Man has the power to rewrite man, to reinvent himself, and technology already has a lot to do with it.
Mankind has reached a crucial point in his development, in his history. It occupies a place that is both anecdotal in the universe, but also one of the most fascinating and unique. From a universe of nearly 13.8 billion years to a human being ( homo sapiens ) that appeared only 300,000 years ago. Man is the luckiest and most improbable result of an organization of matter and effect of time. An organization that enabled life, from a primary form to a sophisticated and intelligent form.
At this point in our development, it is impossible to ignore the impact of the technologies that are in our hands. Already in 2012, the CIA (central intelligence agency) and the National Intelligence Council present a vision of the world for 2035[1] . The proposed landscape is largely imbued with a transhumanist tendency. Man is imagined there as being improved by more and more artefacts, prostheses and sensors of all kinds. Brain implants are being considered. Technological man could then evolve considerably in the coming decades.
Note carefully that if this technology has allowed us to rise, it has sometimes reduced us[2] , even to the point of making us slaves. If man has always been a prisoner of time, today he is in an antagonistic position of strength and weakness. Weakened by tools that go beyond its measure, weakened by a climate emergency, weakened by the latest health crisis.
Faced with a catastrophic observation swept away by an almost irreversible modification of the biosphere, of the planet, and in the face of the capacity to self-destruct, technologies are also a way out and a source of change towards our own humanity.
Neuroscientist and founder of DeepMind Technologies Limited in 2010 (sold to Google in 2014), Demis Hassabis says that without the emergence of disruptive technologies, humans would certainly have a lot of worries about their own future. Artificial intelligence (the machine’s ability to reproduce traits of human intelligence) carries this hope in particular. We understand then why Rico Malvar , the scientific director of the Microsoft laboratory, compared the advent of artificial intelligence to that of electricity. A resource on which both machine and man are dependent.
Other specialists go further and stipulate a rupture possibly as strong as that carried by the writing. In this line of superlatives, current Google president Sundar Pichai compares the importance of artificial intelligence with that of the discovery and domestication of fire.[3] . The symbol is strong. Fire is at the origin of the significant advance of man, it is the promise of being able to provide a rich and varied diet, the promise of heat and that of being able to create tools, and later machines. A fire which, in many mythologies, would have been obtained by man by stealing it from the gods. In Greek mythology , Prometheus ( Προμηθεύς ) discreetly steals the celestial fire. Fire that he will obtain by concealing a torch lit in the sun, and hidden under a bushel of fennel (Figure 1). Will the fire of artificial intelligence also bring a new phase of our civilization ? A fire stolen from the gods or by men who approach and think they are gods ? Keep in mind that this stolen fire led to torture. Prometheus was dragged by Zeus ( Ζεύς ) to the Caucasus Mountains and was chained to a rock, where every day his liver will be eaten by an eagle, where every day his liver will grow again [4]. History allows Prometheus to survive thanks to the savior Heracles.
Will we be entitled to such a rescue in our quest ? By laying the foundations of an intelligence and soon perhaps of consciousness in machines, isn’t man touching on something divine and destructive ?
We are observing the signs and the promise of a new era brought by the convergences of technologies and advances in various fields, even to the point of rethinking the nature of man who now evolves in a space that can be described as ‘hybrid. Milad Doueihi mentions the hybridization “ of our habitable space, our modes of communication and our modes of identity “[5].
Hybridization driven by artificial intelligence, web, Internet of Things, cloud computing (cloud) , mass data ( big data ), robotics, UAVs, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and biotechnology . An evolution of our species which was already highlighted in 1960 by the philosopher Herbert Marshall McLuhan[6] with regard to the impact of media and technologies. He explains this change to us: “ During the mechanical ages, we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electrical technology, we have extended our central nervous system into a global embrace, abolishing both space and time with respect to our planet. Quickly we enter the final phase of human extensions — the technological simulation of consciousness, when the process of creating knowledge will collectively and corporately be extended to the whole of human society, just as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media. “
The man certainly has a hybrid of his flesh and its future be combining what it has always been the XXI st century: an organic being with digital technologies. We are now moving towards an era where physical and digital will no longer stand out. We envision a major anthropological revolution and often with hope an intelligent society, although the uncertainty remains.
Our existence would be doomed to see organic nature converge with digital nature, thus redefining the contours of the new digital nature of man.
Bits , Atoms, Neurons and Genes : BANG !
We are referring to the expression Little Bang as opposed to the Big Bang, that of the creation of the universe . This cosmic event which saw a tiny point of gigantic density and heat become in itself the cause of our entire universe. Tomorrow, person-machine interfaces, phygital , virtual or alternative reality, general artificial intelligence up to intelligent dust could disrupt our customs that are hundreds of thousands of years old. We are moving towards a new bong, symbol of a new creation, of a new beginning.
