This is my response to @heretickitten's incredibly thought provoking blog posting, What is the final product of evolution?
To understand my answer, you must first read hers.
I was forced to take to my blog to respond, because my answer is a bit umm, lengthy...
@heretickitten Upvote to Join the cult?
You of all people? Little miss individuality? ;)
I'm a futurist and I'm also a transhumanist. I believe that the future actually looks a whole lot different than most people believe right now. I don't have a crystal ball. But I do try to day dream a few years out with reasonable accuracy regarding major tech and science developments.
What I see when I do this is a whole lot different than one might expect.
So here is how I see this going. Bear with me, it's pretty long.
What you are calling Moore's law isn't really Moore's law. Moore was remarking on transistor density alone. But the chart you are showing is actually demonstrating increases in information processing capability & information processing density.
Our universe, what ever else it may be, is computational in nature. It is most likely not a simulation (sorry matrix fans). However it does compute at it's most fundamental levels and I am of the firm belief that it's these computations that drive the entirety of our physicality, i.e. the laws of physics.
The computational limit of the universe is something that we are nowhere near approaching yet. We're still on the bottom rung of the ladder.
But you have to ask, what the hell is actually going on there?
What's happening is that our ability to process information is growing at an exponential rate. As we do this our machines get smaller, more intimate. The simple fact is we already spend more time with our devices than our loved ones. But humans as a species are adapting to this in remarkable ways.
Still, the predictions made about the march of progress must be examined on short time scales to understand the longer timescales.
Compare predictions from 1954
To what computers of 2004 were actually like...
And just 10 years later...
And now realize even that device is seriously outdated by today's standards.
We have already arrived at the point where Commercial Neural Prosthetics are available for purchase and implant. Wait that's today??? (yes it is)
Here is tomorrow...
Even that image is not exactly the future. As it turns out, the particular nanobots pictured above are here now. However they are task specific and are directed using magnetic fields and aren't smart enough yet to operate autonomously.
However this does demonstrate that we are either the last generation to know death, or more likely the first generation to live forever. Death itself is infact just another disease we will eliminate, like smallpox.
But let's forget the edgier stuff and just say that human life expectancy grows at it's present rate. Let's also say that information processing capacity and more importantly that information processing density, continue to grow at current rates. No brand new physics, no huge breakthroughs, just what we have now and our present trajectory is maintained.
Even right now we are "homo sapiens" transitioning towards a new species called "homo cyber". The moment we log into the internet and send our thoughts out to others, or otherwise use technology as a vital part of our life, we are experiencing the first steps towards this new species.
Yet at current rates, in 15 perhaps 20 years you will go to the Dr to get the last shot you will ever need. Reconfigurable nano tech that is capable of proactively detecting threats, eliminating them, healing and repairing damage but perhaps more importantly... Optimizing your systems.
This is full fledged transition to "homo cyber".
As your tissues age and fail, this technology begins to replace those tissues, not with new tissue, but with something optimized. Bit by bit, piece by piece, your tissues are replaced. Perhaps over the course of 50 years. As this occurs, information processing capabilities increase. Your mind becomes able to communicate your thoughts, desires and intentions much more efficiently. Essentially you become "wired in", or better yet "tuned in" to the rest of humanity. You begin to develop a type of empathy or even telepathy. Mind to mind communication, as well as instant access to the entirety of human knowledge.
After about 50 to 100 years your last organic cell fails due to senescence
It doesn't matter how long it takes because this technology makes you functionally immortal from the day you get the shot. It's unlikely you'll notice or even care, the day the last cell dies. Perhaps though it will become a human tradition to celebrate that day, like we do birthdays now.
Either way, you are still you. But you are something more, something better. More durable, more intelligent, faster, quicker, smarter etc.
The minute you transcend mortality, you become a new species called "homo superior".
Since you are functionally immortal, and the information that is you is now well mapped and understood by the machinery that replaced your flesh. Machinery under direct control of your own will. Your intelligence has become truly substrate independent.
You are pure information capable of running on multiple substrates and more importantly you understand how to control those substrates in the same way you might drive a car now.
You have not yet transcended physicality, but you are no longer "homo sapien" or even "homo cyber". The minute that last bit of meat fell away you became "homo superior" a completely new species.
