During the latter part of their evolutionary cycle humanity was deeply worried about its own demise. Perusing through the numerous, surviving records of the era, it is fairly easy to identify some of humanity's most common fears: zombie apocalypse, disappearance of bees, evil artificial intelligence, different types of nuclear Armageddon, genetically modified foods, biological weapons gone wild, evil alien invasion, meteor impact, religious rapture, Ebola epidemic, and others.
Humans were right to worry about extinction. The end did come. But there was never a final countdown, or ice age causing meteor, or crazy zombie hordes searching for brains. The evil aliens never came, no apocalyptic day of reckoning ever happened. There were no surviving …show more content…
The size of all other media combined paled in comparison but it was still sizable. It seems that the amount of externally recorded media is inversely proportional to the life expectancy of the dominant species in a civilization. Other, longer living, species are not as creatively prolific or feel the same compulsion humans seemed to have felt to record and share their creations. Humans created multiple fictional layers so they could live multiple lives simultaneously. They gradually created a society where fiction was as important as reality.
According to the humans, the only two things that were certain in life were death and taxes. Yet these two elements of life were what they spent so much of their existence trying to avoid.
How likely was it for humans to use their tiny lives to better their species, or to help the following generation? Undoubtedly it would require a high degree of selflessness for them to give all they had towards an end they will never see, but with enough foresight and optimism it is believable that some could dedicate their lives to such a goal. However, most humans seemed to have lived in a constant state of anguish knowing that nothing they did really …show more content…
Visible in their history was a slow and increasing detachment from the world. Humans became less and less physically active as their dependency on technology increased. At first it was a transformation that created hope of a connected world with no frontiers. Everyone could connect with everyone else, share ideas. With time the tech connection became more sophisticated. It started out with instant messaging, evolved into video, then into virtual reality interaction. From words crisscrossing the planet to entire new virtual dimensions being exchanged. Huge amounts of resources were applied towards making these new virtual worlds accurate replicas of the real world. Sight and hearing were the dominant human senses and were the first ones to be satisfied. Increasing computing power, screen resolutions and sound codecs allowed these evolving VR systems to provide a visual and auditory experience indistinguishable from reality. Touch, taste and smell quickly followed, completing the experience. There was a theory during those early days that predicted a technology singularity when computers became capable of self-improvement. These artificial intelligences would grow, quickly surpassing human understanding. In this scenario humans were be at the mercy of a super intelligence they couldn’t comprehend or control. This singularity never occurred. The evolution of computing was shaped not by the desire to create a new species of sentient beings but by
Humans were right to worry about extinction. The end did come. But there was never a final countdown, or ice age causing meteor, or crazy zombie hordes searching for brains. The evil aliens never came, no apocalyptic day of reckoning ever happened. There were no surviving …show more content…
The size of all other media combined paled in comparison but it was still sizable. It seems that the amount of externally recorded media is inversely proportional to the life expectancy of the dominant species in a civilization. Other, longer living, species are not as creatively prolific or feel the same compulsion humans seemed to have felt to record and share their creations. Humans created multiple fictional layers so they could live multiple lives simultaneously. They gradually created a society where fiction was as important as reality.
According to the humans, the only two things that were certain in life were death and taxes. Yet these two elements of life were what they spent so much of their existence trying to avoid.
How likely was it for humans to use their tiny lives to better their species, or to help the following generation? Undoubtedly it would require a high degree of selflessness for them to give all they had towards an end they will never see, but with enough foresight and optimism it is believable that some could dedicate their lives to such a goal. However, most humans seemed to have lived in a constant state of anguish knowing that nothing they did really …show more content…
Visible in their history was a slow and increasing detachment from the world. Humans became less and less physically active as their dependency on technology increased. At first it was a transformation that created hope of a connected world with no frontiers. Everyone could connect with everyone else, share ideas. With time the tech connection became more sophisticated. It started out with instant messaging, evolved into video, then into virtual reality interaction. From words crisscrossing the planet to entire new virtual dimensions being exchanged. Huge amounts of resources were applied towards making these new virtual worlds accurate replicas of the real world. Sight and hearing were the dominant human senses and were the first ones to be satisfied. Increasing computing power, screen resolutions and sound codecs allowed these evolving VR systems to provide a visual and auditory experience indistinguishable from reality. Touch, taste and smell quickly followed, completing the experience. There was a theory during those early days that predicted a technology singularity when computers became capable of self-improvement. These artificial intelligences would grow, quickly surpassing human understanding. In this scenario humans were be at the mercy of a super intelligence they couldn’t comprehend or control. This singularity never occurred. The evolution of computing was shaped not by the desire to create a new species of sentient beings but by