There are many futurists in the consulting world but are they thinking big enough? What futurists lack is a coherent philosophy to differentiate fashionable trends from social and economic signals that will light the way to a better tomorrow. Our conscious intentions today inform an unknown destiny. Are we blindly lurching toward a post-human society?
In the video interview below, philosopher Dr. Jason Reza Jorjani outlines the potentials and pitfalls of the Singularity. In just 30 years, he warns, this major event will radically reshape humanity. The speed of the singularity is exponential. We will not be prepared for this new human epoch unless we develop an ethos to temper and embrace three courses of human concern; the End of Humanity, the End of History, and the End of Reality.
Jorjani first discusses the End of Humanity by revealing how G.R.I.N. technologies will transform the human experience. Genetic engineering will make supermen and women — and potentially subhumans. Robotics will evolve beyond our understanding of anthropomorphic beings, Information technologies may become sentient. Nanotechnology will change the world on a subatomic level. Combined, these technologies have the potential to change the future in ways that we can’t imagine.
The End of History comes about when our technologies have surpassed our ability to govern under the current frameworks of which we are familiar with. Here Jorjani calls on philosophers like Heidegger and Nietzche who have written of our Ubermensch potential. He points to Marx as a visionary who foresaw a world where humans would be replaced by automation and ownership of land would be obsolete.
The End of Reality is the most mind-bending of all the subjects discussed. Here Jorjani gets into the potential of time travel and a culture that uses it to save epochs of time to replay different scenarios. Like a video game. He makes all of this sound logical and reasonable once you embrace the exponential advancement of technology — which would break our current understanding of physics itself.
Dr. Jorjani wraps up this discussion with a call for a new philosophy he calls Prometheism. He sees this philosophy as a sort of ethos, and a basis for developing a political constitution capable of averting potential catastrophes and it can guide us into a positively post-human future. The first key is in becoming aware of our unconscious drive for ever-progressive technological solutions. That awareness will prevent technology from becoming a monster that runs out of our control.