1.Robot Dreams. A well-known short story by Isaac Asimov with Susan Calvin as protagonist. It explores the dangers sentience in robots may bring to humanity.
2. A Brain Speaks by Andy Clark - a short story (?). It reads like a monologue by a Brain explaining how its Person, John, is unable to understand how his brain works and how alien it would seem if John could actually see or understand it.
3. Cyborgs Unplugged by Andy Clark. The chapter starts by suggesting that rather than building artificial earth-like environments for space exploration we should look into the alteration of humans to cope with the demands of space. Clark starts this way to make a point of how our future lays in space and how to better adapt to it. The essay then discusses cybernetics (the study of self-regulating systems by control and communication), homeostatic systems (mechanisms which correct deviations in a system by dragging them back to original settings), and the cyborg (cyber organism) which contains "exogenous components extending the self-regulating control function of the organism in order to adapt it to new environments". Some examples of cybernetic implants are given, in animals and humans. The author reflects on how these technologies could be deeply and fluidly integrated with the organisms and the profound transformation in our lives, projects and live-styles. The case of cognitive systems is discussed in which integration is not as important as the “fluidity of information” between organism and machine. To exemplify this Clark presents the case of airline pilots piloting airplanes with computers which are able to make decisions. This situation could be thought of as humans becoming part of a temporal cyborg system in which the information flows from the computer to the pilot.
Clark makes a case for a kind of cyborg which does not need implants or any alien technological device inside the body. Using tools from cybernetics he describes cyborgs using (electronic) tools outside the body, so integrated in their everyday life that they are "invisible in-use" making it difficult tell where the "person stops" and where the "smart world begins". In fact our brains need not extra effort to work this way because they are already doing it, for example by receiving inputs from body subsystems which operate unconsciously while holding a pen to write. In fact a lot of our activities are "invisible in-use" to the brain. This could be thought of as symbiotic relationships which “expand and alter the shape of the psychological process that make us who we are". Because of this Clark thinks that humans are "natural-born cyborgs".
4. Superintelligence and Singularity by Ray Kurzweil. Actually this is the first chapter of Kurzweil’s famous book The Singularity is Near: When Humans transcend biology. Here Kurzweil explains how according to him, the evolution of technology grows in an exponential fashion rather than linear. This means that the more our technology progresses the faster it evolves. See for example how in the 19th and first part of the 20th century science and technology generation lasted more than one human lifetime whereas now several generations of science and technology could happen within one human generation. A point of interest within the exponential curve is the knee of the curve, where imperceptive growth turns to explosive growth. The knee of the curve will certainly reached when we achieve a technological singularity. Kurzweil emphasises crucial role the exponential nature of technological development has for forecasting or speculating on the (short or far) future. The chapter follows by dividing earth’s (and human) progress in 6 epochs:
1. Physics and Chemistry: atoms to form molecules and so on.
2. Biology and DNA: DNA appears and with it life.
3. Brains: creation of information processing mechanisms.
4. Technology: from simple mechanisms to super computers.
5. The Merger of Human Technology with Human Intelligence: kicked by the Singularity. It will “enable our human-machine civilisation to transcend the human brain’s limitations of a mere hundred trillion extremely slow connections.”
6. The Universe Wakes Up: human (biological and technological) intelligence will spread to the rest of the universe.
