As an environmental engineer, I can’t help but think about the future and what is becoming of our planet. I study charts and statistics about how the world is environmentally spinning out of control and analyze the correlations of this erraticism to the evolutions of technology over the last several centuries. I have concluded that the sharing of information has become both the most and least progressive movements of the human age. How is that so? And where does that take us now?
I doubt many people can argue that the ability to communicate ever more efficiently has accelerated the progression of man. From our days in caves when language first developed, to spreading word of warfare or the discovery of new land, we have constantly been moving and changing our actions according to word of mouth. Both verbal and physical language alter how we perceive others and situations and are the primary ways in which we communicate both intentionally and unintentionally. First we developed oral language, then we developed messengers and means to communicate outside of our direct linguistic groups. This turned into a written language with mail carriers. With the rise of the Industrial Revolution, we were suddenly sending information via Pony Express, telegraph, radio, telephone, Internet… but where are we heading now?
Communication with such ease is both a blessing and a curse. Although we can share important information to help accelerate a situation (how loved ones are doing, what someone has discovered in a laboratory, that a tornado is coming), this communication also affects us negatively in two ways. Firstly, think of our history of bad choices, such as slavery. We communicated the idea that slavery is a good choice, then we chose to select certain peoples as victims and exploit certain regions which were communicated to one another over the years and distances. The second way that communication has negatively impacted society is that, although curing disease and preventing disasters are desirable to a person, they are not necessarily beneficial to humanity as a whole. No one wants to hear it, but overpopulation is a rapidly growing concern and communicating ideas and warnings that prevent nature from taking its course instead facilitates the spread of problems and population booms that would otherwise not exist.
As a dorky engineer, I like to model the growth of human technology, population, and communication as a conglomerate graph: y = ex. What does that mean? Well, x simply notes the rate at which any of those categories exponentially grows. It doesn’t take a very impressive number to accelerate y at a nauseating speed up the graph. In fact, a horizontal asymptote can be readily achieved without moving very far down the x-axis. In other words, infinity is achieved with ease. But what does infinity mean in the real world? What will happen when we reach this point of infinity? When technology has multiplied with the spread of knowledge and grown so rapidly that it has now reached that asymptote line at the brink of infinity?
Mathematically speaking, we can’t even verbalize the concept of infinity. Honestly, though, I argue that infinity is exactly what will happen. We describe infinity with as much difficulty as we define “zero”, although “zero” is a concept we can visualize. Infinity and the numbers approaching it are truly exponentially more difficult to visualize as they grow, which makes sense. But it’s not enough for me. Why can’t we visualize infinity? Why can’t we predict where we are going? Why can’t we see an end and a solution that are agreeable to this exponential growth?
Enter: Kayla’s slightly superstitious or perhaps extraterrestrial opinions.
I am wholeheartedly convinced that the human mind only has a certain capacity to imagine, invent, and comprehend. Much like we cannot imagine a dimension beyond the third (unless we consider the addition of time an addition of dimension), I don’t believe our minds are suited to comprehend beyond a certain limit. I believe the acceleration of an exponential graph – when the derivative becomes too steep – is the exact moment that we stop comprehending. We’d like to say it’s “mind overload” or that our minds will “explode” trying to comprehend so much. And although that might be a figurative explanation, isn’t it a bit naïve to blame our lack of comprehension on something that we can’t prove? Isn’t that the same as assuming religion as the explanation for all things for which we have no better theory? Like when the first peoples explained lighting as the power of a repulsed god? Saying that suffrage was “meant to be” and is “his choice” because we need something to believe in?
Thus I define the asymptote of our growth and y as x approaches said asymptote to be the point at which our currently evolved brains have reached overcapacity. In other words, progression stops at this point. We are not equipped to compute, comprehend, and invent beyond this predefined limitation of our intelligence. There is a way, however, to get around this barricade: that is to evolve. But how can we evolve when we have converted from nomadic, warring lives to lives of comfort, luxury, and tight-knit societies? How can we expect to evolve under such security blankets when we nurture the suffering, coddle the inept, and put bandages on every slight provocation? We can’t. And no one wants to hear those words, but the truth is we try too hard to play Mother Nature – or god if you so choose. We cannot expect to progress as a race until we have overcome our crutches, namely our unprecedented compassion for helping, protecting, and saving all that would not otherwise survive.
So, in conclusion, the future, communication, and where we are headed all sums into the following: Communication has accelerated us exponentially in all good and bad aspects of our history as humans. This acceleration will halt when we have reached the limit of our intelligence. Our intelligence will not improve or progress because we have decided to protect and preserve all the flaws and populations “not meant to be” in our society. But, all in all, we do not control the universe and Mother Nature will prevail. Natural selection has been the law strongest against the test of time. I do not see our intelligence progressing any further before we either kill each other or we screw up the environment enough for nature to kill us. So I don’t think this entry has been particularly enlightening or relieving, but maybe it’s something to ponder on? Or maybe it’s just something to which we ascent and proceed to accept our fate. Maybe there is no way out. Then, again, maybe that’s what nature intended? C’est la vie.
faithless Faith 