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A vision
« on: 2003-07-12 11:33:56 » |
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Title: A vision
Author: Anders Sandberg
Source: Extropians list
[Just something I wrote in the early northern morning, inspired by the
fierce growth of the surrounding vegitation and some discussions about
the need for values to meet green conservatism. ]
I have a vision of the future.
Within a fairly short time we will have the technological tools to
manipulate matter at the molecular scale, making both manufacturing and
recycling nearly perfect. Advances in artificial intelligence will
enable more or less smart devices to act on their own, allowing teams of
robots to build vast structures as desired or process enormous amounts
of information in order to design solutions to many problems. We will
have the tools to redesign ourselves and our environment according to
our visions.
Soon the solar system will change beyond recognition. Surrounding the
Earth space habitats with their own artificial ecospheres will orbit in
vast bands. Within each there is room for millions of people to shape
their own culture. Similar, but even vaster habitats are being wrought
by the material of the asteroid belt and the cometary nuclei. Slowly a
sphere is being formed by millions of habitats, solar power collectors
and other devices around the sun drinking its life-giving energy and
radiating communications of all kinds. In the end most of the solar
output will be used by life rather than dissipate into the cold of
space.
On Mars eagles soar above the Valles Marineris and dolphins explore the
new Boralis Sea as ecopiesis and terraforming makes it inhabitable. What
started out as a apocalypse of comets guided to crash into the planet
and self-replicating nanomachines producing greenhouse gasses, breaking
down carbonate rocks and freeing water first made the planet warm and
wet enough for life . mostly genetically modified algae and lichens . to
survive on their own. Gradually the life transformed the environment
into something more and more terrestrial species could inhabit. Mars
will never become a copy of Earth; the lower gravity, the red rocks, the
uneven seasons, colder and dryer climate and the two moons will make
sure of that. Over the eons life will adapt more fully to Mars until
what started out as transplanted species will have become entirely new
species that are truly native.
On Mercury an ecosystem of machines is thriving. Self-replicating
machines mine the rocky surface, extracting metals and semiconductors
they use to build solar collectors. Deliberately designed to evolve they
are inventing an ecology of glittering artificial life in shapes
unimaginable to human planning. Some solutions are as creative and
unexpected as wood . a wonderful material with many desirable
properties, but nothing that any engineer could deliberately think up .
and serve as inspiration for the rest of the solar system.
In the seas of Europa adapted deep-sea lifeforms are slowly colonising
the volcanic vents on the bottom of the sea. Most of them are variants
of the ecologies around terrestrial volcanic vents, but strange new
algae designed to make use of the weak light and heat now live beneath
the thick ice. On Earth they have survived in their nearly unchanging
ecological niche for hundreds of millions of years; on Europa their
niche will likely persist for billions of years.
In the tar-like seas of ethane on Titan new forms of life designed from
scratch are evolving. Instead of water they use hydrocarbons, and
instead of photosynthesis they gather nutrients raining down from the
clouds and the forces of the vast tidal flows.
And around the gas planets vast projects are underway to build ships
that will bring the seeds of the solar system outwards to other stars.
Fuelled by energy from the enormous solar collectors and mass from the
gas atmospheres, they hold the collected information of the life of the
solar system . genomes, human culture, the blueprints for new habitats.
Are they crewed? Some might be filled with humans or human descendants,
others by our artificial descendants or simple replication systems. Once
they reach another system they will settle on a suitable asteroid and
use it to build a larger base with room for greater minds, who in turn
will use their stored knowledge and equipment to built yet larger and
more versatile homes. Just as a tiny seed can unfold a few small leaves
and roots that gives it the energy and nutrients needed to grow more
leaves, more roots and strive towards the sun, the solar system seeds
will bootstrap themselves into ever greater and diverse forms once they
reach their destination and finally become adult civilisations.
