Technology created humanity
There are many definitions of what a human being is, and what makes us different from other animals. That we are different is undeniable. Monkeys and many birds imitate and learn. Many human characteristics we might think are unique appear in other species. Yet they are combined in us in such quantities and in such a way as to have generated a qualitative change that makes us unique. Among our various frames of reference, one is particularly useful: the technologies we have invented and applied not only help and support us in our lives, they define our nature. One of the first examples of how technology has a fundamental influence on what we are is the ability to control fire. By using fire to cook the food we eat, we make fire an element in the digestive process. Our cousins the gorillas spend a dozen or more hours eating and digesting, whereas we are more efficient: we spend less time and energy eating and digesting, and also absorb the nutrients in the food more effectively. This has enabled us to shorten our digestive tract, and to expand our brain, notably the neocortex. Although the brain accounts for only about 2% of our body mass, it absorbs around 30% of our energy! The brain would grow even more were it not for the bottleneck, quite literally, represented by the diameter of the female pelvis. Even then, we are particularly immature at birth, compared with the newborn of other animal species. A few minutes after birth, a gazelle is able to stand up and run with its mother. A human baby is completely helpless and takes several years even to learn to feed itself. In this period, our brain continues to develop, especially the neocortex, the most recent part of the brain, organizing itself to accommodate as best as possible the huge quantities of information and knowledge needed to be an active and useful member of society. Agriculture is another example of a key enabling technology. For tens of thousands of years, although human beings were equivalent to us today in every way, with the same characteristics and capabilities, the number of people living on the planet hardly changed. They were hunter-gatherers and the maximum size of these nomadic tribes was determined by the capacity of a particular area that could be covered by foot in a day to provide them with sustenance. The total population of the planet was only a few million. Indeed, recent genetic studies on the mitochondrion, the part of the cell whose genetic composition is only inherited through the mother, have shown that the number of people living at a certain point from whom all human beings are descended was about 5,000. This fine-mesh evolutionary sieve, and the chain of improbability it represents, is not just an isolated case: it represents a characteristic of natural selection and the evolution of complex systems. One reason for this is that a particular geographical area could feed only a relatively small number of individuals. A group of 20-30 people might stop in a valley for a few days or weeks, and then follow berries as they ripened, or the movements of animals. We have an idealized view of that period, given our lack of direct references. We imagine a sustainable lifestyle without commitments and stress, in touch with nature. In actual fact, this is only true if we accept an average life expectancy of 20-30 years, perhaps not even that, and the real unsustainability of a continual plundering of nature, which is only allowed to catch its breath when we move on. An illustration of the unsustainability of prehistoric man's way of life is hunting, which led to the extinction of the megafauna in all the continents. Whether it was the Siberian mammoth or the Australian emu, we killed them all without a second thought. So much for the image of the "noble savage" in contact with nature! The advent of agriculture simultaneously in various regions of the world about ten thousand years ago, based on the cultivation of corn, rice and maize and the rearing of chickens, pigs, sheep, cows and other domestic animals, enabled man to increase the quantity of food available in a particular geographical area by more than an order of magnitude. The reliability of this production, even despite the variations in yields due to rainfall and parasites, was also preferable to the impossibility of predicting what a group of nomadic hunter-gatherers would find in the next valley. In turn, these developments led not only to the establishment of permanent settlements, but also to a corresponding increase in orders of magnitude of the population. Paradoxically, statistical processing of the information acquired from skeletons of that time shows that in the agricultural age, life was harder than when people were hunter-gatherers: the average person was shorter and died younger! Even if people realized this, it was difficult to do anything about it: in the agricultural regions, it was no longer possible to return to the old lifestyle and social organization. This is a general principle of societies and organizations that adopt certain technologies: the new transformed reality depends on technology to function and can no longer abandon that technology and go back to the old ways. Our image of bygone days is often idealized; our perception of their positive aspects is amplified, as is our perception of the negative aspects of the present. Yet if we decided to abandon technology today, billions of people would die and no-one, luckily, is able to decide who those people should be. The increased availability of food and its relative reliability in the agricultural age fueled a population increase and, with this increase, the development of specialized activities. Initially, these activities were directly associated with agricultural work, but, later, a growing percentage of the population became involved in non-agricultural occupations. Today, in higher-income societies, not more than 2-3% of the population works in agriculture and animal husbandry: we are able to feed 100% of the members of society with just 2% of the work force. Even in societies with medium-low income such as India, irrespective of the percentage of the population, it has been calculated that mechanical sources account for 90% of the energy involved in agricultural work.
