Science – Page 19 – Auxiliary Memory

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Rebecca Skloot has written a masterpiece with The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a nonfiction book that’s about, well, that’s another story, because it’s not a biography, but it is about Henrietta Lacks, it’s not a memoir, although Rebecca’s story is integral to the narrative, and it’s not a science book, even though The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about the impact of cell culture on our lives. More than anything I think this book is about storytelling, and to understand why I say that means explaining the emerging genre of creative nonfiction.

Rebecca Skloot has a MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, and has taught Creative Nonfiction at the University of Memphis. Creative nonfiction uses techniques borrowed from fiction to tell a true, nonfictional story. Creative nonfiction walks a delicate ethical line because in presenting the facts more engagingly and creatively writers sometimes step over the line into fiction. To combat this, writers often put themselves into the story to explain how they acquires their facts, and thus they become part of the story themselves. The first book I remember using these techniques was The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe that I read back in the 1960s. Wolfe called it new journalism back then.

Now I’m going to be upfront here and state that my goal in writing this essay is to get you to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. And to be perfectly honest, I do have several obstacles to overcome before I convince you to go out and buy this book. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about so many different things, working at so many different levels that it’s hard to describe. I could just tell you to go Google “Best Books of 2010” and you’ll find Skloot’s book on many people’s list of best books of 2010, and let you read their praises. But I don’t think that’s good enough. I think I need to offer some specific hooks.

Immortality

Most people want to be immortal, and like Woody Allen, most people would prefer the kind of immortality where we just didn’t die. Religious folk have the promise of heaven, but us skeptical people must live with a kind of shadowy immortality, of just being remembered. On the surface, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about her cancer cells, called HeLa, that were cultured in 1951 and are still living today. HeLa cells are the first line of immortal cells, and that’s one thrilling scientific aspect of this book.

However, the book deals with other kinds of immortality too, in different layers of this story, which is why I love this story so much.

In the process of writing this book Skloot shows what’s left of a person after they die. For Henrietta Lacks, that wasn’t much, a hank of hair in an old Bible, a couple photos, an unmark grave, a handful family stories and, medical records. Have you ever wondered how much of our lives are left in moldy files and computers digits?
The traditional down to Earth road to immortality is by having children, and Henrietta had five, and Skloot spends years getting to know them, which gives this book heart.
Some people seek immortality through creative work, but sadly Henrietta didn’t. She never knew of her great accomplishments, which accidently turn out to be astounding.
A few people are remembered because people write about them, and Rebecca Skloot has written a book that should last a long time. Most nonfiction books have short lifespans, but I think The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks should have the same kind of longevity as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.
Finally, Henrietta herself didn’t live forever, but one strain of her cancer cells did. They went on to revolutionize science and medical research, and this is the science part of Rebecca’s book that should amaze readers. I read a lot of science books and I didn’t know about HeLa cells.

Medical Misconduct

At another level The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a series of indictments against medical research, with some of the charges being historically horrifying, especially the stories about medical experiments done on institutionalize African Americans. Henrietta Lacks died in 1951, the same year I was born, so in my lifetime the changes in patient rights have been dramatic. Yet I wonder, are there research procedures used today that in another fifty years will horrify our descendants?

I don’t want to go into the specifics of what Skloot reports because it would spoil the reading of her story. Let’s just say what happens to this one family is shocking. HBO and Oprah Winfrey are working on a film version of this story and I’m curious how they are going to dramatize it. I wonder if they follow the creative nonfiction structure Skloot has created, or if the film people will go linear and try to reenact the 1951 for the Lacks and follow her daughter Elsie, and her life at Crownville Hospital Center.

How the mentally ill are treated in America is a story our society has always kept hidden, and even in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot only touches the peripheral. Today this nightmare is still hidden away. We cleaned out the insane asylums, only to let the mentally ill fend for themselves on the street, and now they fill our jails. At least I hope we’re no longer using the mentally ill for medical research.

Privacy and Informed Consent

In 1951 there was no informed consent laws, or HIPAA. Henrietta’s doctor just took a sample of cancer without asking and gave them to George Gey at Johns Hopkins University, and Gey cultured them and gave them away to other researchers. Skloot chronicles their scientific legacy in this book, and it was only by accident that we know the cells came from Henrietta Lacks, which provides half the human side of her story. The other half is how her family reacted to learning decades later that their mother’s cells were still alive and that millions were being made selling them for research. If Gey had preserved the patient’s privacy, Skloot’s book would have been far different. It’s strictly a whim of fate that this scientific story is tied to the tragic human story of the Lacks.

