What with all the excitement of my holiday on Monday I have to admit that I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write. Which is annoying because I really like writing! And I won’t get to write properly until after my trip. I hope I can survive (and satisfy you guys) with just lots and lots and lots of photos. Here’s hoping!

Anyway… I caught an episode of a fantastic series that’s airing in the UK on Channel 4 at the moment: Inside Nature’s Giants. The first episode featured an elephant (which I missed!) but this week they autopsied a massive Fin Whale (second only in size to the Blue Whale, the largest creature on the planet) — and as the Faroe Islands have lots of Fin Whales, I was obviously very interested! This poor girl had beached itself in Ireland and died — but not to waste such a golden opportunity, a crack team of biologists and veterinary scientists flew in to cut the beastie into little pieces –  in the name of science and commercial TV! (Here’s a video clip which I hope you can view outside the UK.)

I won’t lie: it was pretty damn grim to see the whale’s coroner knee-deep in whale bits (there’s no other word or words that can suitably describe the pink, wobbly mass she was wading through). ‘If I can just reach a little bit further up here into this cavity I can free its heart, but it’s tied down by all of these blood vessels…’ She’s hacking away with a machete! Chopping away at a dead whale!

The heart of this leviathan is a cubic meter! The main scientist (the one with the sharpest knife) held up a segment of its aorta (the main output artery of the heart) and it was about the size of your head! And its heart only beats three times a minute! (Which is how it stays underwater for so long.) The whole whale weighs 60 tons (55,000kg) and is 65 feet (20m) long! When feeding it swallows 70 cubic meters (18,000 gallons) of water and then spits it back out through its filters, capturing fish and crustaceans. It can empty and fill its 3000-litre lungs in one breath — which it only needs to do once every 40 minutes!

But the amazing bit? They’re mammals, just like you and I! They originally started off as dog-like creatures with hoofed feet. 53 million years ago these ‘pakicetids’ jumped into the water and never looked back. It took 15 million years for them to lose their legs and become fully marine. 8 million years more and they had learnt to echolocate (the ’sonar’ that they use to locate food and obstacles). 10 million years later they diversified into dolphins and porpoises — and that’s where we are today.

‘Just’ 53 million years to mutate from average-sized land-dwelling mammal to the largest species this planet has ever known — the Blue Whale (which are bigger than commercial jets, by the way). Their new-born children weigh 6,000lbs (2,700kg) and drink 400 litres of milk a day! But as weird and foreign and huge as they are, they’re still mammals. These monsters are genetically more similar to a mouse than a fish.

And that made me think about where we’d be in 53 million years.

Humans are incredibly young in the grand scale of things. We — Homo habilis, our very, very primitive ancestors — started using tools around 2.5 million years ago, which set us apart from our chimpanzee brethren. And look how far (or not?) we’ve come in just 2.5 million years! In another 51.5 million years what could we possibly evolve into?

I’ve talked a tiny bit about the future of the human race but hardly touched on the topic of evolution.Will we even live long enough to experience tangible evolution? And if we do evolve significantly, what form will it take? Looking at that little dorky dog-like creature above, and then at the Blue Whale it’s almost impossible to fathom what we might become if given enough time! What environmental condition or external stimulus will have the biggest impact on our evolution? Will we develop a 6th finger on each hand to help us type faster? Will evolution instead take the form of transhumanism: bionic arms and eyes, and cybernetic implants?

The problem is, evolution is slow. You can forget ruggedised skin to survive global warming (or impending ice age if you’re that way inclined). You can forget wings to fly around with (though that might happen if we move to a planet with less gravity!) In fact… I really have no idea what we might evolve into. It’s like being asked ‘what do you think the world will be like in 100 years?‘ but exponentially more difficult to answer.

Looking at history we’re actually more likely to wiped out by a meteor before we evolve into something new and exciting. With us obliterated, the whales might sneak back onto land and spend another 53 million years transforming back into dogs:  speaking dogs with opposable thumbs capable of using tools.

Hmmm…

For as long as we’ve been human one resource has always been valued above all others: knowledge. The success and progression of civilisation is measured in just one way: the extent of our knowledge.

We pride ourselves on how developed we are. How much more more civil we are compared to our barbaric ancestors. We sure have come a long way from the grunting, cave-dwelling proto-human. Guns. Medicine. Democracy, equality, liberty; these concepts, these inventions are fine examples of our ever-expanding body of knowledge, our scientific research and the evolution of thought.

Civilisation is like a machine, with each and every one of us playing the role of cog or spring in the great, universal machine. It spans the complete evolution of humanity through time and space and, if we avoid extinction, it will be everlasting.

And that’s how we power this machine: knowledge. Knowledge goes in one end: ‘metal conducts electricity’ — and out the other end comes invention: ‘computers’. Grossly simplified but you get the idea. This machine needs to be fed constantly. It doesn’t differentiate between new data or rehashed, time-worn knowledge: that’s what makes it so devastating! It creates and destroys with ambivalence. Cultures, ideologies, religions; all have fallen or been cut down into their constituent parts only to be reabsorbed — reconstituted.

It seems to do OK with regurgitated, reabsorbed data as long as there’s something new being added from time to time. Imagine a big cauldron of soup — wouldn’t it get a little boring if you never added a new ingredient? The soup would probably dry out even. Our greatest gains definitely come from pouring new knowledge in.

