Think of a world where anything is possible.
Ahhhhhh, bliss. The colours. The smells. The joy. This world is like a never-ending lucid dream, where we can conjure whatever scenario we desire, only to skip off to another. In this land I can die and be reborn at the speed of a thought. I can see the stars up close, and explore what is beyond the great unknown.
Now think of our own world.
Seemingly, there is very little these worlds have in common. The real world has boundaries and obstacles, strict social guidelines and complex class struggles — it’s a place with trade-offs and concessions, a place at the mercy of our own stupidity as we develop means of annihilation, and neglect the stewardship of the one place in the universe we call home.
But it is within this world that men and women have worked across history to overcome obstacles through simple inventions and sublime innovations. The mere idea of “Anything World” was a thought created within this world. In that sense it’s already a part of this world. But mix a thought with our drive to discover and change, with our ability to harness creativity, with our willingness to test our spirit, and we have a concoction that has already taken us far beyond the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our ancestors. Over our history, we’ve opened ourselves up to this great challenge of improvement through knowledge; I doubt we’ll stop until we’ve reached Anything World.
Recently our species has begun to step into the next stage of our great journey towards understanding the reality. Over the last 100 years we’ve introduced computers, traveled to the moon, mapped the genome and begun the difficult process of melding the digital world to the organic. Much has changed, but more change is coming.
In today’s world we’re witnessing boundaries being challenged at every front. What is a book when a digital book can have movies contained within it? What is a toy when it can think and respond with ever-increasing artificial intelligence? What is a “family” when we open up the term to broad definitions? What are you when you have aids to see, aids to navigate, aids to travel, aids to cook, aids to learn? What am I when my cells are changing, and the air that was once within me — that helped me live — is now in the air, and may one day be within you? What are we when science says we’re always evolving, when we’re all growing and no moment is ever identical?
We’re rapidly approaching increased integration of man and machine. As kids we’re told to be ourselves. This is a daunting notion already, but even more so as boundaries blur, options open up and the questions become bigger. Who will you become when you can augment your brain with computer-like memory storage, or take pictures with your eye?
Our past success and the current convergence of technology shows we can reach the world where anything is possible. And once we meld the digital with the organic, we’ll be one step closer.
Think of it: sending a warm thought directly to a loved one — no typing, no text, just a mental command to send the thought. It will be as if we’re telepathic. In this way we’ll reach the boundless future. In this way we can appear like the Greek gods of old. These archetypal figures are ingrained into our psyche and help us to understand our world. But what if these archetypes are less a fragmented mythology and more a longing thought of what humanity could become?
It’s a scary thought, but despite mixed results in the past, we’re still here and we still see fit to keep learning and changing the world around us.
Nothing is stagnant. As stars are born and die, we approach the potential of a post-homo sapien world. Once there, the universe and reality itself will appear to change as more of us become aware that this is a world where anything is possible.
Yet the past is littered with examples of technology used to oppress and kill as well. With the good of this post-homo sapien future comes the bad of electronic viruses, hackers that could affect the body, and worse. Scary stuff indeed, but we’ve yet to allow such concerns to stop us from moving forward. Consider Internet banking or even the death toll caused by using the automobiles.
But past the fear, years down the line when we’ve mastered our own evolution and developed technologies not yet conceivable, we’ll have moved ever closer to the world where anything is possible. Why prevent ourselves from that future?
Corey King has already hacked your mind, using text and words to infiltrate deep inside your body, to the place where thoughts are kicked about.