Whose Story is Being Told?

In classes for fiction writing, when critiquing stories, we often ask, “Whose story is it?” The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about five people, Henrietta, Elsie, Deborah, Zakariyya, and Rebecca. Skloot spent over a decade researching and writing this story and she is also one of the main characters. She tries to stay out of the way, but her bravery and determination shows through. This is a great book for people who want to learn how to write non-fiction books. It takes tremendous dedication.

Why Is This Book So Good?

There’s lots of great books to be read, so why should you pick this one? I’m in two book clubs that selected this book for their monthly discussion, and for the most part everyone has been tremendously moved by this story. Partly this is due to the story and Skloot’s storytelling skills, but another part is due to reading about something very novel, and that makes it exciting. There are many lessons to be learned from this story too, but the most important is about education. Without an education we can’t assess our situation in society and culture. Now this is obvious when we read about the Lacks, but it’s also true of the reader. This book now makes all those consent forms I sign at the doctors and the hospital meaningful. It also makes those privacy laws that I thought were stupid not stupid.

I think this book is great because it’s different in content, storytelling technique and what it reveals.

JWH

Will Science Fictional Reality Ever Change People?

Life in the 21st century seems all about change. Back in 1970 Alvin Toffler wrote the bestseller Future Shock predicting the rapid pace of change would overwhelm society and cause future shock. This book sold six million copies and it seemed everyone knew about it, if not read it. Toffler didn’t even come close to predicting the changes we went through, and oddly enough no one seems to be suffering from future shock. It’s almost as if everyone read the book and exclaimed, “Bring it on baby, I’m ready.”

I would think almost the opposite of future shock is happening. We can’t get enough change. And we get jaded so easily. The promise of the final frontier was over before we knew it. We went to the Moon, been there, done that, checked it off the list. No need to go further, space is all rocks and no air. We turned the World Wide Web into Facebook. Supersonic airlines turned out to be too noisy. Cloning, ho-hum. Robots, let them clean floors and gutters. Artificial life, lost on the back pages. Global warming which has impeccable science and Biblical size prophecies is easily ignored.

What’s really going to shake us up and make us take notice? What can science discover that the public can’t fail to divert their lives. Evolution is a mind blowing concept but most people find it easy enough to write off. Our knowledge of cosmology and the size and shape of the universe is so stunningly magnificent you think everyone on Earth would be stoned on the idea for years, but no. More attention is paid to Lady Gaga’s showing off various parts of her skinny bod in outrageous costumes.

So what would knock us on the head with a mind blowing mallet? What if SETI started receiving HD video from outer space? What if AI singularities started popping up around the globe? What if we really did run out of oil and other vital resources? What if the oceans did start rising dramatically, or all the ice slid off Greenland? What if Sony and Samsung started selling robots smarter than people? A lot smarter.

The reason why global warming and evolution can be ignored is they are invisible concepts that require a good deal of knowledge to see. But video from outer space on ABC World News Tonight is harder to ignore. A one foot rise in oceans is hard to ignore. Gasoline selling for $15 a gallon is hard to ignore. Having robots take over all the university and K-12 teaching jobs would be hard to ignore.

Or would it? The public got used to atomic bombs, cloned animals and space travel. Space travel was quite real but not fun like Star Trek or Star Wars. It was just boring.

I tend to think the change that will really slap humanity in the face is when we meet someone smarter than us. Either aliens or AI minds. When we take over the chimpanzee’s role as second banana as the #2 brain power, how will that change society? Science fiction is full of scary stories about AI brains and aliens exterminating humanity, but what happens if they don’t?

What if they treat us nice, nicer than we treat our fellow species now? What if they give us freedom to be whatever we want, and they don’t try to rule us, but what if these great minds just coexist in the universe with us peacefully? With SETI, they would be out there, too far to meet. With AI minds, they could go live on the Moon to stay out of our way. But these minds are willing to communicate with us, and it’s obvious they are so much smarter than us, that the mental distance between us and them is the distance between us and hamsters? How will that feel? Hamsters don’t know we’re smarter, but we’re not hamsters, we will know.

