#8 AFKANNow | 2008-05-30 23:53
Good question.
I think data downloads are less than a generation away; we already have subvocalization for one hundred words, and directly accessing the neural system saves a lot of effort. Already, speakers are available that let anyone setting DIRECTLY between them hear what is being broadcast, and no one else - apparently, this frequency goes right to the auditory nerves.
We are awash in knowledge; what we need is more intelligence to put this knowledge in a useful framework.
This is where the unique Talent of the Creative Race comes to the fore.
In Africa, they see reddish sand.
WE see iron ore, and the ability to make iron, steel, and tools from iron and steel - an abstract, Creative thought process.
The problem is, the incredible growth of Artificial Intelligence - the IQ Amplifiers that would hook to the neural interface - and enhanced raw genetic material - more, faster connections, for example - would create Homo Novus - something beyond our ken.
This is the great challenge to genetic engineering; obviously, they can engineer to a defined Purpose - Gammas, from "Brave New World," for example.
Designing DOWN is easy.
Yet, given the tools of genetic engineering, Homo Habilus would not have - COULD not have - developed Homo Sapiens. Super Apes, yes; Man, no.
Right now, we can build better raw material, and just have to sit back and see what happens.
I have argued that Civilization, and the spark of Creativity, are only possible with the Western Soul.
THAT having been said, there are software programs out there that design something that developers could not have imagined, and the stuff works.
Quantitative increases are additive; it is when these force a phase shift event that they become Qualitative - and, in the case of our Race, that Qualitative something needed the foundation of the Western Soul as the soil, and the raw material, to work with.
A lot of money is going into artificial intelligence (they just call it something else), and when THAT AI System gets to the point it can work with the petabytes of genetic data that is being developed, we will see remarkable changes, in a short period of time - less than a century, to be sure, and Homo Novus will be Homo Superior.
THAT is the far distant goal I am organizing my nephew's studies around.
The Pope can condemn until Hell freezes over; the fact that human chimera research is being admitted to publicly tells me there is a LOT more going on behind the scenes than anyone dares talk about.
Human experimentation for raw material?
China.
Remember, China did not - and still doesn't - see itself as stagnant.
The Asian Soul incarnate, China saw its government system as perfect; the tools offered by the young upstarts of the West are useful, but America has been around for less time than even minor Chinese dynasties.
Take the ability to plan in terms of centuries, and let that loose with genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, the Children of the Sixties will have killed off America as we knew it.
My nephews will be very busy...