Fire from the Gods

Joel Garreau believes that we are moving towards a post-human future where humanity will no longer exist as we know it to. Just as Paul Virilio states that we are becoming the technology. The merging of people and technology will make how we understand what it means to be human no longer applying. There could still be “natural” people but there will also be “enhanced” people relying on the latest GRIN technology to augment their abilities.

GRIN technology refers to genetic, robotic, information, and nano processes. The genetic component according to inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil will allow the reprogram of biology away from disease and aging. Genes exist as information, Genes are software; we're learning how to change them. Our bodies are not build for our current society (obesity) our bodies try to hold on to every calorie (Ptolemy, 2009). There might be tragedy to alter our genes we don't fully understand. Millions of years of field testing has created who we are.

There are two types of genetic technology. Somatic gene therapy is used to repair genes that do not function properly in a person. Not that controversial because it only changes genes in organs and is not passed on to the next generation (p. 116, Garreau, 2005) .

The other is germ-line interventions which changes the genetic makeup on the embryo at it's beginning. These changes will be replicated with every subsequent generation. It is worth pointing out that these changes are not always fully understood or possible to see the unintended consequences.

The building block of life is information, DNA, the genetic code. Information is also exponentially increasing with the other technologies. The data that is collected and used is drawn from ex...

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...better than annihilation. So for me prevail is the only logical choice.

Kurzweil's credit's in Transcendent Man point out hat Kurzweil believe that the singularity will conveniently happen right before his death and much of his wish for the singularity comes from the loss of his father.

I think a real concern is what motives with an AI have, it is hard to know what something smarter than a human would do, and more importantly want to do.

From the film Transcendent Man Hugo de Grais believes that artificial intelligence would wipe out humanity. Any intelligence that is so much more advanced then our own would view us as pests in the same way that we look at ants. He believes that there is a coming “Artilect War” between those who favor advances in AI and those who view the coming of super intelligence as a means to our own destruction (Ptolemy, 2009) .