Information has a medium of storage. Whether it is the pattern of wood grain in a tree, stored in the medium of plant cells bonded together, or your favorite song, stored in bits on your MP3 player’s flash drive, all information is stored by some underlying platform. Information exists because it persists in the medium of this underlying platform.

Based on the rules of the medium in which it exists, information can sometimes replicate. And when it does, it can also sometimes evolve. Patterns of information that persist longer and/or replicate more, are more likely to be in existence. Errors in replication can sometimes produce patterns that will exist longer and/or replicate faster and/or more often.

Furthermore, information that evolves on one platform, can sometimes itself become a platform to encode information at a new level.

The previous paragraphs convey the entire known history of the universe – from the beginning until very recently. And that statement probably deserves some further explanation…

We cannot perceive the lowest level of existence, but we know it has rules. We call these rules Physics.

Physics has created a platform for the storage of information as persistent patterns called mater and energy.

Patterns of matter and energy interact according to rules we study as Chemistry.

Chemical interactions have given rise to self replicating patterns that are the basis of life. The evolution of DNA became a platform for single celled life. We call the study of these patterns Biology.

The simple cells of primitive Biology have become a platform for multicellular creatures. The evolution of the eukaryotic cell allowing complex animals to arise. We call the study of these animals Zoology.

Multicelular animals have evolved the ability to sense and react to the world around them. The central nervous systems they developed have became a platform that stored a new level of information. A map of reality. An echo of that which was encoded on the lower levels. We call the study of these central nervous systems and the way they store information, Neurology.

The Neurological platform have evolved to allow individual animals to act together in much the same way that single cells could bond to form a multicellular organism. Pack/Herd/Flock behavior was once the newest level of information under the sun.

But it was really nothing new. At least, not, in so far as the meta pattern was still present. And the next step was just more of the same.

The animal that evolved the ability to best communicate information among individuals started spawning new information forms that battled against each other for growth and survival, the way information had always competed on every previous platform. We reference these information forms as Ideology.

This new competing information was, as before, piggybacking on the previous lower platform. New ways for nodes to communicate even faster evolved (writing, telegraph, telephone, TV) allowing larger and larger groupings of individuals to bind together into a single ideology – to become more completely one creature made of many dependent parts.

The meta pattern was unbroken. And if one extended the meta pattern, one would predict technology that allowed virtually instant mind to mind communications – with warring hive minds (governments, religions, corporations) becoming the important things, and individual human beings becoming unimportant interchangeable parts.

I don’t know what the next level after this would be. And perhaps that is natural. An atom is incapable of internalizing the form of a strand of DNA. A strand of DNA is incapable of internalizing the actions of a single celled organism and its interactions with other such. A single celled organism is incapable of internalizing the concept of a multicellular animal and its interactions. And as a human being, I can not really understand the entirety of any ideological organization, or the interactions between them. So why should I expect to be able to guess what higher level of information that might be spawned on a platform of group minds?

But I can see something else…

Although the progressive bootstrapping of new platforms might yet continue – I don’t think it will. At least not the same way. There will be a difference. We will not just evolve into hive minds of individual human bodies that act as one organism. Something different has happened at this most recent level.  Along with greater technology to bind individuals into groups, there has also evolved new technologies to do something very different. Technology has allowed higher level information to start making changes to its own underlying supporting platforms. We have started peeling back the layers of the information platform onion.

Our medical technology is becoming capable of changing our biology. We are close to being able to re-write our DNA – change our bodies. Maybe even change existing bodies, not just code for better biological offspring.

Our information technology is creating new replicating information systems on different platforms – silicone based hardware rather than carbon based wetware. It is possible that a new kind of intelligence may evolve on this new platform, and it may even be possible to encode our existing minds on such platforms.

As quickly as we are moving towards technology that could create hive minds, we are also moving towards technology that would allow any pattern of self aware information (a single individual mind) to access and change its underlying platform – perhaps down to the lowest level of physics. Such individual intelligences, no longer bound to a turtle stack of legacy platforms, might be able to engineer increases in all that they are and all that they can do – attain all that is possible from manipulations at the lowest level of reality.

The possibility of such a path is something very new under the sun.

If you believe that any of the technologies we have talked about are possible (and there certainly are some good reasons to think so), then it would seem that we can look forward to a very interesting future. It may be that we are destined to be a race of immortal beings with powers that we would previously have described as godlike, or maybe we will just create the machine creatures that will replace us, or even something in between as our technology becomes more and more a part of us. Alternatively, we may still be heading for some sort of end of the world scenario, in which we, and all of our works, will come to some cataclysmic end.

Every technology we have talked about holds immense promise for bringing us all a much better life, however, every technology also seems to have some end of the world scenario associated with it. This could be because any power can be used for good or ill, or it could just be the way we tend to think.