And where to find the new knowledge? Exclusively within the domain of exploration. Pushing the boundaries is the greatest thing we can do to perpetuate the machine of civilisation, of humanity.

That’s the crazy thing: all of the knowledge we need to survive is already out there waiting to be discovered. It’s like turning over rocks and finding wriggly worms and millipedes. It’s like turning over a rock and finding data that solves an unknown — ah, so that’s the solution… Eureka! But these rocks might be at the top of the highest peaks or the trough of the lowest marine trenches. These figurative rocks might be in the petri dishes of science labs or on the whiteboards of a particle physicists.

Wherever they are, these rocks need to be turned. It doesn’t matter by who, ultimately, as it all becomes part of our great machine. The magic becomes mundane and the entirety of civilisation surges forward, simply by flipping a stone and reporting your findings.

Problems arise when people stop exploring, when we cease pushing against the boundary. The machine continues to churn — it can’t stop — but with a lack of new data errors begin to appear. Our world-view begins to stagnate. Data is re-analysed and new, erroneous, contrived conclusions are drawn. False progress, bureaucracy, fads and pseudo-science can grip society in a stranglehold.

Before our very eyes exploration has become the black sheep of governmental spending: Research, science, space travel and the like all shunted onto the back burner and the back of our mind. There is knowledge out there just waiting to be discovered and assimilated into our culture, knowledge that will propel our civilisation into the next era. But it’ll have to wait. We have more pressing issues at hand apparently.

[Welcome to Thoughtful Tuesday! You know the format by now: I rant, I rave, I reveal thoughts that bounce around in my head that don't necessarily make sense yet, but may do with a little more thought... This week, a particularly meaty subject that pops up on the blog fairly regularly: Transhumanism.]

It’s a long word that sounds a lot more complex than it actually is but the most important part of its definition, as defined by the Transhumanism Declaration (2002), is thus:

Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We [Humanity+] foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet Earth.

I know. This is serious business! But let’s not get bogged down with long, complex words and ideology. Transhumanism is, basically, the next step in human evolution; in enlightenment.

For the longest time imaginable we’ve been limited by our body. We push its boundaries, we perform feats of extraordinary endurance and power, but at the end of the day it is limited. Eventually, something snaps: a bone breaks, we grow senile — and, sooner or later, we die.

Progress in the areas of humanism and enlightenment are all about prolonging (and improving!) our mental, physical and and spiritual well-being. Thus, that’s exactly what transhumanism is all about: we’ve reached our current, imposed-by-our-physical-body limits; now it’s time to let technology do its thing. It’s time to modify our bodies to take us to the next level!

Let me just throw out some possible modifications (upgrades!) that are covered by transhumanism:

• Biotechnological implants/replacements. Strength, speed, eyesight and endurance limits/thresholds raised way beyond current human bottlenecks.
• Modification of our genetic makeup. This is the one that’s currently under scrutiny from the media. This area deals with the modification of ourselves (or our progeny) to make us inherently more resistant or to damage/pathology. Immunity to disease, removal of short-sight — that kind of thing (though obviously ‘designer babies’ with blue eyes and perfect, beautiful appearance would be quite popular…)
• Prevent ageing (aging). Transhumanism covers the slowing of aging, or even prolonging life until we’re effectively immortal (Who wants to live forever?). Cryogenics also come into play here, though the real ‘philosopher’s stone’ is immortality, of course. This will probably take a biotechnological form — replacement organs, repairing cellular damage, etc.
• A lot more that hasn’t been invented yet…! As a general rule, most things that are speculated or appear in sci-fi novels later appear in real life. We can expect to see some really crazy technologies appear in the future. Artificial intelligence (think Terminator), proper virtual reality (think holodeck in Star Trek) and my favourite — mind-uploading, ala The Matrix: ‘I know kung fu…’

Obviously, along with such awesome abilities come a seriously large number of issues, most of which are of an ethical nature:

You can’t play God!

You’ll turn… into a Frankenstein!

Perhaps it is the existential issue that is most worrisome: When do we stop being human? It’s certainly not when we replace the heart or any of the limbs. It’s the brain, right…? Or is it? How do we know until we try? Do we really trust Bible-thumpers that, let’s face it, know absolutely nothing about cybernetics? That’s why we’re afraid: we have absolutely no idea what we’re getting into. But if history has shown us anything, is it ever beneficial to shy away from, instead of facing, the oncoming torrent of technological progress?

As with any technology there are good and bad uses — as to what defines good or bad, I won’t attempt to state — using transhumanist technology is a two-edged blade. You could enhance only yourself or the genetics of your progeny — a selfish act? — or, with the same technology, you could genetically modify those living in sub-Saharan Africa so that they could live without food.

It’s not guns that kill people…

The thing is, I could go into the ethical repercussions, and whether transhumanism should be allowed or not… but… really, it’s inconsequential. We’re going to do it anyway. Of course there will be devout naysayers — sociologists, psychologists, humanitarians, Christians — (the whole gamut!) — but there always is. The truth — the technology – will out. You can’t stop everyone from kite-flying in thunderstorms.

There is something about technology. It’s all there, just waiting to be discovered. As I’ve already covered, we really like turning over stones. We really like uncovering mysteries. This is the biggest of them by far. What makes us human?

This is going to happen in the next decade, by the way. If you have moral, ethical or philosophical disagreements, you probably want to settle them now, before upgrades for your bionic eyes and ears start appearing in the supermarket.