Golden era of nanotechnology: a post-evolutionary world

Filed in archive News on May 12, 2006

Ray Kurzweil has posted a commentary at Science & Theology entitled "Trends hint at a golden era of nanotechnology".

I hope this level-headed and well-researched essay will get people thinking about what kind of world they want to live in. It may even get them thinking about what it means to be human.

The neural implants and other technological feats Kurzweil refers to are well documented and clearly beneficial. Ninety thousand formerly deaf people, for example, can now hear thanks to cochlear implants.

My main argument with it is the whole idea of "technological evolution", in which, he says, "biological evolution used one of its creations to usher in the next stage of evolution, which was technology."

I don't think of evolution as having this kind of volition - of "using" anything. It's a process, and I think it's a bit grandiose of us to think we can direct it. We will alter it, that's for sure, and as Kurzweil observes, we've already begun to do so.

So the new era will be post-evolutionary in that we will no longer be passive inheritors of the evolutionary process. Instead, we will engineer it. My concern is that we've engineered the planet, and look how it's turned out. (photo Dr. Abdon Guerra F/Flickr)