THE 5th WAVE: THE ‘FLOW OF CHANGES’ - HUMANITY STUMBLES UP THE STEEP CURVE OF THE EXPONENTIAL AGE

The Perched Eye blog is 15 years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the styles and directions of American politics and culture, with an occasional comment on the impact of new technologies. Our observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

We are now experiencing an exponentially turbulent ‘FLOW OF CHANGES' that arguably began when human science entered the cusp of exponential technological evolution with the Quantum Science discussions and debates of Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, Dirac...at 1927's Solvay Conference.) Classical Newtonian Rationalism began to blur and fade after this...supplanted by 'Uncertainty' and debate about what is real, or not, or both. 

And humanity began to understand that something 'more' was coming through that opened door... things unknown and unexpected, and things came rapidly after this, and increasingly more rapidly. 

We had entered a new world of CHANGE...Dynamic Change...Exponentially Dynamic Change. (Changes change, too.) 

But, our (unassisted) brains are not equipped with neuronic speeds fast enough to cope with exponential change. The result is damaging to the individual and our societies. Humanity will have to learn how to navigate the new Age of Exponential Change.

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We are exiting the linear, gentler progression of human development that began with the Enlightenment, led us through the Industrial Revolution, and are now even exiting the cusp that leads radically upward (change-wise, if not for the better) to a near-vertical exponential-change curve where 'change' will be so rapid as to seem a day-to-day mental crisis.

Humanity is finding the post-Cusp, upward climb too steep, too rapidly changing, and increasingly confusing. Our brains are not equipped with neuronic speeds fast enough to cope with exponential change. The result is damaging to the individual and our societies.

 We are now on a difficult path...in almost all aspects of human culture, ethnicity relations, physical health, personal and social mental stability,...and especially politics.  

‘Exponential’ change has become a perceptible determinant of our lives.

America currently leads in this too-rapidly-changing race to…where? And we seem lost and near-overwhelmed by it all - mass shootings in our schools, political shibboleths that operate against the Common Good (but are phrased in clever rhyme and meter to sound comforting, group inclusive, and other ego-appealing ways attractive to the uneducated and desperate...despite being factually against their best interests (a perception Perched Eye noted in 2009.)

CAN HUMANITY NAVIGATE THESE TIMES? (Can we gain control, or at least a working perspective on our Technology and our Future…as we think we want it to be? Or should we choose to continue in our self-driven state of chaos? Or should we try something new? 

Do we have Choices?  For the new? Are there any choices as the race gets faster to keep pace on the upward curve in this new Exponential Age?

The Age of Exponentialism is the 5th Wave that builds upon the shocks to the human psyche and society by modern change since the Industrial Revolution ... notably as written about in books such as Future Shock, Alvin Tofflfer, 1960), followed by Toffler’s “3rd Wave”(1980).  

The Third Wave was followed by the ‘4th Wave's’ writings and thouhts following along after Toffler, and characterized by literary musings in Sci-Fi (e.g., "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968, Philip K Dick), analyses of psychoses, and predictions based on perceived changes and expectations resulting from the 3rd wave. 

IMO, the Fourth Wave emphasized ...technologically resultant discontinuities (Futurism, Singularity and Transhumanism (Kurzweil)); existential angst (RD Laing); and reactions to technological dominance, e.g., Expanionist Sentientcy & ‘Uber-sentiency’ (Nick Bostrom, David Pearce)

The Exponential Age difference is that changes are coming too quick to muse about one, or even one phase in particular. 

We must quickly learn to disregard momentary analyses, and simply give ourselves over to the ‘Flow of Change”. 

There will come a time when humanity will have a moment to rest (or rely on ‘Advanced Integrative Ai) and gain a perspective on our ‘state of being.’ Then, we may be able to consolidate our experience into moralities and ethics for the next steps up the Exponential Curve.

‘Change’ is now more a mental acknowledgment than an understanding.  Close-focusing is useless. Our brains are not equipped with neuronic speeds fast enough to cope with exponential change. Attempting close-focusing one minute loses sight od what is unflolding a minute later. The result is mind-bending, socially dissociating disaffect on the individual...all of which is socially disruptive.

Accelerating change is what mathematicians call 2nd (and higher order) differential change…i.e., changes in heretofore steady (linear straight line) change…with some key interspersed discontinuities (Age Defining Historicies.) 

We’ll just call Exponential Change:

CONFLUENCES, INFLUENCES, CHANGING-CHANGE, & CHAOS: THE TIDES OF EXPONENTIAL CULTURAL EVOLUTION (The Global 5th Wave…)

The Age of Exponentialism is a non-linear, upward-accelerating curve of socio-technological change characterizing an increasingly more rapid evolution of human culture driven by technological advances that feed upon themselves (‘exponential change’)…resulting in such rapid changes that we humans have little time to learn new ‘stuff’and adjust.