It suddenly becomes as easy to travel to another planet as it is to log into your favorite MMORPG today.
You are able to live in and experience other worlds. Experience them in their full reality and in your full physicality. Yet you are optimized for the particular environment you are in at the time. Similar to an avatar, but there is more.
This is possible because what actually defines consciousness, appears to be a measurable quantity called Phi. Phi is a measure of how much each component in a complex system is "aware" of other parts. Your mind is right now only "aware" of the pieces you call "self". But just like you can "sorta sense" when you get a text a few seconds before it arrives. You will be able to be fully sensate within multiple additional machines and you will do this automatically. It will just be as natural as breathing.
This means you can literally copy yourself. Your essence, your personality into a myriad of locations and synthesize the information from these locations simultaneously. There is no single seat of consciousness. You have become a multiply conscious, distributed intelligence.
This is NOT a hive mind. It's you, your consciousness, your will. But you are in many places at once. How many? As many as you choose to! Multiple avatars working in a coordinated but distributed fashion. Perhaps even "joint avatars", for example you are trying to solve a heavy physics problem but you don't quite have the basics to fully comprehend it. You simply run a joint consciousness with someone who does have that information and you borrow their knowledge and intellect.
I imagine that stage of humanity looks a lot like this...
Only without the antisocial and homicidal tendencies. ;)
I'm of the firm belief that this happens long before we start making trips to the stars and most likely there won't ever be any sort of "singularity" or single mainframe where everyone is stored. No matroska brain, no matrix.
To travel to the stars will require new physics, yes. But I'm of the opinion that there exists brand new physics just laying in wait for us to find them when we're ready.
The laws of nature keep presenting themselves as a brick wall. Yet every time we examine the bricks carefully, we find they are made of fine crystal. We shatter the glass wall and we find something new and something more fundamental laying in wait to be discovered.
I believe that we will shortly find that FTL communication is in fact possible and that it doesn't do the paradoxical bullshit we think it will. It's just not possible at our current level of understanding. Yet our understanding, our knowledge, our intellect and our ability to process information is growing at an exponential rate. 2 orders of magnitude more and we are fully "homo cyber", 3 perhaps 4 orders of magnitude and we look back to find we are now fully "homo superior".
Yet for no reason that I can really verbalize, I look and I see a step beyond homo superior. A being that is beyond physicality as we understand it.
One that can directly utilize the fundamental laws of physics by force of will alone. A being that exists within the substrate of the universe itself and is able to effect it's own will; Manifesting it with no more mental effort than that of a daydream. Pure human will and intellect, personified into something much greater than we are right now.
We have no word for this except deity, or god.
So here's another word for it... homo transcendent
As far out there as this sounds, this is what I see us becoming in no more than 10,000 years at current rates of growth. I also think it very likely that nearly every conscious being reading this, will be there when it occurs. It might even be the correct answer to the question What is the great filter?
What's beyond that?
I don't know!
I can barely even fathom this far!
I can hazard a guess though.
I think there is a reason that humans appear to be hard wired for spirituality. Despite the fact that I am someone who does not believe in religion. I have to think that beyond the so called deity phase we will eventually undergo, that we will emerge from the multiverse itself like a dragon hatching from an egg. But into what? I don't know. I do think there is a reason that certain symbols are universal in human consciousness; meaning the same thing to all people, in all places, at all times. But what that reason is? It is beyond me. I just have a hunch the answer lays in that direction.
Now obviously, any of this would take more computing capacity than exists on the entirety of the earth at this time. Assuming our information processing density increases at it's current rate; Our road to fully realized homo superior is only 4 or 5 orders of magnitude more than we have now, but even if it's 10 orders of magnitude more, that still isn't very much when you factor in exponential growth patterns. By way of comparison, to reach the maximum information processing density of the universe is 32 orders of magnitude and we will have been running on the substrate of the universe, i.e. become homo transcendant long before we hit that limit, assuming it even is a limit.
I know it all sounds like a pipe dream...
Yet the cellphone I'm dictating this on, already has 2 orders of magnitude more computing capacity than the entire earth did at the time that first picture was taken. (yes I'm aware the picture is a fake, computers weren't even that advanced back then)
So upvote this and follow me if YOU want to join OUR cult!