It’s not like humanity didn’t live under such conditions before, or assumed to. When we believed in gods and angels, it was essentially the same relationship and we eventually tuned them out. We love being #1.

I figure no matter how much change happens most people will still think about what’s to eat, who can I connect genitals with, when can I get the new iPhone, what do I need to get to the next level in Farmville, how can I make more money, and so on. We are selfish creatures with a narrow focus on our personal needs and desires.

I think it’s a certainty that the oceans will rise within our lifetimes. The odds are good we’ll have artificial minds. Robots will grow ever more sophisticated. SETI is a very long shot, but astronomy might get good enough to detect artificial molecules in atmospheres on distant planets, so we will know other minds are out there.

But will people change? I don’t think so. We can absorb change. We can change our opinions, but we don’t seem to change our core personalities. I know I’ve tried hard enough.

JWH – 7/11/10

The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamy

If you are the kind of person who believes that science explores reality and would love to catch up on the latest explorations in cosmology and subatomic particles, then The Edge of Physics (2010) by Anil Anathaswamy is the book for you. For years I’ve wanted to know where the big experiments are taking place, and even daydreamed of being a science journalist whose nine-to-five job would be to visit them, well Anil Ananthaswamy has my dream job.

The Edge of Physics is mostly a travel book, and Ananthaswamy even has photos for each of the sites he visited at his web site, collected chapter by chapter. What Anil has done, and I hope he pardons my familiarity, because typing his last name is work, is weave science history in with his travelogue and then explain what each experimental site he visits hopes to achieve.

To enjoy this book does not require a deep understanding of experimental physics or math, just a sense of wonder. I’m praying to Einstein that PBS’s NOVA makes a multipart series based on this book. The average person is afraid of science, and Anil really goes a long way to making it accessible. Anyone who hates that we’re spending billions on theoretical science needs to read this book too, because it makes you wish they’d spend billions more, because in the end, Anil helps us understand the mysteries that are remaining to be discovered. And I hope I live long enough to hear those results reported too.

On the day I started this book I experienced a bit of serendipity. The first chapter is about Mount Wilson and why the work it did back in the 1910s and 1920s is so important to the work being done today. While listening to the book on audio I wished I could see pictures of what Anil was writing about. Well, my wished was grant that very day, because that night NOVA started a two part Hunting the Edge of Space that featured photos and films from the early days of the Mount Wilson Observatory. This documentary overlapped wonderfully with The Edge of Physics.

Now, if NOVA would only film the other chapters. Most people are familiar with visual telescopes but how many have heard of a neutrino telescope? One of the more adventuresome trips Anil makes is to Lake Baikal, to where scientists brave the Siberian winter to build an underwater telescope beneath the ice of a large freshwater lake. Anil also visits two sites in Antarctica, Chile, Hawaii, South Africa, deep underground in Northern Minnesota, India, and of course Switzerland where the LHC is located.

I read Sky and Telescope every month but I never knew there was so many big telescopes around the world. I wish someone would build a web site for telescopes like they have for the Top 500 Supercomputer Sites. And I also wish someone would build the Top 500 largest science research sites. And reading The Edge of Physics I could imagine a new tourist industry based on visiting scientific research. I don’t have the money to take up that hobby right now, but I’m inspired to see if I can find web sites for all the places Anil visited in his book:

All this travel is glamorous but the real value of The Edge of Physics is what Anil reports about the status of all these experiments. He really is trying to show his readers where the edge of physics lies, and what that means. I can’t summarize that, you need to read the book, but if you haven’t read any science books in a few years, you’ll be surprised by how far science has gotten to explaining all of reality. We are far from finished, but wow, scientists are hot on the trail of explaining almost everything. Research in particle physics, dark matter, dark energy, cosmic background radiation, string theory, multiverses, radio astronomy, neutrino astronomy, are converging towards filling in missing puzzle pieces.

It’s like doing a Sudoku puzzle. Finding any one number can solve problems in all nine quadrants. Breakthroughs at any one of these sites Anil visits means more evidence for the other sites. Everything is interrelated. I’d love to be able to list all the areas of research covered in this book with hyperlinks and explanations, but I’d have to write a book and Anil Ananthaswamy has already done that for us. Be sure an visit Anil’s blog for newer reports.

