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The Age of Convergence
Humanity has seen many epochs. Most of the shifts have occurred as a result of ideological or technological advances that reshaped society. From Luther’s essays to the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, humanity has demonstrated how a seemingly simple change can send shockwaves through complex systems. Look where we are now relative to just one hundred years ago. Humanity’s existence has spanned over two hundred thousand years, and yet the most rapid advancement of its civilization has occurred in a tiny fraction of that time. I’d like to credit this rapidity (and indeed our very existence) to an underlying force in the Universe named evolution. This article will examine how evolution (and more specifically, convergence, a property of evolution) is responsible for the construction of physical reality; life; intelligence; and technology. It will also describe the characteristics of time and perception, and how convergence is changing them as we speak.
You might be asking “what is convergence?” and it would be an excellent question, for what sort of absurd article would this be: to describe something at such length and to give it such godly acclamations without yet knowing it! I would make no such irresponsible and zealous claim: Convergence occurs when two separate systems join for the benefit of both. In biological systems, it is often described as symbiosis: for example, we have a symbiotic relationship with the many forms of bacterium that dwell in our digestive systems: of which we gain the benefit of digested food, and they gain the benefit of a nice home and three squares.
First on the list of evolutionary products is physical reality itself, a composition of atoms; specifically molecules. The water we drink is composed of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. The air we breathe is a pair of oxygen atoms. Everywhere we look, and everything inside us, is filled with molecules (and actually mostly empty space). They have arisen over the ages of the universe, where atoms float in aimless chaos, colliding and joining; separating, colliding and joining again. They have been in this perpetual waltz since the annihilation of matter and antimatter in the early Universe. These molecules exist as a result of attractions and repulsions, and the energy that remains from the Big Bang. Molecules are the convergence of atoms, the symbiotic inevitability that arises from their natures. But what then, are atoms? Atoms are composed of sub-atomic particles familiar to high school science students; labeled electrons, protons, and nuclei. These are the hierarchical stepping stones which conform to create atoms. The next logical question is, of course, what are those sub-atomic particles made of? Fourty years ago, we would have cited the chicken-egg paradox, and resigned to the impossiblity of discovering. However, recent advances in detection equipment (Graphene – nobel prize topic 2010, and particle colliders), as well as quantum theory, have revealed that there is a paradigm that lies below sub-atomic particles. They have entitled this paradigm the “quantum zoo,” wherein a medley of varying particles exist that are by and large a mystery still to scientists, who at this very moment are attempting to collect data on, and catagorize, these particles.
Each tier of reality has pieces that fit together to create the next level of the puzzle. No classification of atom is alike in its parts (hydrogen is never similar to helium), and I would be willing to bet that those parts have parts of their own (but we cannot see below the nanometer because light’s wavelength is too large). We have also discovered recently that the majority of the universe is composed of “Dark Matter,” (aptly named, since we have no idea what it is) which has massive influence on the formation of galaxies and stars, planets, you and I. Unfortunately, I can’t draw any conclusions on the influence of convergence on dark matter until they figure out what it is. If I knew, after all, this article would be published in Nature instead of here.
Another realm that calls convergence mother is life itself. At the dawn of life, its simplest forms of consisted of chemical self-replicators which arose out of the convergence of molecultes: greedy entities that existed only to copy themselves and to consume the parts required for that feat. They lived in the early primordial soups of Earth: vast oceans rich in minerals from volcanic eruptions and meteor impacts; bombarded with radiation from the sun to mix things up. As they competed, more complex forms of replicator arose – the kind that could steal molecules from others, ones that consumed others (the birth of symbiosis), or constructed protective barriers to protect themselves (the cell wall is born). in an effort to further its survival and replicative capacities – these entities adapted further.* As those life forms grew more complex, so did the system of replication. Encoded bits of data were stored in chemical markers that were collapsed and expanded (DNA) to facilitate replication.
