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Thursday 6 May 2010

What’s going on?



Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow club members,

I would like to thank you for this opportunity.
I do apologise in advance – just in case.

My speech (B1 level) is titled “What’s going on?” and starts with the story we all know.

Once upon a time everybody was happy. We were happy and we lived in harmony with the nature. And then everything changed. For some environmental reasons we went down from the trees and we evolved. We started to think, we invented culture and we opened Pandora’s Box. Our habitat changed from purely biological to mostly cultural. We lost our innocence – forever.

We still like to dream about that mythical golden age of innocence, about living in harmony with the nature. We created even myths like a myth of a noble savage who lives in harmony with the nature. This myth is not true – let’s think how difficult, short and often violent tribal life in the jungle of Papua New Guinea or Amazonia is. There is a huge difference between camping during a weekend in the forest nearby and struggling for survival deep in the jungle. There is nothing idyllic about that. But the myth still is alive – recently we could see Na’vi – noble savages in James Cameron’s “Avatar”. The movie depicting blue, giant, catlike people of the distant moon Pandora very quickly became no 1 in the box office earning currently $2.717.292.481 worldwide and all times.

If you haven’t seen the movie – I am very sorry to say you have a serious problem. You are not keeping up with the modern pop culture, you are not grasping it. In fact you don’t know what’s going on. And what’s going on is the title of my speech.

As I mentioned earlier we have lost our innocence. We started cultural evolution. We cannot go back – we have to move forward by using our brains, technology and science.

Interestingly enough in everyday life it is rare for us to be in the present. Usually, we seem to be stuck in the past or chasing the future. Unless we are have peak experiences. Unless we meditate or being in love.

So we created the culture – or maybe the culture created us – and we start asking the questions. Like the ultimate question about Life... the universe... and everything.

For which the answer is 42 – if you remember Douglas Adams’ book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

If you haven’t read the book – I am very sorry but I have to say you have a serious problem here. You are not keeping up with the modern culture. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the best piece of English literature since Chares Dickens. Besides, it has friendly letters “Don’t panic” on its cover. And you probably don’t know what I am talking about.

Maybe the answer 42 doesn’t make much sense to you but our brains are always looking for patterns. We are always looking for patterns. Our brains always try to find meaning. We always make up stories.

Yet thinking was and it is sometimes dangerous for us - especially for women. Because of thinking our head became bigger. Bigger skulls mean bigger risk during giving birth. It could kill us. But somehow we survived.

Our brains are also tuned to any threats to our existence. It is a survival mechanism. We pay attention to possible threats. If you look at things like zombies, vampires, news, religions, terrorism, doomsday prophecies or nuclear deterrence – all of them are based or fear – or have a strong fear component built in.

The good news is that over 90% of our fears are never going to happen.

However, over 98% species that ever lived on this planet are already extinct. By the way, we helped a little bit with that extinction during the last 10.000 years. Big extinctions occurred in the history of our planet and we are not completely immune. That’s why we simply have to move forward, we have to colonise other planets. How it can be done? We could see how it can be done in “Avatar” movie.

If you haven’t seen “Avatar” – I am very sorry – you don’t know how it can be done.

Anyway, we have to colonise other planets, we have to start terraforming Mars. And I am sure we will colonise other planets. Let me read you a quote from the “Matrix” movie:

Agent Smith - who is not a human - says (quote):

“I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.”

As you can see it is a very important quote. If you haven’t seen “Matrix” – I am very sorry to say that you definitely do not keep up with the modern culture. “Matrix” is one of the most important movies. It had been directed by Wachowski brothers. Well, they used to be Wachowski brothers. Now they are Wachowski brother and sister. Apparently Larry changed his name and his gender, his sex and became Lana Wachowski. Don’t ask me for details.

Anyway, “Matrix” is a very important movie. It depicts a conflict between humans and machines. And this brings me back to the question “what’s going on?”

What’s going on? Cultural evolution - mostly. But maybe in some future we will start – or maybe we have already started – evolution of machines, computers and who knows maybe it will end up like in “Matrix” or “Terminator” movies. (If you haven’t seen “Terminator” I am sorry...)

Just to give you a little bit of explanation: For evolution to happen you need three things: Variation, Selection and Heredity. Providing we have those things evolution happens because it must. Biological evolution happened with genes as biological replicators. When we evolved we started cultural evolution which is sometimes described as evolution of memes – maybe you have heard about memetics? Memetics is about evolution of memes as the second, cultural replicators. The third replicators maybe will be called Te-memes or Tech-memes when machines or robots start to evolve.

So what’s going on at the moment is cultural evolution which is happening since we went down from the trees. It is faster than biological evolution. Maybe in the future we will construct machines and devices which will start to evolve, to replicate on their own. Who knows?

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