There is a big difference between actual history and determining the steps of historic evolution (future or past). For instance, any linguistic animal similar to the human species would almost inevitably develop technology. Someone could easily predict the discovery of iron, agriculture, housing, clothes, motors, computers, etc. But it would be, I think, impossible to predict the rise of Athens, Christianity, the Dark Ages, Buddhism, the USA and so on. We cannot know in advance if wars or peace is going to happen. What we can know is what, in general, happens to the evolution of life, irrespective of the planet it occurs, given sufficient time and amiable conditions.
Now, it seems clear that evolution did not happen in a linear fashion in our planet. For instance the history of life in the planet was, for the most part, occupied with the development of single cell organisms. When a new strategy was found, partnership between different cells to create organized structures, an "explosion" occurred, in the sense that, just in a few million years, a wide diversity of living structures suddenly came to life. In general we might say that evolution in the most part is linear, with small advances, generally in detail. But sometimes a completely new strategy (like multicellular organisms, or photosynthesis, or the eye, or flying, or lungs, or hot blood animals, that leads life into an explosion of diversity.
It also seems exceedingly clear that man is the first example of such a new strategy. We have changed the face of the earth, just as the first organisms who discovered photosynthesis did (they filled the atmosphere with oxygen), or those that created forests (they changed the color of the ground), etc. We have also made a change, in the atmosphere, in the ground, creating great colonies, controlling all nature, going into space, and all that in very short evolutionary time.
Now, all this is very exciting, being at the edge of a new discovery instead of being a species that just continues what others did making a small improvement or being slightly better adapted to a specific ecological niche. We, as a species, have made a new stride, we have made a discovery, something to do with intelligence. But this exciting role, the novelty that our species brings to life on earth also has a price. And the price is quite clear: just as the first multicellular organisms were rapidly replaced by more efficient ones, just as the first photosynthetic cells were rapidly replaced, so will humankind be rapidly replaced. Why? Because the emergence of a new strategy, at first, is not developed in the best possible way. And, by the same reason we were able to surpass all the other living creatures to the top of the the food chain, so we will be surpassed by the same process: whatever we have created, regarding the use of intelligence, that allowed us to surpass all other living beings, will also overcome man when it is more developed in the life forms that will appear over the next ten or hundred million years or so.
Unlike some kinds of spiders, which have existed for sixty million years or more, or unlike some kinds of unicellular organisms, which have existed for thousands of millions of years, mankind will probably only exist for a few millions. In fact, it is not even clear that such replacement has not already happened. Indeed we call ourselves homo sapiens, but is there so much in common between the New York modern man and the tribal inhabitant of the savanna? We might consider our ancestors, just from a million years ago, as savages. Biologically they have the same kind of brain, body, etc. We are physically alike. But our culture is so different that it seems difficult to say that indeed the man that studies anthropology and goes to the moon is the same kind of animal as the tribal man that fight to survive in the savanna among the other primates.
To really understand where we came from and where are we going to, we must be very clear about the kind of new strategy that describes organisms such as ourselves. What have we discovered? Which new strategy has allowed us to become so different from the rest of nature that we can even apply the name "animal" to all the other animals, but not to us? What makes man such a different organism that we don't even want to call it "animal" anymore?
I think that man is the first example, in our planet, of a set of organisms which ceased to be designed at random (and chosen by chance and (statistically and in the long run) by the environment), to be intelligently designed. In other words, until now species were randomly created and changed, through chance mutations in the genes and selection by the environment. But when organisms are able to represent the world in their minds in sufficient detail, they can in in fact reproduce the selection process in their imagination just by imagining different outcomes and selecting an apropriate course of action. If that representation is sufficiently accurate, than such organisms will be able to select, only though their imaginations, a better course of action without the need to try out in practice every strategy. So, we have created a simulated world where we can envision different possibiliites.
This strategy works best if, biologically, our brains are very plastic, so that the best strategies, can be taught, or implanted in newborns, so that they will implement these new strategies and have time to develop even better strategies. Over time, better and better strategies to deal with the environment will be discovered and the ever perfecting of the species in this way will lead to even better developments, following an exponential curve. This has been described several times as an "intelligence explosion", when applied to computers that design better computeres and so on. But the fact is, this intelligence explosion is the basis of human endeavor and success. We are the fruits of such an "intelligence explosion", in fact, we are what might be called, the first "artificial intelligences" on this planet. We were created by many generations of our predecessors, and we also have a role in making changes in the strategies and ways of seeing life that our successors will use. In fact this text, and billions of others like this, are just that: attempts to replace worst algorithms with better ones: more clarity, more knowledge, more truth, more efficiency, a better contact with reality, more chances of success in dealing with the world, more intelligence. We were programmed to reprogramme one another. This is my little bit, just as yours will certainly come also.
When we join all the small little bits over billions of people (billions of processors tying to find better strategies) over thousands of years, we get the current "intelligence explosion" that has given us architecture, telescopes, electricity, space ships, computers and so on.
