its going to get. Because most of us have difficulty visualizing exponential growth, whenever we browse Science and Technology articles, it is likely we will be amazed at the research that is currently being conducted. It is equally interesting to note who is doing the work and thought provoking to learn who is funding the research.
If you look at the past and examine what was classified at any given time, as opposed to what was publicly accessible knowledge; you will see that new capabilities exist long before the technologies underlying them become widely known. The gadgets incorporating those technologies are usually developed for military applications before much diminished versions are available on the shelves of civilian retail stores.
These lags in awareness and availability are very carefully managed for a variety of reasons. This orchestration is accomplished via three layers of science. I will call these three layers: Magic (science not yet widely known nor understood), Science (science taught in public schools and in universities) and Common Ubiquitous Tech (magic, stripped of its clothes, hitched to a plow and employed by humans.)
Each different political unit in our man-made systems has economic and strategic geopolitical effects and repercussions to consider when rolling out Science and Technology. There are also the legalities of patenting and licensing to be navigated. In urbanized civilization, money calls the tune, directs the research and manages the emergence or suppression of each friendly new thing.
One of the deepest seas of dollars that I know of, has historically been the global pool of taxpayers. Collectively, they have underwritten the massive deficits cultivated by governments that leverage their goodwill with wild abandon. Periodically, smaller individual governments will be called on to alter their behaviour and compromise their sovereignty in accord with the latest contractual obligations they have entered into with global financial institutions that “look after” all the generated human wealth. Other prodigious pools of current liquid funds and credit are corporations and criminals.
The list of research activities undertaken by university labs at any given time and the names of the corporations funding the research is information that is available for perusal, but the special jargon that is coined in each field of study acts as an obfuscation and deterrent with the result that most people don’t have a clue what is going on and therefore cannot even venture their opinions.
I have noticed, that as each new technology becomes available, it is accompanied by press releases and stories of how it will be used for altruistic purposes. Such as, the curing of diseases, the improvement of food production and those sorts of things. The articles are appealing to most people, because most individuals think along the same humanitarian lines, especially our children.
We are at a point in history where we can look back and see quite a few examples of previously new things that were supposed to help us all. In many cases, it can sadly be seen that the real effects were the opposite or came with some unforeseen negative consequences. I believe the business euphemism for the latter is, “blow back.” How soon we forget such incidents and how often.
One of the biggest recipients of any country’s funds are its various military branches. In this realm, much information is withheld for a variety of security reasons for upwards of fifty years and some information is fated to never to see the light of day. Each country of any global consequence maintains a secretive intelligence arm or several such. All their secrets are under constant threat of exposure through theft, blackmail, bribery and other techniques both new and ancient, both physical and digital.
It can be be clearly observed that some of the largest contributors of funding for research are the military branches of the world. Sometimes openly and sometimes via corporations who happen to be in a line of business that supplies the military with its materials. The effect is the same, regardless. The stock of corporations of this category is blue chip, it goes without saying.
A review of the biological and chemical warfare programs that have existed since the First World War and still exist today, provides a very good idea of how this military/industrial/business/research relationship functions. Extrapolating from those patterns and considering the bio-engineering, computing, chemical and pharmaceutical research being conducted currently, one would not assume anything different from what went before, in terms of who controls most new technologies and to some of the purposes they may be employed.
It is known that vast stockpiles of each new weapon languish for decades as surplus and are eventually classified as obsolete toxic waste. Almost always, some units go missing, as well. The breakthroughs of one country become obligatory for the “safety” of their unfortunate neighbours. This feed-back loop has carried on uninterrupted from the armoured horse and trebuchet to the nuclear bomb, nerve gasses, land mines, pharmaceutical sprays, blistering agents, steel piercing bullets, night vision goggles, silent helicopters, unmanned killer drones, weather altering aerosols, mutated, crop-killing fungi, manufactured germs, altered viruses, cultivated pathogens, heat rays and much worse.
We haven’t definitively cured the common cold but are evidently on the verge of being able to tailor plants and animals to our desire, via gene editing. If, as is suggested to school children today, the new CRISPR gene editing techniques were found to be able to fix cancer in humans, each child would hope that this treatment would be affordable for all.