Electricity, Writing, Fire, Big Bang.
As you will have understood, this digital life follows in the footsteps of our evolution. Little by little, she goes beyond the frontiers that stood before her. Man is rewriting his history through technology. The comparisons are strong, almost as big as our ambition.
Many scientists have the same feeling, that of belonging to a pivot generation and at the foot of gigantic developments. The signals alert us, progress indicates it, dazzling advances will be offered to future generations. Literary critic Nancy Katherine Hayles made an impression as early as 1999 when she claimed that man had somehow already merged with technology. She points out that all current forms of technology are so ubiquitous that they act on us as a reflection of the image of our actions on it [7] . We are up against the wall. A progress wall or a prison wall ; We do not know it. If the future has never ceased to be uncertain throughout history, ours seems to bear even more uncertainties. We had not envisioned the man on the moon or a horse full of men in Troy. We didn’t want to believe that some colored men were equal to others. We have known many civilizations which have never ceased to build themselves, then to collapse, as a renewal and an eternal repetition of our works and our mistakes. Until now, those who mastered the past had a more accurate view of the future.
Before a man decodes the code of life. Before another creates an artificial cell. Before we have fun reviving an extinct species. Before we lengthen the ends of our telomeres to gain a little life. Before we imagine and realize quantum computers capable of calculating at the scale of the particle. Before we understand that the information of matter can be transmitted instantaneously to two places in space. Before we create thinking machines and start to want to give them a consciousness.
Today, everything seems possible and more than ever. As our progress shakes our way, we have never been so uncertain of our future.
Man is strong in all his progress, all his discoveries, all his exploits. It is obviously all the more fragile. A superhuman can quickly fall, mythology has given us many examples. A life of immortality could turn out to be much drier and more agonizing than a mere mortal life. The gift offered to Midas ( Μίδας) , that of turning everything he touched into gold, was a handicap that could have been fatal. The myth informs us that :
“ Midas was surrounded by gold : the vases, the tables and the chairs, but also the trees and the fruits… everything was transformed, everything had the same color, the same touch. Midas could no longer taste food, he could no longer quench his thirst. Desperate, Midas begged Dionysos ( Διώνυσος ) to withdraw this gift from him. Then the god ordered the king to dive into the Pactolus River, and the strange power of Midas vanished. But, since then, the water of the Pactole is charged with a multitude of gold spangles. “
In this mad ambition and as long as we do not have a setback, worries rather face fascination. How lucky we are to live at this time ! What a joy to understand so much, and to have so many ambitions ! Millennia working in a world of common sense on the rather banal scale of man, without miniature, without gigantism. Man has now offered himself the knowledge of the small, and even of the very small. He offered himself the knowledge of the great and the far, and even the very great and the infinitely far. We have ceased to dream with everyday objects to everyday desires. We have offered ourselves a road to the wisdom (or insanity) of a more universal knowledge. It inspires all men, the greatest as well as the humblest. We continue to want, we continue to hope, but on scales without measures.
Man almost has the power to rewrite man, to reinvent him, and technology already has a lot to do with it. We can sense this moment in human history as unique. Before this expected explosion of knowledge, of changes, of dreams, of reality, he inspires learners, the living, artists and immortals every day.
In this work, we engage in a quest for the dimensions relating to what we will call the digital nature of man. This nature can be perceived through knowledge, art, life and farewell, through little stories of what is part of our great history [8].
This universal history offers us a transdisciplinary look at humanity, a history for which we still have a part of our destiny in our hands, a destiny that each of us can still write.
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[1] Adrien Jaulmes, Gregory F. Treverton , The world in 2035 as seen by the CIA and the National Intelligence Council: the paradox of progress, 2018.
[2] Charles Perez, Digital Prison, Contemporary Questions, L’Harmattan , 2020.
[3] Google CEO Sundar Pichai compares impact of AI to electricity and fire, Lauren Goode, The Verge, January, 2018. https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/19/16911354/google-ceo-sundar- pichai-ai-artificial-intelligence-fire-electricity-jobs-cancer
[4] Mythology tells us that the theft of fire is not the only reason for the torment of Prometheus.
[5] Milad Doueihi , For a digital humanism, Seuil, 2011.
[6] McLuhan Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. 2nd edition. Abingdon: Routledge, 2005 (first published 1964 ) .
[7] Nancy Katherine Hayles , Ho w We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, 1999.
[8] Cynthia Stokes Brown , The Meaning of Big History, Philosophically Speaking, Dominican University of California , 2016.
