Evolving Door

Gregory Benford from the November 1996 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Rather than invoke such fantasies, and the parallel image of a pristine, steady-state nature, Anderson believes that genuinely progressive thinking should embrace chaos theory. Naive, old-style "bio-regionalism" that tries to get us all to settle down and be virtuous ignores that nature alters across time and place, hovering in states bordering on instability.

Indeed, "nature" can't be restored to its immaculate historic state because it is ever- changing, even without us. Any reclaiming we do installs a kind of virtual nature, not a mythical absolute state. This sobering fact at least consoles us for our meddlesome temper. "No matter how much we liked Pocahontas," notes Anderson wryly, "we really don't know how to leave nature alone."

Anderson sees human destiny coming out of three information systems: genetic, cultural, and "exosomatic"--information gathered beyond our bodies, but linked firmly to us, like the bio-info gathered globally. Each of these three "lineages" advances our evolution, with the exosomatic rate now accelerating beyond view.

Where should we let it drive us? No moral anchors here seem trusty. Invoking nature with its implied supremacy ignores that many cultures have fundamentally differing ideas of even what nature is, much less how it should work. Other cultural guidelines--religious doctrine, scientific objectivity, fashion--are similarly mutable and local, necessary perhaps but not sufficient as guides. The "blessing and scourge of our time," says Anderson, is the dizzying multitude of our options. And mere cultural relativism won't work; cultures must clash when the questions are greater than regional.

It is no easy task predicting who or what will win in this future. Wrenching perspectives beckon: Perhaps the quick, easy info flow means that biotech won't operate by the old rules of resource scarcity. What happens to patent rights in this whirl? Should better seeds be immediately distributed to the tropics, say, without worrying about paying their development costs in the north? Who will decide such matters?

Alternatively, will info-savvy groups "skip merrily onward into the bio-information society while the unenlightened masses remain mired in polluted and overcrowded misery"? The traditional right frets over harm to commerce, while the left worries over damage to cultural and social structures. Some think "information wants to be free," and others fear the gusher will swamp frail Third World institutions, leaving them naked in a storm of change.

An insightful example is the potential super-drug, interleukin-12. If it proves effective against Third World scourges such as malaria and leishmaniasis, pressures to develop and deliver it to the World Health Organization will mount. Almost certainly, international agencies will want to give it away, providing little return revenue stream to the company that developed it--and thereby destroying the basic incentive structure of pharmaceutical innovation. So who will create new drugs under such a system?

A deeper issue is how we should value the needs of future generations, as exalted in the sustainable-development model, against the wealth and welfare of those living now. Anderson raises the question but provides no answer. Some, like Kevin Kelly in Out of Control , take refuge in the moral free market of self-organization. Overall governance then must arise from humble, interdependent acts done locally in parallel.

Anderson is skeptical that such decisions will necessarily play well in a highly political arena. He meditates upon an "information standard" like the old gold standard, replacing the state-centered visions of the last few centuries, skirting the world-centered visions of the one-worlders, ending with a multi-centric model, a "polyarchy." Within this interactive soup will float old-fashioned voices like the Roman Catholic Church, autocrats, multinationals, wealthy hackers, and media moguls. Meanwhile, the pot stirs and bubbles, fed by media circuses which fixate upon "contests, conquests and coronations" more than the lofty imperial views of usual ruling elites. Insights can compete with each other, Darwinnowed until they command a price. Since they can come from anywhere, a multicentric world should be more efficient, delivering hot ideas and criticisms, sharpening the survival skills of institutions which can porously use the flow. Still, hard assets will grow in value, too. Competition between gold and information needs more attention before we embrace information as the new standard.

Anderson has an admirable grip on the broad view, describing the process of change and how it can affect our perspectives on ourselves and the world. Most of his examples stem from the present or the near past. Using glossy generalizations, the book is long on rhetoric, short on specific visions. Precision of prediction is impossible, or at least a misleading goal, but working out ideas aloud can give a feel for the fragility of prediction itself, and thus why we can only know so much.

One example he does mention is the MIT Media Lab notion of a "body net," with people meshed thoroughly with their computers. I got a feel for how this might evolve several years ago at MIT, at lunch with a young man wearing a heavy set of glasses. His left eye sported a see-through computer screen. After looking through them a few minutes I could navigate through the restaurant while calling up data into my left eye, using a touch pad in my left hand. I could access data, answer e-mail, or take notes while talking or walking-- paradise for Type A personalities.

Will such augmentations be more than odd gadgets? Divining the future doesn't demand that we guess, but Anderson's case--that biology and data, tightly coupled, will drive change more profoundly than any other forces afoot in our time--seems sound. Answers will come slowly, and as he remarks, we will have to learn our way, sometimes painfully, through the experience.

Comments

nfl jerseys|11.16.10 @ 8:36PM|#

jfthygft

log in or register to reply