Of course, anything that could cure cancer, might possibly be engineered to work in reverse. That is why military sponsors will provide massive funding for exploring that kind of application of existing, publicly known beneficial research. Mixing gene editors with nanoparticle aerosol delivery systems would not be a far-fetched idea among military engineering types.
A quick study of the science underlying the herbicides that have been developed and deployed since WWII will reveal an alarming trend. A trend of science being used to reverse every natural, healthy process in the Plant Kingdom; a realm of great antiquity and unknowable rarity within our universe. In other words, the unzipping of life itself, conducted in the name of commercial farming as well as for war and making a few people incredibly rich.
Another unfortunate factor in this scenario is that the brilliant minds of each successive generation of young scientists are channelled by want or by the temptation of riches and privileges into exactly the kinds of research that can and will be used by people against people, regardless of the rhetoric, press releases and informational minutiae that appear on TV and on social media.
Consider the emergence of virtual reality for home computer systems. This technology incorporates headsets to be worn by the operators. Over time these devices will go through a predictable curve in pricing until they become ubiquitous. The most prevalent tech business models ensure that human envy will eventually drive people to obtain their own VR rig. I have no doubt, that some day in the near future, philanthropists will donate them to underprivileged children worldwide.
It is common knowledge that signals work both ways. Radio waves serve a transmitter by collecting, converting and emitting data and they serve a receiver by providing data to be recorded, processed and stored. Our Wi-Fi signals work on this principal. Considering the research going now to do with the mapping the human brain on a scale never before possible and the concurrent work in quantum computing, several scenarios begin to take dim shape. These scenarios have positive and negative aspects.
A short study of the tracking technologies embedded in internet search engines and the vast array of telemetry vectors hard-wired into many popular computing platforms will clearly show that a massive amount of personal data is being collected and analyzed every second of every day. On an obvious level, it is being done to better serve the advertising industry, which is the financial underpinning of much of the internet. On a slightly deeper level, it is necessary for the smooth running and constant improvement of the platforms and coding languages of the software, firmware and hardware being used. These the most simple, logical and legitimate uses of this information.
It is for the reader or listener to speculate on other likely uses of this data. It must be born in mind while thus cogitating, that for every good use you might think of, there potentially exists an equal and opposite nefarious use and a possible military use.
Recently, I was perusing a list of the fifty richest billionaires and something interesting jumped out at me. Evidently, there is a sub-group of billionaires that have signed a pledge to give away approximately 99% of all their wealth before they shed their mortal coils. On the surface, this looked to me to run counter to the spirit that drives people to amass such wealth in the first place. Further, it suggests that they are converted into saints upon obtaining their 40th billion or so. While other less altruistic millionaires must attend ayahuasca retreats and Tantra classes to tame their raging egos.
A most curious phenomenon, indeed. I am fairly certain that the money will go to non-profit organizations, research facilities, universities, museums, art galleries and the like. I am also fairly certain that there will not be any more potable water, edible food or affordable shelter for those of our fellow humans who already lack those things today. I say this based on conditions that seem to have exist on large swaths of our planet in spite of helpful billionaires of the past. However, as financial pundits are wont to say, “Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.” Perhaps, just perhaps, we may be optimistic by embracing that disclaimer in this era of reconciliation and truth, especially in Canada.
The up-side to the billionaire’s list for me, was that it helped me put in perspective just who is really wealthy and who really isn’t. Some familiar names that I once thought to be significant men and women were suddenly dwarfed by blazing super novas with names I had never seen in print.
One such interesting person was a Chinese businessman, who was previously in the military for a decade and a half. Then, after starting out as a simple border guard, he now heads a corporation called, Wanda. In Chinese the name means something along the lines of “reaching over ten thousand.” The corporation is heavily invested in real estate, both locally and globally.
Wanda is buying movie theatres, production companies and is also involved with sporting events. They have built both Plazas and whole villages in China. In fact, they will be bringing us the World Cup of Soccer at least until 2030, as well as other popular sports events.
In wealth ranking, the CEO is only about halfway to Jeff Bezos’ level, but his website makes fascinating reading, nonetheless. Mostly because, with the exception of investors, stock traders and other high flyers, many ordinary people have never heard of him nor of his empire; although they have probably purchased many of his services.