Exponentialism originates from, is fed by, and supported with a mix of factors:

• ET CONTACT (& DISCLOSURE). This event (or DOD release), accompanied by potential, open-source technology transfer will blow away every expectation and prediction — further advancement upward along the now vertical exponential curve will potentially (!) be hyper-radical. Humanity’s public reaction will be either a ‘Hollywood 6-month fascination’, or a major, permanent shift in human ‘ways’ (religion especially, racism, ethics, Ai progress and codes, …)…or, will ET have it’s own xenophobic response to trusting humans, and then..either we will be resentful that treasures and secrets are withheld, or we will remain ignorant of what ET doesn’t reveal to us…until we discover things for ourselves (ET policy might be to ‘give humans just enought to advance them a bit, but…watch and monitor);
• ABSENT ET DISCLOSURE: Humanity will plot its own course up the Exponential curve.
• Accelerating Information exchange… speed and formats;
• Quantum Technologies (eg, the promise of quantum computing, (hyper-’parallelism’);
• the soon-to-come-on-the-exponential curve‘ of applied QuantumEntanglement with ‘instantaneous’ transmission of messages and physical objects (prototypes already reported);
• Artificial Intelligence — doing human ‘work’ faster and error free;
• Neuro-science & technology, Genetics and Physiology — e.g., organ and limb regeneration, brain enhancement, artificial eyes…;
• Virtual Living — as humans are freed from work, what do we do to occupy ourselves? Or, will this question become irrelevant…as we increasingly turn to virtual escapism?;
• Cultural Reductionism of ‘culture’ to the essentials, the ‘irreducibles’(e.g., food, water, sanitation, air (!)…?). BUt will even these eventually become irrelevant as humanity goes full virtual?;
• HUMANITY EXPANDS (by its own efforts): FTL space-time travel becomes a technical thing (warp drive, M-Drive, etc….and other DARPA projects currently underway, and soon to come, and completed but held secret for the ‘standard’ DARPA vault release (20–50 years).) ET Contact falls into this category.

But for humanity to survive, as it must (!), we humans have to adapt to accelerating change…hard…as we are stumblingly starting to do. (Afterall, we built this system and we can’t let it get away from us…at least not let it get away easily, without a battle (a battle for our survival.)

Humanity are like the ‘60s wave riders of North Shore’s Makaha in my second home, Hawaii, who over the years learned to surf its cross-currents, barrels and random waves…’hanging ten’ and looking good…despite it all.

The human brain, unassisted, seems inadequate for the Age of Exponentialism; and natural human evolution seems to slow to keep up. The answer seems inevitable that humanity must be assisted in the technological manner(s) listed above…which we are doing.

The big conundrum in this Age of Exponentialism is:

CAN HUMANITY HOLD ON! (To Itself, Its Technology, Its Future…as we think we know, or want it to be?)

'Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus' : Mary Shelley's Prescient, 1821 Novel of Humankind's Attempt to Understand the Meaning of Life and the Soul

Note: "Frankenstein, the Monster..." (1821) should be a primer for every modern student and researcher in Artificial Intelligence. The tortured musings of the cobbled-together monster (Ai components) give clues two hundred years later to applying the (Alan) Turing Test for self awareness and developing algorithms for modern artificial intelligence machines.
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This was written in response to a request for comment regarding Mary Shelley, the early 1800's author of Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus, (1818) and Shelley's place in the evolving thinking about the meaning of life and the soul. Although Shelly might not to be significant in a discussion of 19th century tinking on these subjects, this blogger (Pericles21) feels Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' is very important and played a central if not initiating part in framing the thinking about the soul, life and even artificial intelligence from 1818 to the Transhumanism movement of today. Mary Shelley wrote 'Frankenstein' on a dare in 1818 when she was very young and lacking a formal higher education especially technical (although home schooled by very well educated and devoted parents, the Godwin's) who were well known at the time in European intellectual and salon circles. Mary's father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. In addition to Mary Shelley's own varied literary works, she edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley and even is rumored to have assisted in editing the works of the great Romantic poet, Byron. But Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' still ranks as a leader in establishing a new literary frontier in human imagination that explores the most sacred areas of human thought, life and the soul.
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a product of her times, circa 1800. She participated in the thinking and discussions of her times about the nature of life and the soul. Remarkably for such a young person (age 19 at the time she wrote her first work, 'Frankenstein' in 1818) and a woman without formal education much less technical education, she was at the forefront of thinkers of her time (though unknowingly at first) about these topics. In particular, Shelley was caught up in the excitement of new scientific concepts in physiology, i.e., 'animal electricity' ala (Galvani, and discoveries in higher mathematics and science that would lead to the Riemann mathematical lectures in 1854, James Clerk Maxwell's 'Electromagnetic Relationships' in 1865, and eventually to Albert Einstein's Special Relativity Theory (1905), and along the same path of thought and imagination to great works in technical fiction and even art, e.g, the Cubist movement begun around 1905 and exampled by the painters, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger and Paul Cezanne.

