Glomming together: Thoughts for Labor Day
Excerpted from Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near, at 297:
Friend of Futurist Bacteria, 2 Billion B.C.: So tell me again about these ideas you have about the future.
Futurist Bacteria, 2 Billion B.C.: Well, I see bacteria getting together into societies, with the whole band of cells basically acting like one big complicated organism with greatly enhanced capabilities.
Friend: What gives you that idea?
Bacteria: Well already, some of our fellow Daptobacters have gone inside other larger bacteria to form a little duo. It's inevitable that our fellow cells will band together so that each cell can specialize its function. As it is now, we each have to do everything by ourselves: find food, digest it, excrete by-products.
Friend: And then what?
Bacteria: All these cells will develop ways of communicating with one another that go beyond just the swapping of chemical gradients that you and I can do.
. . .
Friend: Now, wait a second. Sounds like we'll lose our basic bacteriumity.
Bacteria: Oh, but there will be no loss. . . It will be a great step forward. It's our destiny as bacteria. And, anyway, there will still be little bacteria like us floating around.. . .
Friend: You always were an optimist.
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Take a look at the Primo Post Human.
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