Exponential Acceleration of Evolution
I mentioned this in a previous post “First Novel in 10 Years” , about the potential paths of future human evolution, but I would like to put that into more perspective. The evolution of human life is not only exponential, but exponential exponential. That is, the rate of change is increasing at a faster and faster rate.
Many people with even a simple background in mathematics are familiar with exponential growth or acceleration. For instance at the Earth’s surface the rate of the Earth’s gravity accelerates free-falling bodies at a rate of 32 feet per second squared. And we generally accept this as an accurate rate for acceleration from Earth’s gravitational mass, but this figure is really only applicable to areas above the surface of the Earth within normally reachable atmospheric levels, say, to 35,0000 feet, or a little over 6 miles above the surface of the Earth. The Earth is approximately 8000 miles in diameter, so 6 miles of altitude above the surface is a small fraction of the actual distance from the center of the Earth and therefore 32 feet per second squared is a pretty good approximation of the acceleration of Earth’s gravity within that range.
However, when you get out to the range of the Moon, then the acceleration from Earth’s gravity is but a fraction of 32 feet per second squared. The Moon is in orbital speed such that it’s orbital speed counteracts the Earth’s gravitational force. But if for instance, an object were not in orbit, but at the Moon’s distance, then it’s acceleration towards the Earth would be only a couple of feet per second, and as the object came closer and closer to the Earth, the acceleration would increase from just a couple of feet per second to 32 feet per second at sea level. This is a good example of exponential-exponential growth. The object (not in orbit) would accelerate towards the Earth at ever increasing speed as it came closer to the mass of the Earth.
The Evolution of Life, especially Intelligent Life takes the same form. Mankind is evolving at ever increasing rates, and as we delve into the technology of our own biology and learn to sequence genes to traits, and learn to use use viruses to create DNA changes in our own bodies, thereby restructuring our own bodies, and begin to relay more and more on machine components to supplement out own bodies, such as pace-makers and artificial hearts, we will continue to evolve at an ever increasing rate.
To put this into perspective, life first showed up on The Earth about 4 billion years ago, and it took about 2 billion years before multi-cellular life began to develop. A few hundred million years after that and there came an explosive diversity of live on this planet. It was only a couple of hundred million years ago that a large diversity of plant and animal life appeared on The Earth.
The beginnings of what we now call the human linage only began to about 4 hundred million years ago, upright apes. Only two million years ago came anything we would classify as “human”. 35 thousand years ago the first cave paintings came to appear. 10,000 years ago, the advent of organized agriculture and the advent of civilization.
If you compressed the history of The Earth into a 24 hour period, then multicellular life only begin the the last 12 hours, dinosaurs in the past hour, and humans only in the last second. One second ago we were upright apes with only rudimentary tools, and now we are delving into genetic engineering and using machines to supplement our lives.
Humanity is accelerating into a changing future at an ever accelerating rate, accelerated by our own growing impact on not only our planet but mainly because of the ever increasing rate and spread of knowledge.
The 19th Century brought us the Theory of Evolution. The 20th Century brought us the Theories of Relativity, Quantum Theory, transistors and computers, lunar landings, and genetic engineering. The 21st Century will likely lead to the end of death of individuals as we have previously known it.
While I am blissfully optimistic about the future of humanity, I also think that our own technology will transform us in the coming century into something more than human. The age of the cyber-human is immenent.
The advent of new technologies allows even the poorest of countries to leap-frog over prior technologies. A country without a telecom infrastructure can go to cellular (wireless) communications without ever having to lay the copper lines that first World countries depended on tho bring us to this bright new age. Language translation technology is coming on strong and will likely allow people of all cultures and languages to be up-to-date on the most recent scientific advances without the intellectual elite having to know foreign langages.
The neural connections of roach brains have already been interfaced with computers. It will not be but a few more years before the human brain is interfaced with computers.
Impending doom? Perhaps?
Impending acceleration of the evolution of human kind is a certainty. If only we do not kill ourselves first.