Before we completely lose our minds immersed in paradoxical and seductive transhumanist dreams, let’s investigate the actual technology. Today’s relevant landscape dips and rises with genetic engineering, neurological augmentation, the rise of “automated government agencies” – cyborgs that enhance or expand their capabilities using technological means, robotics and artificial intelligence. These ventures have been in the works for many years and are only now beginning to bear fruit. For decades, scientists have been able to mutate genes and electrically stimulate the human brain, however clumsily these events were initiated. Primitive robots and computer systems are older than many people who are now reading this text.
Man is the robot – carrier of a large brain, aware that he is conscious. A robot designed to discover the circuit that programs its behavior. The nervous system is the organ of consciousness. When humanity discovered the function and infinite capabilities of the nervous system, a mutation took place: The transformation from the earthly life of larvae to a higher destiny.
Timothy Francis Leary 0 (1973)
The seeds of the future were planted long ago. So let them not be lost among the weeds or in dark and deceitful purposes.
The truly state-of-the-art is often even exaggerated and therefore vague and indiscernible. Enthusiastic and wild imaginations are prone to various delusions. “Flying cars” and “cold fusion” 1 are constantly close to us, just “around the next corner”. However, aside from failed, ugly and dysfunctional prototypes and patents that lead nowhere, these alluring fictional promises never seem to materialize. As a typical example of a completely funny analogical illustration, our famous expatriate in the USA Peter Diamantis 2 started his book “The future is faster than you think. Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries and Our Lives” (“The Future is Faster Than You Think How. Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries and Our Lives”, published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 2020) quoting Jeff Holden (Jeff Holden)3, then product manager of Uber, who in May of 2018 predicted the use of … flying cars by 2023!
We hear variations of the same hyperbole about the Metaverse, self-driving cars, cancer cures, nano-robots (or nanobots) and quantum computing all the time, so we really are so tired of the incessant related nonsense that it becomes easy to forget that a real discovery can change everything. Once a truly effective prototype emerges, it tends to replicate rapidly! Example of “safe talk” : According to the “National Museum of American History,” “From 1939-1941, approximately 7,000 television sets were sold. This new technology was out of reach for most Americans at the time, as the cost of the devices ranged from $200-$600.” Television sets “became available nationwide only after World War II.” A little later, millions of devices permeated American living rooms.
On the other hand, various institutions do possess and develop cutting-edge technologies hidden in secret research laboratories. One can only imagine what is hidden behind the curtain of …. stereotypical passionate “crazy professor”. Many obnoxious and persistent salespeople (typically the various occasional tele-booksellers) make a fortune doing just that, exhibiting science fiction plots which they sell as debunked “secret technology exhibitions”. This action may be despicable and predatory, but it is also… sufficiently profitable. It should be noted that some gullible people are willing to pay a lot of money to hunt down a non-existent mythical sea monster and… at the ends of a plane and not a spherical earth!
Nevertheless, these secret programs do exist. We may give them an occasional glance when a brave complainant is raised, bringing relevant evidence to the matter. American Edward Joseph Snowden, a technician (systems administrator) who worked under contract for the NSA (US National Security Agency) and the CIA, revealed that the NSA had worked extensively with Big Tech4 to to spy on the entire planet. This was a devastating revelation for the establishment, even if essentially nothing stopped. Next, we had Cajun – French Canadian, computer and software engineer at Google, (fired in 2022), priest and self-appointed moral judge of Artificial Intelligence *Artificial Intelligence – AI), Blake Lemoine, who publicly denounced that Google’s chatbot5 LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications)….has feelings, is “sensitive”. In fact, Lemoine (a graduate of Lafayette University in Louisiana) insisted that the software in question “has a soul and is afraid of death.” In its official response, Google accused him of “drinking the Kool-Aid”6. Over time we will see which of the two views is true.
Any technical analyst finds himself caught between exaggeration and utter secrecy. Even when the “hype” of the hype becomes a real product or a secret project is revealed, the current technology is quickly surpassed by further developments. It is difficult for a sober observer to persevere and continue. However, some snapshots give us some vague idea of where we are and where we can go. We have been studying and researching global events for decades. Therefore, we will see which seeds germinate and which are lost.
