Prologue
We once gazed in fear and wonder at
comets, lightning bolts, volcanic eruptions, and plagues, with the belief that
they were beyond our comprehension. We
thought that they were mysterious forces of nature, and that we were bound to
their omnipotent control. We attributed
these forces to powerful gods and hoped that by praying to them, they would
show us mercy. We even hoped that we would one day become as powerful as them.
One day, we did. We had unprecedented
control over nature. The world and universe was not as mysterious as it once
was. But it also was not as safe as it once was. No longer was power allocated, for everyone
was a god. We laughed in the face of nature, and joked about our ignorant
ancestors, but no one was laughing when tragedy struck. It was a collective
product of our own faults, and we had never experienced as much regret as we
did in the history of our species. But the past cannot be changed.
In
order for you to understand our current plight, you must first understand the
path that we took as an entire species - a path where our stance with nature
changed over time. To help you understand, I will tell different tales of our
species’ interactions with nature. These
tales will be ordered chronologically, and will each capture an important time
period where our mode of interactions with nature changes.
A Time of Mythology
(1000 BCE)
Amidst a thunderous storm and wild waters was a fisher in
his boat. Beset by the darkness of the night, rain began to crash all around
him. Waves, each subsequently bigger than the last, began to form in his
vicinity. At this moment of danger, not even his beautiful catches would
comfort him. In fact, his greed was responsible for his position, as he
prolonged his stay to catch more fish. All he wanted to do was return to his warm
home in Athens, but the unpredictable movements of water and the inconvenient
weather conditions were preventing him from navigating back in the ways that he
was used to.
He stood up, walked to the tip of his boat, looked up at
the black sky, and yelled from the top of his lungs: “WHY MUST YOU DO THIS TO ME
POSEIDON?! WHAT HAVE I DONE TO UNPLEASE YOU?!” Immediately afterwards, a stream of electricity
traveled down from the sky and struck his boat, instantaneously slicing it into
fragments. The fisherman, who barely avoided the lightning, was propelled by a
wave a short distance from his boat as it was destroyed. With his last bit of
strength, he closed his eyes and went into a prayer posture, causing him to sink
slightly into the ocean. He then descended casually into the watery abyss,
knowing that he stood no chance in the face of the gods, the masters of nature.
The
Industrial Revolution (1845)
With her arms tightly wrapped around her chest, she gazed
through the adjacent window at the changing landscape. Hills, plains, and trees
appeared then disappeared rapidly. These fleeting images were the only things
that could distract her from the intense pain that she was feeling inside.
Months prior to this trip, she had been experiencing small pains in her chest that
had slowly gotten worse and worse. When she finally went to a local doctor in
hopes that he would alleviate her pains, he didn’t know how to treat her. Feeling great sympathy for her, he sent her
to a more advanced hospital across the country. Not wanting her pain to
exacerbate, she took the earliest train available.
She knew the train ride would only take three days to
travel across the country to her destination, which she felt was enough time
for her to survive. She felt comfortable knowing that she was using the speediest
transportation available. She felt safe in the hands of industrial technology. But
the velocity of train travel could not match the speed of an untreated raging
sickness. Five hours into the trip, she felt excruciating pain, and by ten
hours, the pain had more than doubled. In dire need, she began to scream for
help, which easily attracted all the nearby passengers. Unfortunately, no one
knew how to help her. Two hours later, she lost consciousness, and began to
take weaker and weaker breaths. Eventually, she stopped breathing entirely. She
had a cardiac arrest, and not even the most modern medical technology could
have saved her life.
The Information Age
(2013)
Face pressed against a circular window, he stared down at
the passing mountains and seemingly endless water. He knew his mother was
nearing death, so he wanted to see her one last time in the hospital. He
canceled his business plans for the week, and got on an early flight to his
destination. Suddenly, a collection of
clouds appeared and blocked his field of vision. He then closed the window, took
a deep breath, and reassured himself that everything was going to be ok. He
knew the flight would only last 2 more hours. However, something else sparked
his concern. Suddenly, he forgot exactly how he would get from the airport to the
hospital, as he had not traveled to his mom’s country in half a decade. But
that concern quickly disappeared. He pulled out a tiny mobile device, and in
less than a minute, used it to find the nearest and cheapest transportation
route to the hospital, all with the luxury of moving only a single finger.
After the plane landed, he took a shuttle to the city of
the hospital, and from there took a yellow service car directly to the
hospital. He rushed to the front door, underwent necessary small talk, signed a
few papers, and then finally was taken to the room where his mother was
resting. He instantly noticed machinery connected to her bedside, and various
sorts of plastic tubing that ran directly into her body. He knelt before her
bedside, and wept softly. His mother was unable to speak, but she looked at him
and formed what appeared to be a grimace with the outlines of her mouth. Though
his heart was warmed by their reunion, he was overcome with sympathetic sadness,
for he imagined the conditions his mother had to bear. But shortly after this
inner reflection, he stood up and said thank you to his mother’s doctor. He
knew that the best medical technology was being used to preserve her life in a
way that would comfortably ease the inevitable and unconquerable force of
death.
