"Vernor Vinge. The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era" - читать интересную книгу автора

enormous web of electrodes with exquisite precision. If we want
our high bandwidth connection to be _in addition_ to what paths
are already present in the brain, the problem becomes vastly more
intractable. Just sticking a grid of high-bandwidth receivers
into a brain certainly won't do it. But suppose that the
high-bandwidth grid were present while the brain structure was
actually setting up, as the embryo develops. That suggests:
o Animal embryo experiments. I wouldn't expect any IA success
in the first years of such research, but giving developing brains
access to complex simulated neural structures might be very
interesting to the people who study how the embryonic brain
develops. In the long run, such experiments might produce
animals with additional sense paths and interesting intellectual
abilities.

Originally, I had hoped that this discussion of IA would yield
some clearly safer approaches to the Singularity. (After all, IA
allows our participation in a kind of transcendance.) Alas, looking
back over these IA proposals, about all I am sure of is that they
should be considered, that they may give us more options. But as for
safety ... well, some of the suggestions are a little scarey on their
face. One of my informal reviewers pointed out that IA for individual
humans creates a rather sinister elite. We humans have millions of
years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a
deadly light. Much of that deadliness may not be necessary in today's
world, one where losers take on the winners' tricks and are coopted
into the winners' enterprises. A creature that was built _de novo_
might possibly be a much more benign entity than one with a kernel
based on fang and talon. And even the egalitarian view of an Internet
that wakes up along with all mankind can be viewed as a nightmare
[26].

The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the
passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts
our most deeply held notions of being. I think a closer look at the
notion of strong superhumanity can show why that is.


_Strong Superhumanity and the Best We Can Ask for_

Suppose we could tailor the Singularity. Suppose we could attain
our most extravagant hopes. What then would we ask for:
That humans themselves would become their own successors, that
whatever injustice occurs would be tempered by our knowledge of our
roots. For those who remained unaltered, the goal would be benign
treatment (perhaps even giving the stay-behinds the appearance of
being masters of godlike slaves). It could be a golden age that also
involved progress (overleaping Stent's barrier). Immortality (or at
least a lifetime as long as we can make the universe survive [10]
[4]) would be achievable.