For tens of millions of years, dinosaurs were the cutting edge of evolution, with a great variety of species. We are still discovering how dinosaur groups were organized and, for example, how some of them cared for the young. We do not know what triggered the development of intelligence in man nor do we know whether dinosaurs would have made similar progress, given an appropriate environmental stimulus. We do know that time ran out on them: after the impact of an asteroid with the Earth, and the ensuing climatic changes, dinosaurs became extinct, together with a very large majority of contemporary species. There have been five major ones of these so-called mass extinctions on the Earth and we are investigating their respective causes. If dinosaurs had had telescopes, could they have avoided extinction? They would certainly have been able to identify the asteroid before it hit the planet. And if they had had a sufficiently advanced space technology, they could have organized a rescue mission to try and modify the orbit of the asteroid and prevent it from colliding with the Earth. We have telescopes and are gradually developing our capabilities in space and the models enabling us to perform maneuvers of this type. For example, and despite what Hollywood movies would have us believe, exploding the asteroid is not particularly helpful; although the pieces would be a bit smaller, they would remain on the same orbit, and their total impact would have the same energy as the whole asteroid. The thinking today inclines toward the view that anchoring a sufficiently large probe to the asteroid would create a variation in the gravitational field that would change its orbit over time and avoid a collision with the Earth. The question involves mathematical and scientific knowledge, engineering expertise, project coordination and management, finance and resource allocation, and social and political consensus. Figure 1: The only difference between us and the dinosaurs is that they didn't have telescopes. In concrete terms, the difference between us and the dinosaurs, of course, is that they didn't have telescopes. Metaphorically, however, they did not possess the tools of reason and science to enable them to deal with the dangers of extinction, to see and perhaps deviate the asteroid, or, in our modern times, the dangers of pandemics, climate change, extreme conflict and so on. When the NASA budget for radio telescopes that catalogue and monitor objects in space whose orbit could bring them into collision with our planet was cut, we turned ourselves into dinosaurs, voluntarily blind to the threats to our species. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen had to step in, using his own resources to finance the re-activation and management of these specialized tools, and give us a chance to catalogue the asteroids and perhaps prevent a future impact from wiping us out. Generally speaking, it seems fair to say there are no alternatives to the tools of reason and science to deal with our problems. Even when we put them to the best possible use, we have no guarantees. Insurmountable problems exist. But if we want to have a chance of resolving them, we simply have to identify the most appropriate scientific approach, the most suitable type of solution (for example, a gravitational solution rather than a Hollywood-style bomb). Burying our heads in the sand is not the answer.
There is a common belief in the press, radio and television, but also among online media, websites and the social networks, that the only serious way of providing information is to present the facts in a balanced manner. Taken to an almost absurd extreme, this approach sees two sides to every fact or phenomenon, one positive, the other negative, and tries to give the same amount of column space or airtime to both. Whether this dogmatic method stems simply from ignorance or whether vested interests are not infrequently at play is hard to say. Among scientists, 99% are convinced that the climate is changing and that man is the cause. You often see television programs where an almost comic attempt is made to give equal time to the argument that this is not the case (that climate change does not exist or is not caused by man). By inviting a scientist on one side, and a climate change denier on the other, these programs create the artificial and false impression that both points of view are equally valid. Based on this type of approach, it is easy to make the flawed generalization that there are two sides to every technology, one positive and one negative. Technology, however, is not a zero-sum game, but a positive-sum game. Rather than balance out, its positive and negative sides have a positive net effect. This valuation is statistical, not absolute: the various facets of each technology need to be carefully examined. After an open debate in which everyone takes part, we may decide not to adopt certain technologies, to avoid becoming dependent upon them. Generally speaking, however, the simple fact that the world population is more than seven billion rather than a few million demonstrates that the overall effect is beneficial to humanity. People who say we should abandon technology, because they fail to understand it and therefore fear it, should first of all answer the question "Who are the 99 people out of 100 who will have to die as a result?" The precautionary principle that highlights the risks of technologies slows their uptake. Questions relating to consumer protection are often cited with regard to their use. The premise here is that on one side, the consumer is defenseless and unable to defend themselves, on the other that the consumer is under attack, ready to be exploited and tricked, and generally opposed to the action of those who propose solutions to their problems. The final step in this reasoning implies that the regulatory bodies are better informed, better prepared and better able to decide for the best on behalf of the consumer, in deciding what the consumer may or may not be able to do or even to know.