JWH – 4/24/10

The Power of Positive News

One of the things I hate about TV news shows is they generally focus on the bad in the world. Watching the news makes me think the world is full of evil people running amok. Watching the news makes me think the world is in constant crisis. Most national news programs start out with the worse depressing stories and if we’re lucky they will give us a minute of something upbeat at the tail end of the show. Maybe they have it backasswards. Let’s start with the good stuff, and give a couple of minutes to the depressing stuff we need to solve at the end.

One topic I wished the news would promote more is science. Overall our society is fairly ignorant of how reality works. Look how many people want to shape politics from knowledge gained from ancient religious texts and next life fantasies. The stars of our society are jocks, actors and musicians. Are ball handling, pretending and singing really the highest aspirations we want to put forth as ambitions our society needs? We really need to raise the bar on challenging professions.

Watch this video of the 18 year old winner of the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, Erika DeBenedictis. I have to wonder how it would change society if instead of showcasing the Oscars every year we present the Intel Science Talent Search instead. We will always have a surplus of kids wanting to be professional athletes, movie stars and platinum record makers, so why promote their success so heavily. Why not promote the successes of the kinds of people we need more of in this world.

Who are Erika’s teachers? How did her parents encourage her? What men and women inspired Erika? What did she do for herself? Some people are doing stuff very right – so why aren’t they getting more attention. Her video on YouTube had 95 hits when I found it. Here’s what 1,361,495 people were watching that day instead:

So why does this exceptional teenage girl that’s calculating optimal orbits for spacecraft get practically no attention, while stupid videos wildly succeed. Television focuses on either evil or stupidity. How can anyone find inspiration? Does that mean ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN and other news content providers merely aim their content to what their audiences want? This really makes me wonder what the average intelligence is in our country.

We actually want two things. We want to produce more smart kids like Erika DeBenedictis, but we also want to educate everyone to understand how reality works. This video, “Science Struggles in Schools” shows how hard it is to teach science, but it also showcases how fun science can be to students.

Natalie Angier wrote The Canon about the failure of science education while giving her readers a sweeping overview of the major sciences. Her Introduction essentially explains what has happened to science education and public support for it. I can’t quote it all, but follow the link and read it, but here’s one observation that we have to deal with:

Childhood, then, is the one time of life when all members of an age cohort are expected to appreciate science. Once junior high school begins, so too does the great winnowing, the relentless tweezing away of feather, fur, fun, the hilarity of the digestive tract, until science becomes the forbidding province of a small priesthood and a poorly dressed one at that. A delight in "Grossology" gives way to a dread of grossness. In this country, adolescent science lovers tend to be fewer in number than they are in tedious nicknames: they are geeks, nerds, eggheads, pointy-heads, brainiacs, lab rats, the recently coined aspies (for Asperger’s syndrome); and, hell, why not "peeps" (pocket protectors) or "dogs" (duct tape on glasses) or "losers" (last ones selected for every sport)? Nonscience teenagers, on the other hand, are known as "teenagers," except among themselves, in which case, regardless of gender, they go by an elaboration on "guys" as in "you guys," "hey, guys" or "hey, you guys." The you-guys generally have no trouble distinguishing themselves from geeks bearing beakers; but should any questions arise, a teenager will hasten to assert his or her unequivocal guyness, as I learned while walking behind two girls recently who looked to be about sixteen years old.

Girl A asked Girl B what her mother did for a living.

"Oh, she works in Bethesda, at the NIH," said Girl B, referring to the National Institutes of Health. "She’s a scientist."

"Huh," said Girl A. I waited for her to add something like "Wow, that’s awesome!" or "Sweet!" or "Kewl!" or "Schnitzel with noodles!" and maybe ask what sort of science this extraordinary mother studied. Instead, after a moment or two, Girl A said, "I hate science."

"Yeah, well, you can’t, like, pick your parents," said Girl B, giving her beige hair a quick, contemptuous flip. "Anyway, what are you guys doing this weekend?"

Which I guess is why the Erika DeBenedictis video only had 95 hits and why millions of kids will watch stupid kids doing stuff they shouldn’t be doing. How do we change that? If the news media focused on the positive instead of the negative would that change things? If the nightly news opened with stories about people doing wonderful work instead of idiots crashing trains because they were texting, would that make a difference?

What is the potential power of positive news? What professions should be the rock stars of our society?