As individual complex replicators grew more competitive, it became advantageous for differing replicators to converge. For example, the components of a cell were historically separate entities: distinct organelles exist within the cells that allow your body to function. Thanks for joining the team! Convergence scaled up; bigger, better. Organs such as the liver, kidneys, circulatory systems, immune systems, nervous and digestive systems… the vast diversity of convergence evident in your body is astounding. We are tributes to our biologic forebears in that we hold their portraits in every crevice of our being.
*(The cell itself is an object of symbiosis, some biological theorists suggest that prokaryotic cells had the components for energy conversion, and were consumed by ancestoral eukaryotic cells.)
Intelligence arose as a result of the advancement of the first data-replication system to which we paid homage in the last paragraph: DNA. As a simple codification system, it is still used today in humans all over the world! DNA itself became a comprehensive system from which life extrapolated the diverse blueprints that build us from the bottom up. The problem with DNA though; is that it is not a true system of information transference. You can’t pass knowledge on to your children (if you could they wouldn’t smoke meth like you did). Instead, evolution designed a system (the brain) that could learn from experience, using memes (specific pieces of information – such as “that is a lion and will eat me if I don’t run fast” or “that plant is poisonous”) constructed from memory to enhance our survival capability. The brain is the next form of convergence on the great chain. It is a set of systems that performs very specific functions in separate regions of space. The brain regions govern the organization and interpretation of sensory perception, the storing of memories, the creation and expression of language, art, music and the regulatory functions of the human body (among other functions). Yet despite this very segregated system of divisive purpose, the human mind arises as one overarching real-time synergy. This can be attributed to the great web of neurons that span the regions and connect them together (the neo-cortex, the gray matter of which we have more of than any other species on earth). This connection, this real-time blending produces what has been labeled consciousness or self-awareness, the you-ness, that wakeful life inside your skull.
Here we come to my more speculative and perhaps philosophical area of the article: the treatise of time and mind. Since birth we are inundated with sensory perception that the brain organizes into hierarchies of context that may be useful for the future. The brain’s purpose seems to be, then, to prepare us for the future, to survive in situations that may arise. Consciousness exists, as a result, within the confines of time. When presented with paradoxes of causality, our instincts dictate to us what is possible or impossible. For example, if I punch myself in the face, it will hurt a second after I do it, not a minute before. This is the intuition bred of a mind on a membrane of causal time. We are bound by this intuition, and it drives our behaviour.
There are three classifications of time: Past, present, and future. There are also three accompanying classifications of perception: people that live in the past, relishing in memories either good or bad; people that live in the present, like Buddhist monks, or people that simply seek pleasure and avoid pain; and people that live in the future, working and sacrificing the present to achieve ends.
The human mind is a convergence of these three aspects. The past is a tool for the augmentation of the present: it classifies our senses; indicating what we should expect from the things we see, hear, taste, touch and smell. We make decisions based on the contextual classifications of stimuli (for example, ‘that is a car, and if i walk in front if it, I may die,’ arises when crossing the road). The past, therefore, blends into the present.
The present is an augmentation of the future; it is deterministic in that we engineer the circumstances within our control in order to manufacture a perceived end. The present blends into the future. This is the interaction of the phases of time within the human mind.
So where does this leave us? Isn’t this where we stand still; perched above this spattered slate, where words are strewn from mind, to be digested in the miasma of lights that hide behind your eyes? Does the mind evolve? Does it converge? Before I can answer that, I have to carry on to another layer on the evolutionary onion:
Technology.