A recent example of this precautionary principle at work is the opposition of the US Food & Drug Administration, the federal agency that regulates food and healthcare products and services, to the DNA decoding service offered to the public by the 23andMe company. Taking advantage of the exponential reduction in decoding costs, in 2009 this Californian company began offering the public an innovative service. When you register on their site, they send you a test-tube: you deposit a sample of your saliva in the tube (put bluntly, you spit into it) and mail it back to the company in the envelope you received in the original package, prominently marked with the threatening "biohazard" icons for biological materials. After a couple of weeks, they send you an email message informing you that the decoding procedure has been completed. You can then read the results, protected by a password, directly on the company's website. In 1985, an extremely ambitious Human Genome Project was launched in the USA with a budget of three billion dollars. The goal was to decode the human genome, consisting of three billion base pairs, in fifteen years. The progress of the project is a classic example of the power of exponential change. Seven years in, only one percent of progress had been achieved. Even the experts in the field thought the project had failed and that it would take not another seven years, but dozens if not hundreds of years to complete, and involve astronomic costs many times higher than the funds originally provided. Very few people considered that the one percent result had been achieved through a doubling of the decoding capability. By maintaining this rhythm, not the speed, but the acceleration of the process, by the following year, 2% progress had been achieved, then 4%, 8%, 16%, 32%, 64%... and after exactly seven additional doublings, the 100% objective had been achieved on time - fifteen years - and on budget. The doubling of the power of the project didn't stop there, however; the speed of decoding increased, bringing down its cost. Today, in 2015, it is possible to have a complete DNA profile for about $2000, or for $99 a partial profile, of the so-called Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (or SNIPs) believed to be responsible for the individual characteristics that distinguish us from one another. There are five hundred thousand SNIPs in human DNA and the 23andMe company concentrates on their analysis and processing. The results are astonishing. By analyzing my DNA, the people at 23andMe can tell me the color of my eyes and hair, as well as dozens of other characteristics of my phenotype; that is, the physical manifestation of the action of my DNA. They can make a statistical assessment, in terms of greater or lesser predisposition toward specific types of illness. They provide indications on dosages even for common drugs if I should have to use them, in addition to the recommendations of normal prescriptions, or, conversely, advise a lower dose given my natural reaction to the compounds contained in the medicine. Clearly, being able to take decisions on the basis of this information can have important consequences. Knowing that specific changes in my lifestyle can reduce the probability of a particular condition affecting me can be life-changing. Telling my doctor that I have a particular sensitivity to a drug he is about to prescribe so he can adjust the dose accordingly could save my life. The FDA has decided that the way 23andMe presents the information, making the probabilistic and statistical correlations between the genome, behavior and the development of particular conditions and diseases explicit, was not appropriate. Specifically, it has ruled that consumers should not have direct access to this information, which should be given only to physicians who would therefore be the only people to interpret the data and give advice to their patients based on their conclusions. In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg. His symbolic act was the trigger for the development of the Protestant movement in the Christian church, leading to a schism with Catholicism that continues today. One of Luther's theses was that the Bible, the sacred text of Christianity, should be translated from Latin into German to enable people to read it themselves, without the intermediation of a priest. The preexisting interests, as well as a conservative and dogmatic justification, created an irresolvable conflict that led not only to the schism in the church, but also to hundreds of years of bloody conflict. Today the FDA is taking the role played by the Vatican in Luther's day. It does not want people to have access to the sacred text of their DNA, translated from the language of biochemistry into the accessible language of information technology, and has ruled that interpretation of the text may only be through the priestly intermediation of medical practitioners, who uphold their position from a conservative and dogmatic basis.