Lets zoom outwards in time and space. From the perspective of the galaxy
the yellow dwarf star on the outskirts of the Orion arm has never been
unusual. But first it sends out a burst of strangely ordered radio
signals. Soon afterwards it begins to change as if the solar system
around it was turning into a globe more carefully using its energy for
something. Nearly instantly . a few scant millennia . other stars in the
vicinity begins to change in a variety of ways. A wavefront is expanding
outwards turning empty solar systems and raw matter into something new
and complex: habitats for life. In some cases this might be the
terraforming of planets or the construction of habitats in space. In
other cases entire planets are dismantled to build enormous concentric
shells of energy collection, computing nodes and cooling systems that
enable vast computer networks to house information ecologies far more
complex than the biological one that once grew on the first planet. Here
and there entire stars are disassembled to provide for longer lasting
sources of warmth than they would naturally be. As the wavefront passes
the galaxy changes, becomes a home to life and thought and not just to
mass and energy.
And after it has transformed the milky way the wave continues outwards .
to the Magellanic clouds, to Andromeda and the other galaxies in the
local cluster, taking the vast jump to the Virgo cluster, embracing the
local supercluster and beyond. This is my vision of the future: a future
where life embraces and fills the universe.
One might argue that what I have described is not the triumph of life
but the triumph of human culture and technology. But what is human
culture and technology but an expression of life? The human species is
just another species doing what it can to survive. In our case we
stumbled on the unusual ecological niche of making tools to help us and
eventually build our own ecological niches, something which was aided by
(or perhaps caused by, causing or co-evolving with) our vast
communications and thinking abilities. There are many species that use
simple tools to survive better, or construct environments that please
them . insect larvae assembling gravel coatings, birds picking
caterpillars with sticks, corals constructing reefs. Are they in any
respect different from our clothing, hammers and cities? A city is not
just an artefact but also an ecosystem: countless other species have
moved in and survive there thanks to the actions of the keystone species
Homo sapiens. Given enough time natural evolution would likely produce
adaptations to city life among the plants and animals just as bizarre
and beautiful as the one seen on coral reefs and in tropical jungles. It
is only because our cities are so young and not intended to be
ecosystems (and because we do not pay attention) they appear
impoverished and sterile.
It is true that humans will play a key role in this vision. But it is
not primarily a story about the hegemony of humanity over the natural
world. It is true that this vision has room for all varieties of human
futures and ambitions, from quiet contemplation to vastening into
godlike posthuman states. While the humans might consider themselves the
rulers, they are unwittingly serving life by expanding its niches to new
places, places where life would never have been able to go naturally.
Evolution can never reach a local optimum separated from current species
by a sufficiently broad desert of non-viable species; no matter what it
cannot evolve the molecular machinery to build diamond skeletons,
spaceflight or survival on Mercury. This is something that requires what
is currently uniquely human, foresight and technology. Intelligence is
necessary for the long-term survival and expansion of life. By expanding
outwards (for whatever reasons) humanity brings with itself other
species. Some as food and companions, some as freeriders and parasites
and likely, when crossing great gulfs, many .just in case. to make sure
no diversity is lost. Some might be visionaries wanting to save or
expand life for its own sake, but the beauty is that not all humans need
to be. A vision that required all humans to act as one would remain just
a beautiful vision; a vision merely requiring that humans continue to do
what it always has done is far more likely.
Pessimists among us might complain that in the past we humans have often
destroyed the environment of life, and that this is also something that
is likely to continue. But most of this destruction has been due to
ignorance and limited resources: when you are half starving you do not
care that your next meal is an endangered keystone species. It is thanks
to the affluence and efficiency of modern technology we can reduce our
ecological footprints and undo some of the damage. If one believes that
mankind is always the destroyer, then my vision is not possible. But
given that assumption no other positive vision of the future is
possible, not even sustainability on the Earth. On the other hand, if
one assumes humanity can take care of its biosphere (however
imperfectly), then there is no hindrance to spreading that biosphere
outwards and hoping for the best.
As I see it the word life should not be interpreted narrowly and
parochially as our particular kind of water-protein organisation but as
complex self-replicating and evolving systems as a whole. The machine
ecology of Mercury, the methane ecology of Titan and the software living
within the vast computing networks are all examples of generalised life.