Equally fascinating to me, but on a different tack, is some newer research being done on autism and Asperger’s syndrome. A Swede, Svante Pääbo, has mapped the Neanderthal genome and found that there are some correlations with some aspects of the neural development pattern known as autism. (CADPS2 and AUTS2, to be specific)
He has also concluded that all people alive today (excepting Africans) carry 1-4% Neanderthal genes. It has further come to light recently that two other species of human like creatures were at one point contemporaneous with homo sapiens, namely the Denisovans and the hobbits. These hobbits were found on Flores Island in Indonesia and not in the Shire.
A key point in this research is the fact that when homo sapiens encountered those other human varietals, they engulfed, interbred and made them extinct. In the case of the Neanderthals, prior to becoming extinct, mating occurred with homo sapiens and some of the offspring obviously and definitely survived to pass on the genes of both parents.
At this juncture, I would like you to read a quote from the New Yorker Annals of Evolution August 15, 2011 Issue—Sleeping with the Enemy—What happened between the Neanderthals and us? by Elizabeth Kolbert
“From the archaeological record, it’s inferred that Neanderthals evolved in Europe or western Asia and spread out from there, stopping when they reached water or some other significant obstacle. (During the ice ages, sea levels were a lot lower than they are now, so there was no English Channel to cross.) This is one of the most basic ways modern humans differ from Neanderthals and, in Pääbo’s view, also one of the most intriguing. By about forty-five thousand years ago, modern humans had already reached Australia, a journey that, even mid-Ice Age, meant crossing open water. Archaic humans like homo erectus “spread like many other mammals in the Old World,” Pääbo told me.”
“They never came to Madagascar, never to Australia. Neither did Neanderthals. It’s only fully modern humans who start this thing of venturing out on the ocean where you don’t see land. Part of that is technology, of course; you have to have ships to do it. But there is also, I like to think or say, some madness there. You know? How many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you found Easter Island? I mean, it’s ridiculous. And why do you do that? Is it for the glory? For immortality? For curiosity? And now we go to Mars. We never stop.”
“If the defining characteristic of modern humans is this sort of Faustian restlessness, then, by Pääbo’s account, there must be some sort of Faustian gene. Several times, he told me that he thought it should be possible to identify the basis for this “madness” by comparing Neanderthal and human DNA.”
“If we one day will know that some freak mutation made the human insanity and exploration thing possible, it will be amazing to think that it was this little inversion on this chromosome that made all this happen and changed the whole ecosystem of the planet and made us dominate everything,” he said at one point. At another, he said, “We are crazy in some way. What drives it? That I would really like to understand. That would be really, really cool to know.”
I will weigh in here to say that in my own opinion, a creature that is not adapted to living in water would have displayed infallible logic in having halted its travelling when reaching such an obstacle rather than trying to conquer it. Perhaps just living near the shore and enjoying new menu items and a nicer climate in a contented manner is not a bad choice. I am certainly glad that great white sharks, for example, didn’t decide to cross that barrier and move onto dry land. Or that rattlesnakes didn’t take to the air.
The New Yorker quote is eleven years old now and I would be very interested to see what else comes to light from this particular research and more importantly, how it is used after the facts are known. I heard a presentation recently on the topic of gene editing, in which a very bright young scientist told a small child that someday we can maybe use gene-editing to fix some diseases like autism.
Anyone who is even slightly acquainted with the newest information on this topic should know by now that autism is not a disease. Rather, it is a neural variation from the majority. It is a condition of being that is to be seriously reckoned with both for the autistic person, their families, non-autistic people and the world that we all share. Hence, the two rather new and quite proper terms in use for discussing autism are, neurodiverse and neurotypical.
Thus, if an incredibly intelligent young scientist is so misinformed as to see autism as a disease to be fixed, what, one wonders, shall the friendly future hold for autists once this CRISPR technology is in the private, corporate hands of Mt. Everest climbers, multi-billionaires, military strategists and their opposite numbers in the underworld of dank deeds?
In conclusion, I would venture my opinion that in light of the amount of research going on at present in so many fields and embracing the new vocabularies that are necessarily being spawned as a result; that the future is not particularly friendly, if we use the past as a model to predict it, but rather, that it is sesquipedalian.
fin
-Sources—https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/15/sleeping-with-the-enemy
(accessed Nov. 11, 2018)