ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

58 Origin and Evolution of Life
Robotics and bacterium [may become] ... ultimately united in
biochips based not on silicon, but on complex organic compounds. ...
Manufactured molecules would exchange energy with their
surroundings ... to turn it into information [and] open doors to
‘cybersymbiosis,’ the comingling of human and manufactured parts
in new life forms and ultimately enable us to remake our species. ...
Homo sapiens might survive only as a rudimentary organ, a
delicately dissected nervous system attached to electronically driven
plastic arms.
Hans Moravec (1986) of Carnegie-Mellon University’s Robotics Laboratory
and author of Mind Children has his own vision of mind/tech symbiosis in which
ultra-precise robotic brain surgeons transfer the software of human consciousness
to a supercomputer. He describes advantages of existing in silicon or gallium
arsenide with robotic bodies. These include being impervious to harsh
environments, electronic transportation across galaxies and immunity to disease.
Max Headroom is a hypothetical television personality whose consciousness
exists solely within computers and electronic equipment. The mind content of a
head injured motocyclist (“Max. Headroom 2.3m” was his last image before the
crash) is somehow transferred, collected, and actively existing in electronic
circuitry. Somewhat of a video cult figure, Max Headroom may be the first of a
breed of technocognitive entities.
Comingling of mind and technology would be a neat trick, fraught with
potential benefits and dangers! Certainly it would depend on an understanding of
the mechanism of consciousness which is not currently available. Perhaps
imminently available nanosensors will be able to interact dynamically at the level
of cytoskeletal protein lattices within all living cells. This interaction may lead to
the next symbiosis, one which will have as profound effects on biology as did the
conversion from prokaryote to eukaryote. If nanotechnology and biology become
symbiotic, consciousness can be a commodity.