Our actions shape the future. The consequences of our hopes and ambitions extend beyond the present. The precautionary principle dictates that before a given solution is adopted, it is necessary to take into consideration all the harm that it can cause. Often invoked in areas of consumer protection, regulators feel empowered by it to make sure that new products and services that are brought to market are not only useful and have positive effects, but that negative effects can be excluded. Especially in the fields of health and pharmaceutical research, the cautionary principle has been the preeminent inspiration of product development. Of course in an ideal world regulators would only seek to establish the best course of action for the public good, rather than implementing self-propagating bureaucracies. And in an ideal world dominant players in a given market would not use their power to stop newcomers and diminish the dangers of unknown competitive factors, distorting the rules, and unduly influencing the process. Yes, we are not living in an ideal world. The proactionary principle, originally proposed by Max More, takes into account the opportunity cost of inaction, and the costs of regulation itself, in deriving a balance that is more future oriented. If we look at the future generations, and the benefit they derive from our actions, delaying the implementation of a new technology can have very large consequences. The freedom to experiment, and the opportunity for individuals to gain knowledge outside of the officially sanctioned paths of research, objectivity, and transparency, and other components of the proactionary principle make it a useful tool to design novel action. A family residing in the United States has been afflicted by a rare condition for which there wasn't a commercially available cure. The pharmaceutical company that actually started initial research on it evaluated that going through the regulatory obstacle course to bring it to market was not worth it. Of course for those directly impacted by the illness it is not a question of profit considerations. Thanks to modern communications, the availability of research, the family has been able to connect with others in their same situation, to purchase the rights to further develop the cure, and to successfully apply it to their own members and to those of other families similarly afflicted. Based on the traditional approaches, this could never have happened, both from a technological and regulatory point of view. There are countless other examples of bolder experimentation and free inquiry that await the application of the proactionary principle to achieve their goals and flourish. The European Union, based on environmental concerns, incorporated the precautionary principle in its fundamental treaties. Is it going to imply that the EU is more likely to refrain from adopting technologies than other socio-economic areas? Is this going to be the basis of a certain level of fossilization of European society? Or maybe it is the expression of this situation which already afflicts it?
Is freedom an emergent property of self-organizing matter? We strongly believe to be endowed of free will, and most of our social structures are based on this. There is no physical foundation to it. The determinism of physical laws, quantum uncertainties notwithstanding, allows no space for the concept to hide and show its effects. Just as we are constantly moved to anthropomorphizing objects, animals, and phenomena, we are compelled to interpret decisions as made freely instead of being the consequence of the state of matter and its interactions, inside and outside of us. Individual behavior aggregates to that of larger groups, and finally of societies. We judge the outcomes of individual decisions and consequences in civil and criminal law. We can judge the capacity of societies to engender the well-being of its members, or, on the contrary, to be corrupt, unjust, and spreading confusion, violence and suffering. The capacity of a group of societies to generate well-being doesn't only depend on the aggregate decisions of its members. It also depends on what knowledge is actually available to them, and through them to it. The ancient Roman civilization created wonderful art and philosophy, and we rightly admire its achievements. However, it was organized at a fundamental level on slave labor, which today is universally condemned. Could it be different? Is it possible to imagine a Roman civilization that didn't employ slavery? It is not, because the level of knowledge, and especially the energy availability that that knowledge generated, made it impossible to achieve its goals without resorting to the force of human muscle, or programmable humans, people you could tell what to do, and who'd do it without talking back. During its period of expansion, while able to draw on successful waves of slaves, the Roman civilization appeared to be well adapted. It was only an appearance, because it could not last. Rome could not further expand, having basically conquered all the available land of what we call today Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and enslaved all the individuals that could be enslaved in those populations. At that point it went into decline and became incapable of resisting the changes coming, or adapting to them. This is of course an extremely simplistic representation of a long and complex history. There are many other forces at play beyond that of slaves or the lack of slaves. Today, with current knowledge, we can build