Varietals

By | January 25, 2006
4 Comments

We’re living in the final days of humanity’s homogenuous era. Some predict that all of humanity is converging into a single type, and that the wonderful diversity of the past — as represented by things like culture and language — is going to be lost forever, that all of human civilization will be reduced to some bland, globalized, lowest common denominator.

These folks have it exactly wrong. Not only is technology going to allow us to preserve languages and cultures, it’s going to allow us to create whole new cultures much faster than we were able to evolve them in the past. Look at World of Warcraft and Second Life. Are these games, or are they newly emerging civilizations? Take a stroll around Second Life when you get the chance. You’ll see some people there who look like everyday people, while others have a few basic “enhancements” — like wings or flourescent skin. Still others assume the form of giant robots made of flame or mixed-breed dinosaurs or just about anything you can imagine (not to mention any number of things you probably can’t.)

Sure, people might choose to change virtual form for entertainment purposes, but would there ever be an incentive for people really to change their basic structure? In the real world?

Well, putting aside the question of whether the distinction between the real and virtual worlds is going to matter that much over the long term, perhaps we can take a hint from nature. Chris Twyman writes:

In Washington state there is a bountiful supply of Salmon. They fall into two distinct types – Rainbow and Steelheads. It seems that new born salmon make a decision about what species they want to be at hatching. Either they turn up stream and become a Rainbow and grow to about 5 lb’s maximum or they turn downstream and head out to sea where they grow upto 20lbs and become Steelheads. Here is the amazing part. Two rainbows mating can produce a Steelhead and in turn (as a thank you) two Steelheads can produce a Rainbow.

This natural division of salmon varietals, developed to allow a single species to thrive in two wildly different environments, gives us maybe the smallest of hints as to what’s in store for humanity as we begin to take control of the processes and basic building blocks that make us…us. Humans will choose new forms to accomodate new environments, to achieve new goals, and to fulfill aesthetic desires. With these new forms will come an explosion of new ways of expressing what it means to be human — or, in other words, an explosion of new cultures unlike anything that humanity has seen to date.

cambrian.jpg

Will the Cambrian Explosion turn out to be just a preview of the coming Technological Explosion? Maybe.

  • http://rikklaver.punt.nl Rik

    You’re talking natural fantasy and artificial evolution, aren’t you? But wouldn’t ‘we’ grow into a Single World Society first? Not driven by games and the internet, but by geopolitics.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Rik –

    Artificial evolution, definitely. Not quite sure what you mean by natural fantasy, but I think the limitless ability that our online personas currently have to assume different forms will eventually be realized by our real selves. (Or, alternatively, we will come to view our online selves as part of our real selves.)

    I think geopolitics mostly just gets in the way of the emergence of a single global society, which is driven primarily by economic and technological developments. Paradoxically, that single global society will be the perfect environment for preserving and restoring existing cultures as well as for creating new ones.

    Right now, cultural distinctions are a luxury. Why are people all over the world learning English? Primarily for economic advantage. Likewise, when people swap out their traditional cuisine for McDonalds or their traditional entertainment for HBO, that’s mostly economics, too. People “can’t afford” to hang onto their existing cultures in the face of a competing culture that offers them more choices.

    But eventually that gets turned around. Greater buying power ultimately means more choices. Plus technological development will eventually support massive flexibility in things like clothing, architecture, and use of language. Global Society 1.0 looks kind of bland, but once we get up to, say, version 5 it’s going to be pretty feature-rich — including support of a many of the features of the “systems” it supplanted, plus lots of unexpected new stuff.

  • Jim Strickland

    Let us not confuse cultural homogeneity – which does not currently exist – with biological homogeneity – which is the rule for humans. Genetically speaking we humans as a species are closer together than members of the same troop of chimpanzees. We might diverge, we might do it artificially, but I think we’ll start to run into the factors that keep us in genetic lockstep.

    1. If you change much DNA, the human brain fails to work properly. The fragility of the structure and chemistry of the thing is astonishing. It takes only very subtle defects in brain chemistry before sanity suffers, and only slightly greater ones before the brain is not viable at all.

    2. If you are too different, you won’t find anyone who will mate with you. I think this is the true origin of the ‘Valley of the Dolls’ phenomenon, where people become less comfortable with a doll the more human-like it is once it goes beyond a certain threshold. That threshold differs from person to person, but I think this is a fundamentally conservative force on human evolution, natural or artificial.

    Remember that we as a species are *still* learning to accept that people with different skin color, hair types, noses, eye shapes, etc are still *us* and it’s been a long slow climb to do so. When you’re dealing with someone with three arms and a propeller (to quote Mork and Mindy, I think) you are probably going to be single indefinitely. Now of course, given that level of genetic manipulation you can probably reproduce asexually…

    -Jim

  • Rik

    Jim, just commenting on point 1. The fact that the entire thing is fragile, proves nothing. It is actually an argument for the robustness of the brain.
    What exactly is harmful? Is anyone normal, or sane, on close inspection? Given the absence of mass biological insanity in humans, I wouldn’t worry about changing dna. It’s more likely that you get people like in CS Friedman’s novel ‘This Alien Shore’. A particular affliction can be turned into something useful.
    Natural fantasy… I commented on robots on CRN. Wouldn’t robots be in Lamarckian evolution? Maybe you can make a distinction between weak and strong Lamarckism, I’m not sure. But I wondered why the Borg did not evolve. The ST writers probably never thought of it, but when a Borg acquires a trait and passes it on to the Collective, it must be either accepted, junked or stored. Anyway, another commenter responded by saying: yes, robots would be in Lamarckian evolution first, but then pass on to something like physics.
    To me, that’s still Lamarckism. Physics is a uniquely human cultural artifact (= it does not exist without us), one form of extelligence. Culture may be weak Lamarckism (traits (memes) are hardly ever passed on perfectly), but it’s still Lamarckism.
    Apart from that, natural fantasy is just the opposite of natural history. Fantasy creatures made real. The first ones everyone will find shocking and provoke anti-legislation. Which would drive the whole thing underground. At present any evil plastic surgeon can construct a mermaid (do some unethical thinking: it shouldn’t be too hard), but anything more fancy / sophisticated probably takes another 20 years. Bipedal felines aren’t much of a problem, but if people can look like any celeb (argh! a thousand eminems! a million britneys!) or a supermodel, things become a little more worrisome.