There have been many ‘end of the world’ scenarios before, and we have survived them all without even breathing very hard. Here is just a small sampling:

• A couple thousand years ago, there were people predicting that all civilization was doomed by the military practice of the time of salting the Earth of a defeated nation, so that no crops could be grown there again. The theory was that eventually all farm lands would be salted, through ongoing warfare, and then everyone would starve.
• The year 1000 AD brought the first millennium crisis, with people believing that Christ was sure to return and Armageddon would follow.
• In 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted overpopulation and mass starvation was just a decade away, and it has continued to be thought to be “just a decade away” by many others, ever since.
• In the 1970′s with global temperatures having fallen steadily for 40 years, some concerned environmental scientists predicted the start of a new ice age, and told people that global cooling (yes cooling), caused by our modern industrial practices, was going to freeze us all – unless we shut down all the factories.
• In the 1980′s we were going to be annihilated at any moment by a nuclear war between super powers, perhaps started by computer error or a computer hacker.
• There was another millennium scare in 2000, and this time, there was the millennium bug with computer date stamps not registering properly past Y2K – it was certain to threaten modern civilization with a massive global computer shutdown.

However we have not survived the entire list of imagined world ending disasters – not by a long shot. Just for fun, here are a few additional possible scenarios: (This is the short list. Many more available at www.exitmundi.nl):

• cosmic ray burst
• super volcanism
• drastic climate change
• another big bang
• deadly new mutant animal species
• super virus or bacteria
• black hole

Now here is an interesting thing about all the scenarios we just listed: they could all be natural occurring phenomena. At any time, we could all be killed by a completely natural disaster according to the plot line of any of these scenarios. However, most people do not seem worried about the world suddenly coming to an end through natural forces.

Now take a look at the list again, but this time put the words “New technology causes…” in front of each of them. Do the scenarios now seem more likely? To a lot of people, the prospect that science could cause some of these things seems far more likely, and/or worrisome, than the idea that they might occur without a human cause.

Now take a look at the list again, but this time, put the words “New technology saves us from…” in front of each. Does that make you feel better? Most people don’t seem to think about the fact that we create science to shelter us, and to serve our needs, and that this should make a scenario where science saves us, more likely than one in where science accidentally destroys us.

The point we are trying to make is that there is no particular logical reason to believe that such a disaster will occur soon, let alone that we will somehow cause it with our science. However, the idea that this might be the case seems to be in a lot of people’s heads. Most people seem to believe that the idea of science causing such a disaster is more likely than it occurring naturally. The only explanation we can find for this bias is that certain idea-organisms have reasons to want us to resist technological change.

These idea-organisms will continue to promote disaster scenarios to slow our technological progress. More such scenarios are always in the works. Some people point to prophecies that foretell our immediate doom, saying that the Mayan calendar predicts a “new cycle” in 2012 and that our technology will destroy us then. Some predict that the “real” millennium computer bug will happen in 2038 when the UNIX date time format runs out of space. Global warming has us burned, flooded, or frozen (pick the one that scares you most) sometime in your lifetime. And there is the nanotech earth eating goo scenario.

This all seems very scary doesn’t it? But you can probably always find a prophecy to say whatever you are scared of, if you just look hard enough. For example:

If you believe in prophecy and are afraid of nanotechnology, have you ever considered this registered trademark of The Sherwin-Williams Company? Perhaps they should never be allowed to use nanotechnology in their paint factories…

If we were to allow this to happen, after being so clearly warned by this obviously prophetic logo, wouldn’t our faces be red?

(We know, the joke isn’t as funny in black and white, but color printing costs being what they are, what are you gonna do?)

It is always more interesting to say that the world is about to end than it is to say that the world will continue on and be just fine. It will always grab more attention. It will always produce more newspaper headlines and teasers spots for later news programs. (“There are three common household products that are probably in your home right now, and could suddenly cause the end of the world! Tune in at 11 O’clock to find out what they are.”) Such fears are exactly the kind of thing that Collective Identities use to gain control. The message they send is that you will be safer if control of such dangerous matters is left to some Higher Power.

But why should we believe that the Collective can protect us from ourselves? We know that a free market works to give us the things we want, and that the Collective almost always does a worse job. When it comes to deciding what technologies will be pursued, the free market has a record of producing things that benefit individuals, while large collective entities, in competition with each other, have given us things like atomic weapons and genetically engineered diseases. There is no reason to believe that central control will not do more harm than good.

It may be true that as individuals get more powerful, a single very upset person might one day have the power to destroy everyone and everything. However, a Collective is more likely to create the technology that would make that possible, and keeping someone from using it, once it is created, will be a real trick. Also consider that the only people who ever seem to be willing to commit such acts of murder/suicide are those infected with the urgent cause of some Collective Identity.

If we allow collective Higher Powers to decide what technology is developed and what is suppressed, it is more likely to create harmful dangerous technology, and suppress good uses for advanced technology, such as giving us all longer healthier lives. This could actually make the difference between you living to see some incredible future world, or dying of old age just decades before things really get interesting.

If we can control the future in any way, reducing collectivism’s drag on scientific progress is probably our best bet. As a person living in the early part of the 21st Century, you may well be part of a truly unique generation of human beings on the planet Earth. But which unique generation are you a part of?

You might be part of the last generation that has to die, or the first generation of immortals.

Whether you let the development of new technology be influenced by individual hopes and dreams, or controlled by some collective mindset, could well make the difference of whether or not you get to witness the future of mankind.

We can’t tell you if the future will be hell on Earth, or heaven, or something more mundane in between. All we can say is that we think it would be a real bummer for you to die of old age just before it becomes clear what is actually going to become of humanity. And it would be especially annoying if the only reason you were not saved was because some group of people, hosting idea-organisms based on writings that are thousands of years old, denied your right to life by slowing the progress of medical technology.

Do your best to stick around. You don’t want to miss the punch line, do you?