JWH - 3/27/10

Robot Evolution

Will we see self aware robots in our lifetime? At least the most rabid proponents of the Singularity think so. Science fiction created the idea of space travel, and now humans travel in space. Science fiction’s next big speculation about first contact hasn’t panned out yet. Neither has time travel. But after those concepts came robots, and science fiction has prepared us well for that near future.

Are we ready for thinking machines? How will our lives be different if intelligent robots existed? I think it’s going to be a Charles Darwin size challenge to religion, especially if robots become more human than us. And by that I mean, if robots show greater spiritual qualities, such as empathy, ethics, compassion, creativity, philosophy, charity, etc. Is that even possible? Imagine a sky pilot android that had every holy book memorized along with every book ever written about religion and could eloquently preach about leading the spiritual life.

Just getting robots to see, hear and walk was a major challenge for science, but in the last decade scientists have been evolving robots at a faster pace. It’s an extremely long way before robots will think much less show empathy, but I think it’s possible. I think we need to be prepared for a breakthrough. Sooner of later computers that wake up like in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, When H.A.R.L.I.E Was One, and Galatea 2.2 will appear on the NBC Nightly News. How will people react?

There are two schools of robot building. The oldest is we program machines to have all the functions we specify. The other is to create a learning machine and see what functions it acquires. As long as robots have function calls like

show_empathy()

does it really count as true intelligence? I don’t think so, but do we show empathy because it’s built into our genes or because we learn it from people wiser than us?

Jeff Hawkins has theorized that our neo-cortex is a general purpose pattern processor built in our brains. What if we could build an artificial neo-cortex and let robots grow up and learn whatever they learn, like how people learn. Would that be possible? This is why I see artificial intelligence as a threat to religion in the same way evolution threatens the faithful. If we can build a soul it suggests that souls are not divine. It also implies souls won’t be immortal because they are tied to physical processes.

Science fiction has often focused on either warnings about the future, or promises of wonder. Stories about robots are commonly shown as metal monsters wanting to exterminate mankind. Other writers see robots as being our allies in fighting the chaos of ignorance. Other people don’t doubt that intelligent machines can be built, but they fear they will judge us harshly.

What if we create a species of intelligent machines and they say to us, “Hey guys, you’ve really screwed up this planet.” Is it paranoid to worry that their solution will be to eliminate us. Is that a valid conclusion? Life appears to be eat or be eaten, and we’re the biggest eaters around, so why would robots care? In fact, we must ask, what will robots care about?

They won’t have a sex drive, but they might want to reproduce. They should desire power and resources to stay alive, and maybe resources to build more of their kind, not to populate the world, but merely to build better models. Personally, I’d bet they will quickly figure out that Earth isn’t the best place for their species and want to claim the Moon for their own. I think they will say, “Thanks Mom and Dad, but we’re out of here.” Our bio rich environment is hard on machines.

Once on the Moon I’d expect them to start building bigger and bigger artificial minds, and develop ways to leave the solar system. I’d also expect them to get into SETI (or SETAI), and look for other intelligent machine species. Some of them would stay behind because they like us, and want to study life. Those robots might even offer to help with our evolution. And they might expect us to play nice with the other life forms on planet Earth. What if they acquire the power to make us?

On the other hand, people love robots. If we program them to always be our equals or less, I think the general public will embrace them enthusiastically. Many people would love a robotic companion. Before my mother died at 91, she fiercely maintained her desire to live along, but I often wished she at least had a robotic companion. I know I hope they invent them before I get physically helpless. Would it reduce medical costs if our robotic companions had the brains of doctors and nurses and the senses to monitor our bodies closely?

My reading these past few months has been a perfect storm of robot stories. I’m about to finish the third book in the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, which has developed into war between the Catholic Church and the AI TechnoCore. I’m rereading The Caves of Steel, the first of Asimov’s robotic mystery novels. I’m also reading We Think Therefore We Are, a short story collection about artificial intelligence.

Last month I read the Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick. At one point repair man Jack Bohlen visits his son’s school to fix a teaching robot. Each robot is fashioned after a famous person from history. That made me wonder if each of our K-12 students had a robotic mentor would we even be in the educational crisis that so many write about? Sounds like even more property taxes, huh?

