Techno-leap to balancing & rationing Earth’s resources: In a brave new world of mind-expanding possibilities, Part 2
By Debra Rae
web posted May 22, 2017
At Lapetus Solutions in Wilmington, North Carolina, several insurance companies are testing new technology that pairs facial analytics with additional data to estimate life expectancy. The good news: It’s believed a single selfie can detect early signs of disease. The bad news: Findings could determine an applicant’s qualification for life insurance and/or pricing for it. Hooking neurons to molecular computing systems may promise better healthcare for psychiatric disorders, measurable solutions for rehabilitating the disabled, and the option of replacing people who work under hazardous conditions; but there’s no turning back from participatory technology.
The techno-leap to merging human consciousness with machines and brain-to-brain connections is now doable. Notwithstanding frightening ethical implications, futurists fully intend to apply technology toward mapping/electronically shocking the brain, harnessing the subconscious for accelerated performance, detecting emotions, fashioning virtual realities and synthetic genes, and equipping humanity to flourish in space. The name of the game? Let’s Play God.
Dr. Martin Erdmann fingers Technocracy as an up-and-coming, techno-fascist world order. Technocracy describes a totalitarian form of would-be utopian socialism. Once freed from biological restraints, some seven billion mystically connected global citizens are expected to interface with technology as virtual persons who, in turn, create virtual environments in which they expect to rule as “kings.”
God’s Creation Gives Way to Enhanced Humanity
Arguably, the minds of enlightened futurists have passed the limits of conceit. The Book of Psalms (73:7, MSG) explains: “Pretentious with arrogance, they wear the latest fashions in violence, pampered and overfed, decked out in silk bows of silliness. They jeer, using words to kill; they bully their way with words. They’re full of hot air, loudmouths disturbing the peace. People actually listen to them—can you believe it? Like thirsty puppies, they lap up their words.”
As the saying goes, “Like father; like son.” Described in the Bible as a beautiful, anointed cherub, Lucifer exalted himself above all others. He purposed to usurp humans as crown of God’s creation; even more, he wanted to become as God. With that very ambition, Lucifer seduced Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit of knowledge. Earth’s first lady learned the hard way that “playing God” rendered no service to her relationship with God, her family, and (over time) humanity at large. Due to self-god delusion, Lucifer fell as lightning from heaven; and Adam and Eve were ousted from paradise.
To this day, proud, haughty scoffers reason: "Perhaps man is not the end product of God's work. Perhaps man is the by-product of the process which will create God.” Serving as medium for an emerging worldwide, super-brain trust, cyberspace is breeding what Teilhard de Chardin dubbed the noosphere—i.e., cosmic consciousness. New Age proponents look to a mass, planetary shift from the age of Pisces to that of Aquarius, distinguished by group- or cosmic- consciousness. Having triumphed over matter—first, the geosphere (inanimate matter); then, the biosphere (biological life)—the duly enlightened and highly evolved look to planetary transformation marked by emergence of a new, superior species called homonoeticus.
In actuality, the end goal is to one-up God. Problem is, manipulating RNA interference (RNAi) in order to create designer babies, for example, is worlds apart from silencing genes for ornamental pigmentation in petunia plants! No matter. The NSF/DOC-sponsored report, “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance,” and the final report of the President’s Council on Bioethics, “Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness,” showcase human enhancement through technology.
To that end, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology successfully implanted a false memory into the brain of a mouse, manipulated to accept as reality what never happened. Given this scientific milestone, researchers see no end to possibilities for reactivating, then tweaking, human memory—or implanting altogether new “memories.” Already on the table are plans to link local groups of machine-enhanced individuals into a collective global intelligence.
In time, it’s anticipated artificial intelligence will enable humans to direct their own evolution by overcoming cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, aging and even confinement to planet earth! “Grand technologies” (i.e., cognitive science, nano-, bio-, and information- technologies) hasten transcendence to the Singularity signaled by a quantum leap manifesting the so-called New Man (homonoeticus).
The Singularity
Director of engineering at Google, Raymond ("Ray") Kurzweil is a brilliant American inventor, evolutionary futurist, and author of The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999), The Singularity is Near (2006), How to Create a Mind (2012), and more. Through his “Edges of Life Lecture Series” at the College of Science (University of Arizona), Kurzweil characterizes information processes of technology as being quite predictable.
Correspondingly, for the future to be predicted, he believes, one must take exponential progression into account. What Kurzweil calls the “paradigm shift rate” will allow thirty-two times more progress in the next fifty years than what was achieved in the last fifty. The next horizon includes harnessing artificial intelligence; ultimately, Kurzweil predicts that our brains will be uploaded to the Internet.
Identifying as “humankind’s best investment” the pairing of futures technologies with cradle-to-grave learning-by-doing, Ray Kurzweil started the Singularity University. Its mission is to educate, inspire and empower global leaders to overcome humanity’s most perplexing obstacles. Key areas of technological change include nano-science and technologies; resource, information, engineering technologies; health, social, educational, cognitive technologies; socio-economic and security technologies. Technocrats’ “wild romp through the future” will impact technology on identity creation and complementary currencies transactions.
With biological evolution extending through technological evolution, the Singularity marks a point in time when computer intelligence exceeds human intelligence. Without human intervention, machines will become autonomous, maintain themselves, and create new technologies and new machine designs.
Freedom Gives Way to Techno-Fascism
In the Technocratic Era, control is the endgame, so what better place to start than with energy? Encompassing generation, distribution and consumption of electrical power (also natural gas and water), the Smart Grid is a global initiative using advanced digital technology to redesign the power grid. Keep in mind that installing Smart Grids in every house and business (worldwide) effectively removes control from consumers and forfeits it to central government.
Supporting an entirely new, resource-based economic system, Network of Things (NOT) technology features wireless, two-way communication among interactive appliances, digital meters and automated substations. In order to subsidize any shortage of energy in neighboring systems, individual customers are temporarily denied access. In reality, what’s deemed best for the common good is but a cover for political decisions that not only decimate personal privacy rights, but also monitor and control delivery and consumption of green resources. Providing equally for basic needs of everyone effectively dismisses right to wealth accumulation, private property, and inheritance.
Nation-States Give Way to Globalism
New York Times bestselling authors and veteran investigative journalists Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott painstakingly unveiled the Obama Administration’s second-term national energy policy that would permanently remake America into a government-dominated state. Unless the Trump Administration purposefully interrupts civilization’s present trajectory, the America of equal opportunity for all, constitutionally limited government, economic freedom and personal liberty will become distant memories.
By passively accepting surveillance cameras, police and drug-sniffing dogs in our schools, national databases that track our finances and activities, sneak-and-peek searches of our homes (without knowledge or consent), and anti-terrorism laws that focus suspicion on average citizens, Americans who remain uninformed and unengaged steadily forfeit basic freedoms and constitutional rights ensured by the founders.
Reflective of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Germany, “at such a time as this,” we do well to heed the good pastor’s wisdom: “Not to speak is to speak,” and “not to act is to act.” So what’s it going to be, America? 
Debra Rae is a regular contributor to The Intellectual Conservative and this publication. © 2017