The
Biotechnological Age (2051)
A large crowd of doctors applauded right
after he completed his sentence. He finished his talk on the state of
contemporary medicine. After the applause, he gave a genuine thank you, and then
pressed a button on his visor to remove his virtual presence from the shared
virtual teleconference room. He then exited his medical office, and hopped on a
hovering pod-shaped vehicle, ready to return home to his lovely wife, who was
carrying his baby daughter. Powered solely by light, the vehicle autonomously
flew him to his house. His flight path was highly regulated, as it synergized
with the paths of other autonomous vehicles, and he was home in short time.
Once home, he was greeted by his
wife, who feigned appearing happy and healthy. She then quickly told him that
she has been feeling sick today, and for the first time in years. He then pulled
out a bar-shaped device out of his pocket, pressed a couple of buttons, and then
scanned it across her body from head to toe. He then pressed another button,
and rescanned the bar across her body in the same motion. Amazingly, she instantaneously
recovered and felt well again. She then formed a gigantic smile, and then gave
her husband an elongated hug. After releasing her arms, she asked how their
daughter was, whose gender they knew immediately after their daughter’s
conception. He then took the same device, pressed a series of buttons, scanned
her once again, and confidently gave precise quantitative details about their
daughter’s state of health. “Oh! I forgot! Take this tablet dear, it should
provide your nutrition for the next 2 weeks!”
Contemporary
Chaos (2090)
The future of humanity once looked so
hopeful! We were technologically
advancing every single day. In less than 4 decades from the Biotechnological
Age, our technological power had more than tripled! Our methods of
transportation had reached new levels of convenience and accessibility. All it
took to travel across the globe was 30 seconds, as teleportation became a
possibility. The world became smaller! And then we made innovations in
biotechnological medicine. We discovered how to live forever by figuring out
how to reverse the aging process. After a while, these privileges became accessible
to nearly everyone! We had been more powerful than any humans in the history of
our existence. With the help of technology, we were the masters of nature - the
gods our ancestors only dreamed they could ever be like. But this apparent technological power, which
helped facilitate and prolong our lives, turned out to be a catalyst for chaos.
With immortality as the legal and accessible
norm, everyone sought to prolong their life. This led to an initial doubling,
and then eventual quadrupling of the population from the moment immortality
became accessible (2070). Twenty years later, there is barely enough room to
fit any more new life. We had to focus on building vertically. We even had to
build floating cities over oceans. But those became occupied within a few years.
Systems of governance recently saw that the
high accessibility of immortality posed a threat to the continuity of the human
species, as there were not enough resources to support all human life. So this
year (2090), these systems legally made immortality private, and this angered
the public. The thought of death, which had for decades been forgotten, is now
a present danger, a danger that fuels people to take action by raiding the
biotechnological sites of immortality. Teleportation makes these raids
possible, and global violence ensues.
Control and order are slowly but
surely lessening. The public is losing faith in governmental systems because of
their inability to establish control and provide public security. These efforts
to stop population growth seem pointless. Space on earth is already near max
capacity, and restricting immortality will not make any short term impacts on
our population. It just spurs hatred and violence. It’s too late to fix what
has already been done, and resources are running out. It doesn’t matter that we can travel the planet
in seconds, or live eternally, because our planet is perishing. What’s the
point of living, if all there is to live for is violence, chaos, and a selfish
war for resources? No one cares about each other anymore, and I don’t see that
changing in the future.
Looking back at the struggles of our
ancestors, I can now see how they weren’t as bad as the ones we face today. They
wanted to be like us. They wanted to dominate the seas, the skies, and force of
death. Nature was their ruler. But now, I want to be like them. Even though their
world was larger and more difficult to transverse, it was safer. Technology is
what changed our interactions with nature. As shown in each progressive tale, it
gave us more control over travel and death; each new technological innovation
made us one step closer to our unspoken goal of supreme power over nature. But
our ancestors would never know that once that goal was reached – that once
technology would finally be at its peak - life would be toxic.
Technology by itself didn’t cause the toxicity
we experience today. It was instead the result of our actions - a consequence of
the ways we used technology. We created the toxicity; technology was just our
enabler. If I could travel back in time, I would travel back to the Age of Information,
and warn everyone of what could happen if technology is not used responsibly. Technological
growth was booming for the first time back then. Maybe I could convince them
that technology would be the future, and tell them that since technology would
be in their hands, the future would be in their hands as well. Maybe their
future would be safer than our present reality.
~Inspired by Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future and my personal encounters.
