A Mind Is a Terrible Thing

Want to guess what percentage of cells in your body are you, rather than bacteria or other life forms? Give it some thought; we’ll come back to this.

Meanwhile, I’m obsessed with TED Talks.

The thinkers of great progressive thoughts about technology, education, and design get together at TED conferences; TED Talks is all that nerdy goodness packed into free, 18-minute videos. I’m ceaselessly fascinated. The shameful truth is I don’t even know who many of these people are – only that they say shocking and compelling things which, taken together, are the most hopeful and marvelous ideas I’ve ever had nightmares about. For example, the percentage of cells in your body that have your DNA:

About 9%. No, I’m not kidding. Bonnie Bessler says – in passing, mind you, on her way to the revelation that bacteria can coordinate a light show, “At best you’re 10% human. I think of you as 90-99% bacterial.” I’m still not over it – and not just because it’s gross to contemplate. Suddenly all that “baggage” I’m carrying around is alive. No wonder we’re meant to feel at one with the world. I’m starting to be philosophical about my identity crisis: “The I…” wrote Emmanuel Levinas “is the being whose existing consists in identifying itself, in recovering its identity throughout all that happens to it.” Yes, but who knew it would be a full-time job?

I’ve taken to watching the talks alphabetically by title, which is a thrilling way to get a series of unrelated but jaw-dropping ideas into one’s brain in short order, as the topics range from oceanography to architecture to particle physics to the source of happiness. Together, the TED Talks are a mile wide and an inch deep, which is a cross-section of science I love. Don’t bother me with details; I’m working on a grand unified theory…

The astounding facts that float by in this inch-deep world are one of its great joys. Deep-sea oceanographer Robert Ballard reminds us we went to the moon and played golf there before we went to the largest feature on the face of the earth – the mid-Atlantic ridge, which covers 23% of the planet. Really? We’d better get down there and look around. Meanwhile, Burt Rutan is urging entrepreneurs into the world of commercial space flight, including a cruise around the moon. David Keith warns us that science is going to deliver climate and weather control whether we want it or not. Remind me to worry about that, would you?

Back on earth, Susan Savage-Rumbaugh argues that many differences between humans and the bonobos she studies are cultural rather than biological. “We are sharing tools, technology and language with another species,” she reports. Indeed, her bonobo companions start a fire, write symbols, and drive a golf cart (albeit poorly). They also play Pac-Man, and some of them are better at it than me.

The world of biotechnology has been up to awe-inspiring things since I last paid attention, which is good because we’re in need of a new economy. Futurist Juan Enriquez talks about “reprogramming” life – a concept so far-reaching he has only a moment to mention it will cure cancer. Scientists in Japan and the US have “rebooted” skin cells to behave like stem cells, which in turn can be reprogrammed to express bone, stomach, pancreas. “We’re likely to be wandering around with re-grown body parts in a reasonable period of time,” he predicts, a bit like lizards that can re-grow a tail. This freaks me out a little.

Aimee Mullins, a pioneer in prosthetic limb design, shows off her coolest sets of legs, including ones that look like jelly fish. “A prosthetic limb doesn’t represent the need to replace loss anymore,” she says. Even better, Enriquez reports that a man who set several world records in the Paralympic games came within a second of qualifying for the regular Olympics. “Two or three Olympics from now they’ll be unbeatable,” he promises. Just as Mullins decides how tall she wants to be today, the deaf won’t merely hear – they will hear whales sing and focus their hearing directionally. The blind will see in infrared and micro-focus. How cool is that?!

Jeff Hawkins studies the nature of intelligence, and talks about progress storing memories in non-biological systems. “Attach memories to sensors and they will experience live data and they will learn about their environment,” he assures us. There is also now a Registry of Standard Biological Parts – a sort of biological Lego set. Non-biologic systems can teach themselves to move, can replicate. We’re about to cozy right up to the line between technology and life.

Kevin Kelly argues that technology evolves according to the same rules as life – that in fact it could be classified as a seventh kingdom, evolved from the animal kingdom. The difference is that technology doesn’t go extinct; it’s possible for a new technology to evolve from “dead” technology. Even this distinction won’t hold up if the Australians manage to make a wolf give birth to the currently extinct Tasmanian tiger; the current problem is not the science, but a lack of DNA samples.

And now I’m scared, and not just of wooly mammoths romping the earth and the mass production of buffalo with wings.

See, I’ve been counting on dying as a chance to catch up on my sleep, and I’m afraid scientists plan to rob me of this solace. Let’s put aside the complete inadequacy of my retirement plan to cope with such a possibility. I may not be ready to kick off today, but immortality seems so… interminable; like hell without as many fiery pits or opportunities to chat up medieval plague victims and murderers of old.

No. Instead I’m going to be part prosthetic, part robot and mostly re-grown – a bionic woman whose memories have been backed up onto a hard drive of bacteria and stored on The Hive Mind, which we used to call the Internet. My best friend will be a bonobo whose day job is flying a space saucer to hot springs on one of Saturn’s moons; I will look after his amphibious pet owlcat while he’s away.

People who study these things think there’s at LEAST a 20% chance humanity won’t make it past the 21^st century. Half the estimates give us a 50/50 chance.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.