{"id":33,"date":"2002-09-18T09:59:13","date_gmt":"2002-09-18T09:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/?p=33"},"modified":"2016-01-14T16:49:12","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T00:49:12","slug":"coming-soon-humilty-to-replace-hubris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2002\/09\/18\/coming-soon-humilty-to-replace-hubris\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming Soon: Humilty to Replace Hubris"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/digitalmass.boston.com\/news\/globe_story.html?uri=\/dailyglobe2\/260\/science\/Will_evolution_leave_humanity_behind_-.shtml\">A scientist predicts<\/a> that humans will soon lose their place as the most complex things in the (known) universe \u2014 to be replaced by computers.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A few folks, such as Kurzweil, embrace the post-human future with enthusiasm. They look back upon the long sweep of cosmic evolution and recognize that humans are a momentary efflorescence, destined to be supplanted by new forms of complexity as surely as people took precedence over insects and mice.<\/p>\n<p>In Kurzweil&#8217;s view, the future will be characterized by &#8221;greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, greater love.&#8221; His optimism is similar to that of the Jesuit mystic Teilhard de Chardin, who saw the fulfillment of creation at the end of time, rather than at the beginning.<\/p>\n<p>The majority of people, however, are distressed and frightened by the prospect of a post-human future. The late great chemist Erwin Chargaff and entrepreneur <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wired\/archive\/8.04\/joy.html\">Bill Joy<\/a>, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, have gone so far as to call for constraints on certain kinds of technological innovation as the only way of preserving our essential humanity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A scientist predicts that humans will soon lose their place as the most complex things in the (known) universe \u2014 to be replaced by computers. A few folks, such as Kurzweil, embrace the post-human future with enthusiasm. They look back upon the long sweep of cosmic evolution and recognize that humans are a momentary efflorescence,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2002\/09\/18\/coming-soon-humilty-to-replace-hubris\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Coming Soon: Humilty to Replace Hubris<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-tech-the-net"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5heLP-x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":830,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}