For me, the most fascinating product of convergence (close second to the human mind), is technology; whose breakneck advance has carried us into modern civilization. We are, after all, completely dependant upon the tools we’ve created. Modern humanity has already merged with technology; influencing our evolution in relation to our interaction with it. Now more than ever we are integrated with it. We live longer; we consume more media; we wage destructive war; at a distance we relate to each other in real time; we are surrounded by light; we travel in hours where our meager biped-progenitors could not have walked in years… The changes are exhaustingly innumerable. All the while, we take it for granted; and often, we don’t consider technology as a phenomenon in and of itself. The creations of humankind are part of the evolutionary process. A layer upon our hierarchical forebears: quantum particles, subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, life, data storage, intelligence, the human mind, technology; the passing of a patterened light from hand to hand, each paradigm sacrificing for its continuation.
In an effort to avoid too lengthy of an article, I would suggest that if you want to understand the convergence of technology much more specifically, please read my article on the Singularity. In brief, however, the differing facets of technology are swarming together, producing effective gains that, apart, would not be possible. For example, an emerging field, bionanotechnology, merges biological and man-made mechanics on the nano-scale (one billionth of a meter), making possible mechanics that in either field exclusively are difficult (or impossible) to achieve. As a result of collaboration of technological and scientific fields, there will come a point in time where the power of technology will exceed our expectations and imaginations. A few of the possibilities that technology may bring are: indefinitely extended lifespan, augmented human intelligence, artificial intelligence, colonization of space, world peace, free education… and many more, including the unforeseeable advances that arise out of their predecessors.
I must take a moment here to give credit where due, to a book by Ray Kurzweil entitled “The Singularity is Near.” Within this weighty technological tome, Kurzweil outlines a theory called “the Law of Accelerating Returns,” in which he explains how the evolutionary process gains power and speed as it compounds upon its own advancements. In addition to the phenomenon of convergence, this process conjures images of visible crushing towards a point in time and space, very much in the way a black hole’s event horizon crushes matter into a singularity (hence the name). It was the law of accelerating returns that brought me to realize the phenomenon of convergence, and its effects on us. Kurzweil describes in detail, how he has documented the advancement of computation over the past 30 odd years. He explains that computing power is accelerating, doubling every machine generation (and machine generations are coming in shorter and shorter intervals). A book well worth reading; it changed the way I perceived the world.
My final point makes reference to the alterations that technology has made and will make on the facets of perception this article previously described. The past augments the present, and the present augments the future.
What is distinct about the current generation of technology is that we now have access to the compendium of all human knowledge and experience (the internet, in combination with search engines and smartphones). This availability of information allows us to conjure the past experiences of others in order to make concise decisions about the present, thereby engineering the future with a higher degree of accuracy. We’ve been given the ability to learn from the mistakes of billions of other humans at the touch of our fingertips. It is retrospective omniscience; a merging of past and present that allows us to interpret stimuli with more wisdom and experience than a traditional human mind can contain. At the moment, it may not seem as significant, because that information is subjectively retrieved, in fact willfully; whereas memories and experiences are hard-wired and in reaction arise, without intent.
However, as computation becomes more ubiquitous, and augmented reality (a movement in tech development to overlay information on the world) becomes more prevalent, the process will become as smooth as our intuitions. This is the First Act in the convergence of time. The second will come when technology allows us to predict the future with a high degree of accuracy, and when we can actually communicate with the future (it is theoretically possible using massless particles to send messages into the past because they are not bound by the arrow of time). We stand upon a precipice now as creatures incomplete. The children of transition, we’re pressed in the pincers of shifting perception. What will become of us? Should we be seated in indifferent reservation? Should we be governed by fear of change? I would respond only that fear is not a solution, but a reaction. We can either choose to embrace change, or we can choose to die. Our current modality breeds suffering and extinction of our species, the extinguishment of our Eden. Embrace evolution, or die, as those giants upon whose shoulders we have stood are dead, their existence contrained by ignorance, fear, faith, and complacency for the wonder of the universe.
About the Author
Amateur by admission, I’m a writer out of London, ON. I write articles on a wide variety of topics when not engaged in the attempt at producing poetry or fiction. Those topics may include History, Politics, Science, Art, Literature, and pizza toppings.
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