Mary Shelley's intellectual world generated fictional works that expressed the excitement of new science which expanded the boundaries of human ingenuity and imagination. This new territory of the imagination based on scientific discovery led to the 1865 rendering of nascent quantum mechanical tenets of Uncertainy and other quantum principles in the fantasy worlds authored by Oxford mathematics professor (1855-81), Charles Dodgson (nome-de-plume, Lewis Carroll), notably his 'Alice in Wonderland' (1865) and 'Through the Looking Glass' (1871). And also in the works of Jules Verne, aka 'The Father of Science Fiction'- '20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' (1870) and   'Around the World in 80 Days' (1873); in the breakthrough science fiction works of HG Wells (biologist) -  'The Time Machine' (1895), 'The War of the Worlds' (1898) a truly out-of-this-world vision of non-earth (extraterrestrial life forms) and 'The Island of Dr Moreau' (1896) which must be placed as the inheritor of Mary Shelly's earlier 'Frankenstein'of 1818. 

Although Mary Shelley was not a scientist nor formally educated, she was home-schooled by very well educated and sophisticated parents. And her parents' home was an important intellectual scene of the very important 'Salon' phenomenon of 17th and 18th century Europe.  In the scene, Mary was  'taken up' as a teen age girl by the famous poet Percy Shelly and was introduced and immersed into the company of leading figures of 'forward' thinking in Europe, including the mentoring 'attention' from the poet and intellectual, George Gordon Lord Byron.  In this company, on an idyllic Swiss lake vacation, Mary Shelley shyly accepted a 'dare' to write a story about some important or interesting theme of the day.  Venturing forth from in this game, Mary wrote 'Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus' (1818). 'Frankenstein' put into narrative words the questions raised but not clearly stated from the serious scientific thinking of the time about the nature of the soul and life, and following on from there, race and species which in 1839 surfaced through the  biology field work of Charles Darwin, 'The Voyage of the Beagle', and  Darwin's later great breakthrough,'The Origin of the Species' (1859).

Despite Mary Shelley's lack of formal education, especially technical,  Mary's 'Frankenstein'  was at the leading edge of the wave of emotion among Europe's salon intellectuals who pondered the place (and meaning) of humanity in the midst of rapidly advancing 'new science'. A principal focus of those salon debates was, 'what are the biological and/or yet undiscovered principles of life and especially the soul'?

Following from her immersion in the leading salon discussions of her time, Mary Shelly explored what might be the consequences of mankind's 'tampering' with the sacredness of life and soul. In this context, Dr Frankenstein's creation is much more than a 'put-together monster' but a representation of  humanity itself, stumbling along blindly and naively into new realms not completely understood and loaded with potential risks and dangers.

Of great 'prescience' in 'Frankenstein' is how Mary Shelley writes about the monster's musings (and laments) about his physiological incompleteness despite his self-awareness, his worries about who could love him, his search for love and his thoughts about what to do with himself. These are concepts of man-made intelligence that Mary Shelley rendered into words in 1818 but would not be addressed seriously until the 1940's mathematical work of Alan Turing's 'Turing Test', an algorithmic method of determining whether an artificial intelligence is self-aware, i.e., sentient. Interestingly, in the context of this discussion, Alan Turing turned his mathematical prowess into developing a theory for the chemical basis of morphogenesis.

More modern examples of Mary Shelley's legacy of exploring the meaning of life and soul would include Philip K Dick's, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' (1962) (also made into the film hit, 'Blade Runner'  (1982), and  Ursula Le Guinn's ('The Left Hand of Darkness' (1969), Samuel Delaney's 'Babel-17' (1966)  and Walter Moseley's 'Blue Light' (1998) and 'Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World' (2001).

Mary Shelley's inquiring spirit lives on  today. Modern (current, 2015) science is the most recent chapter of her legacy (and of her contemporary fantasy authors, e.g.,Wells, Verne, et al) of  imagination- become-real, e.g., organ transplants, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and the looming 'trans-human singularity' ( Neal Stephenson, Ray Kurzweil, Jody Turner, Vladimir Mayakovsky, et al).