Be The Borg
And Now for Something Completely Different
I’ve been inspired to discuss my future views by Pazzomundo’s post on the evolution of media. By the way if you’re interested in big picture economics, commodities and trading then pazzomundo is worth adding to your reading list. I’m not hugely interested in those topics, but I do like to know what people investing from that perspective are thinking.
OK lets dive in. Make sure you place any drinks, bowls of cereal or the like out of harms way. I’d hate you to splatter your screen due to either laughter or outrage. These thoughts are random and unedited into any real structure. They are my first step into the future and I’m just throwing it out there to see what sticks. Do I believe any of these thoughts? Belief is such a strong word, I doubt any of these thoughts are right just as I doubt most things.
Pazzomundo shows the evolutionary path to social media. If you extrapolate current trends and keep in mind that many of the people responsible for delivering our technological future are science fiction geeks then you arrive at a place I call Be The Borg. OK I admit it, I too may be a science fiction geek and that may distort my view of the future.
I ask myself one question, will humans of the future resemble Captain Janeway or The Borg. For those who don’t know The Borg have various cybernetic implants embedded inside and outside their bodies. These implants connect all the drones to each other in a massive collective called the hive mind, which suppresses each drone’s individuality. Their main goal is to find perfection by assimilating more species and technology, but they only assimilate what they think is relevant biological or technological traits. Heck I think you could argue we’re almost there!
Tags, social voting and ubiquitous wireless communications are three of the essential elements on our path to being The Borg.
Changing topics slightly. It was only nine years ago that Celera first sequenced human DNA. I invested in Celera at the time and so closely followed the race to sequence. Billions were spent in achieving that feat. Nine years on do yo know what the current race in DNA is? Genomic companies are currently racing to be the first to sequence human DNA for $1000. Holy cow, that only took nine years. Can you imagine what humans will be capable of in another nine years or of more interest to me another 27 years? Or another 100 years, which is a mere drop in time.
Humans are wonderful organisms. We have the ability to repair broken bones, to fight viruses and bacteria, to process information at phenomenal rates and of staggering complexity, yet like The Borg we continue to try and perfect ourselves. Currently we can only make modest improvements, but over the coming decades the number and complexity of possible improvements will grow exponentially.
Just as our own body can currently mend broken bones, ‘medicines’ will be developed to repair our organs, including our brain.
As humans are a vein race there is no way we’d tolerate a ghastly future where we had to look like Seven of Nine as a Borg. We’d opt for the humanised variety to the right. Yes I admit it, this entire post is a thin veil for my desire to post a picture of Seven of Nine, the woman responsible for putting Barrack Obama is the White House.
Ultimately living forever won’t be a fantasy it will be a reality that the world will have to deal with.
Humans are the Anomaly
I’m a gardener and love plants. Over the years I’ve come to realise plants communicate with each other. How they communicate is beyond me, but it could be chemicals transmitted by the wind, insects or other wildlife. Plants are spatially aware, they know what is growing close to them and I believe they know the network of plants outside their physical area.
Humans in our arrogance believe we are the most intelligent life on the planet and yet until recently scientists hadn’t even grasped how to utilise this style of networking that plants have used for millennia. Perhaps plants are the most evolved form of life on this planet.
Excluding human life, the plants and other animals coexist on this planet. It’s possible that they all communicate and we can’t understand how, because we are an introduced life form.
Coincidentally after I wrote the first draft of this post, someone suggested I read some Ray Kurzweil. I’ve had a quick look at some of the information out there on THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR and my quick take is that Kurzweil wears artificial intelligence blinkers. His view appears to be of a mechanistic future for humans. That could be unfair and I look forward to reading Kurzweil.
“The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light” via The Law of Accelerating Returns.
I’d like to focus on that last sentence while keeping in mind the exponential growth in our mastering of DNA. Organic life has evolved over millennia. To think we’re going to make something better based on non-organics in the next century or two seems arrogant. Why would we even try to reinvent the wheel? We simply need to understand the wheel, replicate it and improve on it. I see the greatest leaps coming via our mastery of DNA code not software code.
It is inevitable that we will master DNA and humans control of our organic world will be incredible.To expand outward into the universe we could look for hard technological solutions or we could simply seed passing meteors with DNA code, perhaps in virus form or something beyond my understanding and rely on that spreading our code throughout the universe. Or if that is deemed to random then maybe we do build rockets and shoot them at likely planets.
If we are likely to spread beyond this solar system it seems logical to assume that in the expanses of time that other civilizations have done so. Therefore, it is possible that we are the seeds of a distant civilization. Hence, why we fail to understand the natural inhabitants of this planet.
Back to Investing
Those wondering what any of this has to do with investing probably stopped reading long ago. Though in case those still reading are wondering, let me share with you one of favourite myths in investing and the really big picture.
“My crystal ball is broken.” How often have you heard refrains similar to that. It is such a mantra that it is virtually gospel in investing circles. Part of the reason I enjoy investing is that it enables me to see the future more clearly. Through investing I assimilate information on the major technological and social changes and then try to profit from those changes.
If you keep telling yourself that you can’t see the future then there is no chance you can. The future is as clear to me as the past, though that may simply be because I have a terrible memory!
A big change that is coming is distributed everything. This change will be slow as the powers that be have invested a lot of time, energy and money in becoming the powers that be on the back of the current status quo. They fear change as it could usurp their power and influence. Despite that, distribution is a virtual formality, with a few exceptions.
The really big picture is my kids are likely to live to be over 100 and possibly forever in some form. When I think long term in investing I think compounding and I think of that to support my partners and my retirement and our kids in their long lives.
I’ll leave you with the words of Bruce Lee.
“Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own”.
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