EVOLUTION'S CHILD
LOOK FOR THE DESCENDANTS OF HOMO SAPIENS IN THIS GALLERY OF
FUTURE FORMS
THE WHOLE EVOLUTION ALMANAC
When the book of evolution is written, what will it say about
the descendants of
man? Will the heirs to the human throne be tiny green creatures that
feed off
the sun, expansive clouds of cosmic dust, or robots with virtually no organic
components
at all? When challenged by the creative force of evolution, our
far-flung progeny might
take some innovative forms.
Whatever the outcome, several of the scientists we contacted in
search of
evolutionary scenarios said that, thanks to extraordinary advances in genetic
engineering
and robotic science, we will have the power to control our species'
fate. Partly because
we have begun to take command of our destiny, it would be
wise not to discount any of the
fanciful life forms that follow. As the
nineteenth-century British biologist Thomas Henry
Huxley once said during a
debate on evolution, "I am too much of a skeptic to deny the
possibility of
anything." So today, meet with an open mind some of the potential members of
the
family of future man
HIGHER TOUCH
Each finger of the robot creature will have fingers.
These fingers, in turn,
will have smaller fingers in a repeating pattern. The
metal-and-plastic
creature, a future version of you, will pull in its branches to walk
through a
door, then, once in the room, spread out to its full six-foot diameter.
According
to Hans Moravec of Carnegie-Mellon's Robotics Institute and author of
Mind Children
(Harvard University Press), the fingers of this treelike creature
will have a powerful
sense of touch. Gliding over a photograph, these tiny
tactile organs will sense height
variations in the developed silver on the
paper. And if the creature needs an eye, it will
form it by crisscrossing its
fingers tightly enough to diffract light like a lens.
But the
most extraordinary aspect of this immortal creature will be its ability
to simulate human
thoughts and capture human memories so precisely that in many
ways it could pass
for-indeed, replace-one of us. In the scenario put forth by
Moravec, humans will create
this intelligent robot replacement one step at a
time. The creature's dumb
great-grandfather, created between 2000 and 2010,
will have the brainpower of a lizard
built for grunt work-and no personality at
all. The second-generation robot will learn
from experience. The
third-generation robot will run almost instant simulations of every
task you
assign it, executing intricate instructions with ease.
By the turn of the next
century, Moravec adds, the fourth-generation robot-the
high-touch "fingerbot"-will be smart
enough to build replicas of itself and to
fashion a spacecraft to the stars, These highly
intelligent robots, capable of
thinking much like us, will begin a trek across the cosmos,
leaving the Earth as
a human preserve.
At this juncture, says Moravec, organic, mortal
humans will want to transfer
their thoughts and feelings-indeed, their very essence-into
the vessel of the
immortal machine. As time goes on, Moravec adds, humans will meld with
their
lab creations so that they never die.
Human and machine, predicts Moravec, will merge
into one with the help of a
skilled robot surgeon. The surgeon's job: transferring brain
function layer by
layer into a machine and then excising the now-useless biological tissue
from
your body*. These human-robot hybrids, Moravec adds, won't all have to look
like a
bush with a trillion fingers. Instead, you'll pick your own body style,
gearing it to the
environment and your personal aesthetic taste.
Moravec has found that his idea raises
fears, and wonders why. "What is it
about this body of yours that's so incredibly
important?" the senior roboticist
says. "If it were killed and an exact robotic substitute
put in its place, your
friends wouldn't miss you. Your family wouldn't miss you; none of
your projects
would miss you. So nothing would miss you. You'd be dead, so you wouldn't
miss
you. So who cares?"