societies and civilizations without slaves. Relying on chemical and soon solar energy, our decisions are driven by their more efficient use, and they outcompete the eventual alternatives. We are not morally superior to the Romans as individual human beings, we are taking advantage of the accumulated information and its applications. The outcome of the US Civil War between the South and the North was dictated by economic efficiency and a better organization of energy and industrial bases by the North. Our current civilization is, as a consequence, the expression of our knowledge. The technologies we have available shape it, similarly to how Roman civilization was shaped by the knowledge and the technology available at the time. We can start asking ourselves what the limits of adaptability of our civilization are, and how it will change with the accumulation of information, its application in new knowledge and new technologies. If you asked a Roman to tell you if it were possible to build a civilization without slaves, the answer would have been "No!". What are the false axioms that we are holding? What are the questions that we can ask and assume that the answers would be universal, with everybody firmly believing that a given assumption is a necessary part of our societies in any place and any time? With the knowledge available to us in the future, we'll appear as primitive and naive with that secure and false answer as the Romans appear to us today. When the shift happens, and how it manifests itself, depends on the tensions that build up between societies in a given era. What is possible in one place may not be immediately possible in another place. Differences build up as a consequence, since knowledge gets applied and experience accrues. In a world of global communication as today, the understanding of these differences brings to the possibility of applying knowledge faster, adopting best practices, what works well, and avoiding mistakes. When communication barriers or ideological ones put obstacles in the path of this flow of information, the divergence of societies increases. The tensions accumulate, and under an apparent immobility, the organizational structure of society is under increasing stress. At that point a small change in the boundary conditions can bring to very big core changes, rippling through the entire society. This is what literally happened with the Berlin Wall, which was metaphorically and physically shielding the planned economies of the USSR and of Eastern Europe from those of the West. When the Wall fell, the effects of allowing market economies to rapidly penetrate brought first economical and then swift political change which could not be contained or controlled even by the very people who initiated and allowed them, like then Secretary General of the Russian Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev. Since the information differences create these areas of limited knowledge, individuals within those areas often don't even realize that they are living in a maladapted society. They can be taken by surprise when the weaknesses and the brittleness of the civilization are made evident by the abrupt changes. Even political experts and historians are better at explaining rapid civilizational changes after the fact than forecasting them. This makes it hard to prepare for the changes, and to reduce the amount of suffering that the period of uncertainty creates.
The current capitalistic economic paradigm predicated on constant growth has been dominating for the past 200 years. Even before, resource exploration and allocation in feudal societies has allowed ignoring what today we call externalities of economic activities. This was possible while a given nation or civilization did not care about destroying a competing one. Or under the assumption that depleting the ecosystems and exterminating dominant species of a given continent there would always be another to discover and to start the process over with. Today it is evident that this behavior is not possible anymore. Advanced nations should not wage war against each other. They should not destroy or subjugate other populations. They should not, endanger ecosystems and their species through their economic activities. Very simply there are no new continents available to pillage. This implicitly means that we are not better people than before. We did not change our ways because we understood that there was a morally superior behavior to be adopted. Our mentality is fundamentally the same. The reason we are now considering alternatives is because the old way is not possible anymore. The externalities of our economic activities are all those consequences that are not reflected in the profit and loss considerations. It is up to society to look at various sectors and decide if it can allow this. Alternatively, it can put in place regulations that surface the hidden costs, and let society as a whole explicitly absorb them, or force the enterprises active in the chain of production to deal with them instead. Unsustainable economic practices have large externalities and in a closed and globally connected world cannnot be allowed. Overcoming the depletion of ecological support systems, the waste of resources that could be used more efficiently or recycled, a complex society must turn towards sustainable practices in order to generate dynamic, but robust solutions. A civilization cannot be well-adapted without recognizing this need, and without acting on it with the appropriate tools of incentives and regulations.