The Speculist

You're talking natural fantasy and artificial evolution, aren't you? But wouldn't 'we' grow into a Single World Society first? Not driven by games and the internet, but by geopolitics.

Rik --

Artificial evolution, definitely. Not quite sure what you mean by natural fantasy, but I think the limitless ability that our online personas currently have to assume different forms will eventually be realized by our real selves. (Or, alternatively, we will come to view our online selves as part of our real selves.)

I think geopolitics mostly just gets in the way of the emergence of a single global society, which is driven primarily by economic and technological developments. Paradoxically, that single global society will be the perfect environment for preserving and restoring existing cultures as well as for creating new ones.

Right now, cultural distinctions are a luxury. Why are people all over the world learning English? Primarily for economic advantage. Likewise, when people swap out their traditional cuisine for McDonalds or their traditional entertainment for HBO, that's mostly economics, too. People "can't afford" to hang onto their existing cultures in the face of a competing culture that offers them more choices.

But eventually that gets turned around. Greater buying power ultimately means more choices. Plus technological development will eventually support massive flexibility in things like clothing, architecture, and use of language. Global Society 1.0 looks kind of bland, but once we get up to, say, version 5 it's going to be pretty feature-rich -- including support of a many of the features of the "systems" it supplanted, plus lots of unexpected new stuff.

Let us not confuse cultural homogeneity - which does not currently exist - with biological homogeneity - which is the rule for humans. Genetically speaking we humans as a species are closer together than members of the same troop of chimpanzees. We might diverge, we might do it artificially, but I think we'll start to run into the factors that keep us in genetic lockstep.

1. If you change much DNA, the human brain fails to work properly. The fragility of the structure and chemistry of the thing is astonishing. It takes only very subtle defects in brain chemistry before sanity suffers, and only slightly greater ones before the brain is not viable at all.

2. If you are too different, you won't find anyone who will mate with you. I think this is the true origin of the 'Valley of the Dolls' phenomenon, where people become less comfortable with a doll the more human-like it is once it goes beyond a certain threshold. That threshold differs from person to person, but I think this is a fundamentally conservative force on human evolution, natural or artificial.

Remember that we as a species are *still* learning to accept that people with different skin color, hair types, noses, eye shapes, etc are still *us* and it's been a long slow climb to do so. When you're dealing with someone with three arms and a propeller (to quote Mork and Mindy, I think) you are probably going to be single indefinitely. Now of course, given that level of genetic manipulation you can probably reproduce asexually...

-Jim

Jim, just commenting on point 1. The fact that the entire thing is fragile, proves nothing. It is actually an argument for the robustness of the brain.
What exactly is harmful? Is anyone normal, or sane, on close inspection? Given the absence of mass biological insanity in humans, I wouldn't worry about changing dna. It's more likely that you get people like in CS Friedman's novel 'This Alien Shore'. A particular affliction can be turned into something useful.
Natural fantasy... I commented on robots on CRN. Wouldn't robots be in Lamarckian evolution? Maybe you can make a distinction between weak and strong Lamarckism, I'm not sure. But I wondered why the Borg did not evolve. The ST writers probably never thought of it, but when a Borg acquires a trait and passes it on to the Collective, it must be either accepted, junked or stored. Anyway, another commenter responded by saying: yes, robots would be in Lamarckian evolution first, but then pass on to something like physics.
To me, that's still Lamarckism. Physics is a uniquely human cultural artifact (= it does not exist without us), one form of extelligence. Culture may be weak Lamarckism (traits (memes) are hardly ever passed on perfectly), but it's still Lamarckism.
Apart from that, natural fantasy is just the opposite of natural history. Fantasy creatures made real. The first ones everyone will find shocking and provoke anti-legislation. Which would drive the whole thing underground. At present any evil plastic surgeon can construct a mermaid (do some unethical thinking: it shouldn't be too hard), but anything more fancy / sophisticated probably takes another 20 years. Bipedal felines aren't much of a problem, but if people can look like any celeb (argh! a thousand eminems! a million britneys!) or a supermodel, things become a little more worrisome.