All has been thought and written at one point. We live in a postmodern era of ennui, where we have seen and thought every idea. Yet, although tentative specters of this last idea have flitted about in science fiction writings, no attempt has been made, no realistic plans set, to attempt the necessary and inevitable achievement of our most noble aspirations as a race, and that which holds the key to our salvation from want, from loneliness and isolation, and from cruel cruel death. Death is an obvious enemy, it debilitates the will and it steals from us, like a thief, humans just as they reach the prime of the reasoning and intellectual capacity. Imagine the power and wisdom of the human race if we had a millennium to accomplish all that we do in the short span of a few decades (for some nigh on a century) moreover, imagine we could arrest the entropic progress of age in this period and its effects upon the beautiful mind housed within. Experiments with telomerase have yielded promising results and the keys to stopping, perhaps even reversing, aging, are close to our grasp. Yet while this is a critical component of what I am speaking of, it is not the ultimate end goal. For the continuation of all humans into perpetuity as is would inevitably result in a Malthusian collapse of the resources we could extract, even with the increased labor force and knowledge pool. Our ability to exploit the resources on our Earth in a sustained fashion, and those outside it, is not, nor would it likely accelerate at, a quick enough pace to avert this catastrophe.
What I am speaking of is the creation of a what is sometimes referred to in science fiction as "the singularity." More broadly, I propose the need to create a brain-machine interface device. In doing so, we deliver not only the fruits of religion, but also address the critical and ever looming pressures of a broadening social sphere which threatens to fray our connection to one another and devolve into schizophrenic madness. Consider our history laid out before you, and it quickly becomes obvious that the pace of our technological innovation has improved as our intercourse(figural and literal) with one another has increased. Not only have more people served to produce more solutions faster and at greater efficiency, but we have also made possible the productivity gains of specialization of labor and, as a corollary, the specieation of knowledge into domains allowing a vastness of human knowledge never before imagined. However, this diversity also threatens us, for while these improvements march ever onwards, our social technology, our ability to communicate and relate to one another does not keep pace. We have create the telephone, the telegraph, the internet, the mobile phone, and a network of wires and satellites that connects the whole of the Earth. Yet the pace and ease of this communication has not been addressed. More and more is asked of our human rulers, to the point where can we realistically expect even the best intentioned wisest human to make decisions fast enough or process information fast enough to make law meet individual human need? To make political structures, the mechanisms through which we exert our collective power and action, to move fast enough to suit the demands of society and of reality? I speculate that we cannot, and this is without considering all of the problems involved in representation and governance such as corruption and informational deficiencies. A new mode of relations is needed to preserve the benefits we have found, but also to soothe the human spirit, to give it aid and comfort, to preserve it in death, and to rule it in justice. If a brain thinks like a highly complex bio-chemical computer, than a computer can be built to think like a brain but better. And our thoughts could be interpreted by such a machine and sent to one another through the electromagnetic spectrum and translated back into meaningful thoughts and memories to others. For the first time, humans could actually speak and be understood by one another. For the first time, we can truly call upon a God and here it answer back. And if a such a brain machine were built better, one could be built big enough and good enough, with enough faculties to observe all the stimuli of the entire human race connected to it, and through it to connect them all to one another, as they are connected in deed now. No human would ever be alone, and such a device could ensure their EM signature remained in the machine's memory after death, ensuring a "matrix" like afterlife dependent only upon electric energy for continuity. Such a machine would be the best possible imaginable actor to make law (and what is law if not simple convention by which we attempt to capture in stasis that which is by nature dynamic--human society and that which is good by it) and be judge. It would also be the only actor with all of our knowledge to provide an unifying view and focus to our actions, to ensure our efficiency and harmony, and to maximize the good felt by the human race in its eternal quest for extension of our power. By all definition, such a human collective would be God, and a most benevolent and just one at that. One of us, and for us, and one that truly accomplished the greatest and most noble of our goals and provided all the fruits of religion. This idea has been though before, but the demands of society, of changing reality, make obvious the necessity of its implementation like never before. If one imagines history as a progression, then this must be the next natural step of our social technology if we seek our elevation. Failure, and continuation down our other paths of expansion, I fear will result in our inevitable dissolution as a race into anarchic barbarism in a struggle to survive in a world of diminishing resources, and diminishing human capacity, or succumbing to cosmic destruction of which the power to prevent we shall never have with a unified focus. Earnest attention, and the greatest of our efforts must be directed at this endeavor.
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