So we see clearly now that our new strategy has two big aspects: imagination, or the aility to simulate the world in our minds (this allows us to run the evolutionary process of generation of alternatives and selection much faster), and plasticity, or the ability to implement the new strategies in practice. This plasticity is what renders man indefensible if born without a supporting culture. A human baby left in the jungle could, at best, immitate a surrogate family (perhaps dogs, chickens, gorillas, etc). If not it would simply die. I am not biologically prepared to deal with the world. My brain needs a culture, needs to be filled, with desires, notions, values, etc. Without this "filling up", I would not be me. Indeed I would be probably less than an ordinary mammal, I would lack even a simple vision of life.
But a third aspect is quickly seen as emerging from those two: culture. Culture is like the external DNA, the external information deposit where we, as a species, go and get our information on how to live. Without it we are less than animals. Now culture in the human species has been deposited in different places,
as physical rituals and "traditions" captured by seeing how others do things and imitating them (this is also what some other primates do);
through language, oral traditions, kept in the brains and passed on from living brain to living brain;
through language, written tradition, kept in papirus, books, and so on;
through music and painting;
through the written press;
through movies and the tv;
through computers and the internet.
Now, as we go along through the different mediums we can see that we are creating mediums able to store greater and greater quantities of information. As books replaced brains (for instance in Greece, following the written versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey) great explosions of knowledge occurred. Now, the information available was not limited to the brain ability. Plato could write his dialogues with his best inspiration, and we could read them and reread them at our leisure, pointing down important reflections and so on. The limits of the brain were partially overcome through reading and writing, which lead to an "intelligence explosion" in ancient Greece. The middle ages (or the "Dark ages") brought with them a shrinking of the culture and replacement of knowledge and adventure with superstition and fear. We can understand this shrinking as almost the result of a disease or a virus, that has two aspects: first a complete explanation of the world, which means that nothing else needs to be searched for, further explanations are unidesirable, secondly, by the fear imposed through education that searching for such explanation is "bad" and deserves punishment (publicizes divine punishment from heaven but in fact real social punishment is the norm, including expulsion or even torture and homicide). The creation of all-explaining dogmas with an accompanying society based on fear can only be compared properly compared with a disease or a virus. We know that such states of disease can last for millennia (just has happened in Central America, in Eastern Cultures or still happens with many of our contemporary citizens) and, in fact, it is difficult to find a cure. Historically, societies that have embraced growth and knowledge simply overcome the more superstitious ones (just like European states did, following the Enlightenment, and the US too, in the same process). With the current globalization process, it is not entirely clear that humanity, has a whole, might be sunken by such viruses, nevertheless, even if a small region in the future is capable of embracing true humility and progress, it will rapidly overcome all others, and so the evolution of culture seems almost unavoidable.
The basics of growth through the artificial mind is basically through freedom of thought and freedom of speech. The first allows us to imagine new alternatives to old problems, the second to imprint them to expand the existing body of culture. The more freedom we have the greater the need for an expansion of our collective memory, our "external DNA", our body of culture. Presently we have a gigantic and ever growing capacity to store mind events. However there seems to be no effective mechanism for the "selection" of the best ideas. It is like we have created a big jungle, where Ideas can fight, eat (gain adepts), and die (be forgotten or deleted, get extinct). Until now there seems to be so much space to thrive on. We don't really need to kill any one, we can keep all these stupid videos on youtube that no one will ever see. But, for how long? And what is the point of having so much rubbish? Won't it become more difficult to find out the right sort of information?
Fortunately, we were also able to replicate some of our cognitive processes, and it seems likely that in only a matter of a few thousand years we will be able to replicate in computers much of our cognitive processes. It is likely that in that near future information can be sorted out, organized by categories, given hierarchical form, in sum, structured in such a way as to become useful in our dealings with the world. Such dealings will involve (just as in the past) at least to different aspects: manipulatory - that means the ability to manipulate reality in order to achieve our goals, and aesthetic - the ability to see something that is worth it, which determines the goals themselves. So we will evolve in both technique and art. In both the visible and the invisible.
It seems quite clear that the evolution of computers will help us a lot in the first respect (manipulate the world), but it is unclear whether computers can be more than auxiliary regarding aesthetic values. I mean, they can certainly store a poem, or a film, but it is not clear if any amount of cognitive processing is able to show us the beauty of something. In that respect it is even concevable that many animals, that we consider vastly inferior to man regarding their congitive abilities, have a much more developped aesthetical sense, better values, a better vision regarding the beauty of the world that envelop us. So, it is not clear whether computers and increased cognitive power will be sufficient to increase our aesthetical abilities or not.
Besides, we don't even know how consciousness relates to cognitive abilities. So there are many mysteries here too.
What seems entirely clear is that an augmentation in shared memory and and shared cognitive abilities, will allow mankind to evolve and to design not only its "software", its culture, but, eventually, to design or redesign its hardware, the brain. When that happens, we will certainly give a new jump, that transhumanists and post humanists have already talked about.
In any case, ee are the first random designed beings to intelligently design the bodies and minds of our successors. What they will do with those abilities can only be imagined if we'd know more about the universe than we actually do (a monkey could not predict the discovery of engines or electricity).
Main ideas:
Humankind as transitory species
Imagination and natural selection
Culture as external DNA
Fear and dogma as virus of the mind
Expansion of shared memory and shared cognitive abilities as the basis for designed brains.