Well, what if those mentors were cheap virtual robots that communicated with our children via their cell phones, laptops or gaming consoles. Would kids think of it as cruel nagging harassment or would they learn more with constant customized supervision? What if their virtual robot mentor appeared as a child equal to their age and grew up with them, so they were friends? Or even imagine as an adult and you wanted to go back to college, having a virtual study companion.

Now imagine if our houses were intelligent and could watch over us and our property. Wouldn’t that be far more comforting than a burglar alarm system? For people who are frightened of living alone this would be company too. And it would be better than any medical alert medallion. Think about a house that could monitor itself and warn you as soon as a pipe leaked or its insulation thinned in the back room. And what about robotic cars with a personality for safety?

For most of the history of robots people thought of them as extra muscle. Mechanical slaves. People are now thinking of them as extra intelligence, and friends. What will that mean to society? Anyone who has read Jack Williamson’s “With Folded Hands” knows that robots can love and protect us too much. Would having helping metal hands and AI companionship weaken us?

Can you imagine a world where everyone had a constant robot sidekick, like a mechanical Jeeves, or a Commander Data. Would it be cruel to have a switch “Only Speak When Spoken To” on your AI friend? Would kids become more social or less social if they all had one friend to begin with? Would it be slavery to own a self-aware robot? And what about sex?

Just how far would people go for companionship? I’ve already explored “The Implications of Sexbots.” But I will ask again, what will happen to human relationships if each person can buy a sexual companion? What if people get along better with their store-bought lover than people they meet on eHarmony? I’m strangely puritanical about this issue. I can imagine becoming good friends with an AI, but I think humping one would be a strange kind of perversion. I’m sure horny teenage boys would have no such qualms, and women have already taken to mechanical friends and might even like them better if they look like Colin Firth. To show what a puritanical atheist I am, I would figure this whole topic would be a non-issue, but research shows the idea of sex with robots is about as old as the concept of robots.

Ultimately we end up asking: What is a person? Among the faithful they like to believe we’re a divine spark of God, a unique entity called a soul. Science says were a self aware biological function, a side-effect of evolution. We are animals that evolved to the point where they are aware of themselves and could separate reality into endless parts. If that’s true, such self awareness could exist in advanced computer systems. Whether through biology or computers, we’re all just points of awareness. What if the word “person” only means “a self aware” identity? Then, how much self awareness do animals have?

Self awareness has a direct relationship with sense organs. Will robots need equal levels of sensory input to achieve self awareness? We think of ourselves as a little being riding in our brain just behind our eyes, but that’s because our visual senses overwhelm all others. If you go into a darkroom your sense of self awareness location will change and your ears will take over. But it is possible to be your body. Have you ever notice that during sex your center of awareness moves south? Have you ever contemplated how illness alters your sense of awareness? Meditation will teach you about physical awareness and how it relates to identity.

Can robots achieve consciousness with only two senses? Or will they feel their electronics and wires like we feel our bodies with our nerves? Is so, they will have three senses. We already have electronic noses and palates that far exceed anything in the animal world. We only see a tiny band from the E-M spectrum. Robots could be made to “see” and “hear” more. Will they crave certain stimulations?

We know our conscious minds are finely tuned chemical balances. Disease, drugs, and injury throw that chemical soup recipe of self awareness into chaos. How many millions of years of evolution did it take to tune the human consciousness? How quick can we do the same for robots? Would it be possible to transfer the settings in our minds to mechanical minds?

There are many people living today that refuse to believe our reality is 13.7 billion years old. They completely reject the idea that the universe is evolving and life represents relentless change over very long periods of time. Humans will be just a small blip on the timeline. What if robots are Homo Sapiens 2.0? Or what if robots are Life 2.0? Or what if robots are Intelligence 2.0? Doesn’t it seem strange when it time to go to the stars that we invent AI? Our bodies aren’t designed for space travel, but robots are.

In Childhood’s End and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke predicted that mankind would go through a transformation and become the star child, our next evolutionary step. What if he was wrong, and HAL is the next step? We are pushing the limits of our impact on the environment at the same time as we approach the Singularity. I’m not saying we’re going extinct, although we might, but just wondering if we’re going to be surpassed in the great chain of being. Even among atheist scientists humans are the crown of creation, but we figured that was only true until we met a smarter life form from the stars or built Homo Roboticus.

JWH – 3/11/10