We will not just expand the niches of traditional life but also create
new kinds of life . as experiments, as art, as adaptations. And these
forms of life are equally worth our reverence and appreciation as the
traditional wet kind. There is no fundamental difference between created
and born life, except possibly that the former has a morally responsible
.parent..
Some readers no doubt find my vision distasteful just because it
replaces the natural with the artificial. There are those who argue that
terraforming a planet is a crime against its natural environment. But
when plants begin to colonise a newly formed volcanic island, is that a
crime? Hardly, and it is seen as natural. Would it be a crime to
deliberately scatter seeds on the island? It might have less of the
appeal of surprise a natural scattering would have engendered in a human
observer, but from the perspective of the plants and rocks there is no
difference. Scattering seeds across the universe is the same thing on a
vast scale. Perhaps most important, life remakes itself. A typical tool
when left to itself will not change (except for some decay). Life
reproduces and evolves, exploring new possibilities almost by
definition. Even a strictly manufactured living environment will become
something else given enough time. It will become born rather than made,
but it could not exist without the initial manufacture. Humanity is both
steward of life and a player in its emergence.
One might argue that this is just a .quantity is quality. vision, that
the number of living things do not matter. Why convert teratonnes or
matter into plants, animals and humans when only a few would be
necessary? But the same argument suggests that we would be just as well
off with a single patch of vegetation in an otherwise empty gravel
desert as an entire meadow. One reason the meadow is better than the
patch is that it can sustain more species and more complexity than the
patch; it can be a part of the interplay between biomes. It is also more
stable to damage and is needed to sustain large animals like horses. But
it is also necessary to allow more uniqueness. As I see it life has an
inherent worth compared to the matter and energy of the universe. It has
the potential of growth, change and awareness disorganised rock and
plasma lack. Due to its evolutionary and individual past each organism
is contingent . it was shaped due to its genes and surroundings in an
unique way that will never occur again. Each of us, each blade of grass
or bacteria, is a kind of one-of-a-kind snowflake. I hope the universe
will be filled with a snowstorm of these.
What about other life in the universe? In this ecological vision there
is not just room for it, it is something to be sought out, cherished and
spread just as we will spread our own kind. Life is life.
What about the alternative to my vision? Imagine the following
.sustainable. vision: mankind contents itself to the Earth, remaining
static either deliberately or by quietly dying out. Life continues on
Earth, while the bodies of the solar system revolve as nothing has
happened. Species come and go on Earth, while the sun slowly but
inexorably increases in luminosity. In a few hundred million years the
increasing heat overcomes the homeostasis of the biosphere and it
largely dies out, leaving a Venus-like world of heavy smog and gravel.
In a few billion years the sun grows into a red giant and engulfs the
inner system. What is eventually left is either a frozen husk of slag
orbiting a white dwarf or just a hint of extra lithium in the spectrum
of the planetary nebula around it.
Is this vision desirable? It is the .natural. chain of events that will
result if humanity does not change things. There is room within it for
billions of species and thousands of grand civilisations. But it ends
ignominiously and it is fundamentally limited.
On a larger scale there might be biospheres emerging all the time around
distant stars: small stalks of grass growing in the dark soil of the
Milky Way. But without intelligence supporting them they all shrivel and
die before any chance of seeding. Each biosphere, filled with uniqueness
and potential, will vanish without a trace, without even one conscious
observer.
The desire to protect the natural is a desire to protect the contingent
and valuable from the ravages of entropy . or just conservatism
devaluing human ambition and creativity. Unfortunately the two are often
confused. This vision is all about protecting and nurturing nature at
its largest by means of vast human ambition. The triumph of the
denigration of the artificial and deliberate would be not just the
abandonment of humanity but also the eventual betrayal of the only
chance life has to continue growing.
It has been said that growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. This is
true, but it is also the ideology of the orchid. Without constant
attempts to sprout seeds everywhere the orchid would die out. Even if it
did survive at a guaranteed constant number it would not have any
incentive to evolve. It is the constant struggle to produce more orchids
that have made orchids evolve their bulbs and air-roots, their amazing
flowers to entice insects and vast variety of ecological niches. It is
thanks to growth and evolution that we achieve beauty.
I propose that we will turn the universe into a garden.
--
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Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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