As a young boy I’d read old science fiction anthologies gleaned from second hand book stores. My favourites were the shortest stories, heavy on concept and light on plot and characters. One such story, only a page in length, described advanced aliens deciding that the earth was no longer worthy of consideration as we had unlocked the destructive power of the atom before developing the ability to colonise other planets. I can’t remember the name of the story or the author but the concept stuck with me. Not just the thought that such confined power could lead to ultimate destruction but that there might be a logical, calculable inevitability to it.
The nuclear threat has not diminished. Environmental degradation and conflict over dwindling resources also threaten. We may navigate these threats but further out might there still be a logical, calculable inevitability to our demise? Are there still other filters through which our civilisation will not be able to pass? Or if we are to pass through them will we have to reshape our societies into forms which, from a present day perspective, seem abhorrent?
One popularised filter is the the “Grey Goo” scenario proposed by Eric Drexler in 1986: The conversion of all biomass on earth into self replicating nano machines and chemical residue. Robert Freitas writes:
"Unlike almost any other natural material, biomass can serve both as a source of carbon and as a source of power for nanomachine replication. Ecophagic nanorobots would regard living things as environmental carbon accumulators, and biomass as a valuable ore to be mined for carbon and energy. Of course, biosystems from which all carbon has been extracted can no longer be alive but would instead become lifeless chemical sludge." (Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators)
Later he calculates that starting with a small seed population of replicators a global conversion of all organics could occur in under 3 hours. All the organic complexity built up over 4 billion circuits around the sun reduced to a homogeneous mass in less time than it takes the earth to spin 45 degrees on its polar axis.
An outbreak of this rapidity would cause a heat signature which could be detected and targeted by defensive nano machines before significant spread. But this shield need only fail once or be sabotaged or turned against us and the war is lost. What chance do fragile, complicated organic beings have as armies of nano replicators clash and ravage the ecosystems upon which we depend? There is no learning gradient here, no second chance. One defensive failure or exploit and a dead earth is carpeted by dying nano replicators.
There are many other potential attack vectors: Bioengineered pandemics. Artificial super intelligences running out of control or enhancing the lethality of human directed attacks. Or the spread of advanced weaponry or chemical and biological agents preceded by the widespread adoption of advanced 3D printing techniques for both organic and inorganic matter. And others of which we are yet to conceive. To stress our societies to the point of collapse need not require obliteration or even that humans are directly targeted. A recent paper in Science questioned DARPA funded research into the use of insects for horizontal gene transfer into plants. The dissenting authors propose that such research could be used to circumvent the Biological Weapons Convention and produce changes in a crop’s genome for hostile purposes: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6410/35.
Gun control in the US is a perennial and seemingly intractable issue. The argument may well still be raging when we see the proliferation of technology which will allow individuals to construct anything from raw elements in a matter of seconds from the privacy of their own homes. At this point the gun debate becomes moot and we are faced with a more fundamental dilemma: Is personal freedom a guarantee of armageddon when such power exists in the homes of every disaffected citizen who wishes to avail themselves of it?
Whatever the particular variant all of these threats have one frightening characteristic. Once developed they will be very cheap to deploy. They will be great levellers whereby any individual may wield a destructive power greater than any entire nation on earth today. Taken to the extremum we are faced with the question: Can a population of 10 billion individuals with god like power possibly co exist on an earth sized planet? Must we become something other than human, something more durable, more redundant or more diffuse? Must we break into tribes of trusted individuals and move away from each other into the universe as quickly as our technology will permit?
Or in order to survive must society employ a level of surveillance and control such that Orwell’s 1984 would seem a laissez faire frolic by comparison? Perhaps the first inkling of such a future is now visible in China . Citizens are monitored by a network of 200 million CCTV cameras. AI powered systems pour over this data identifying individuals, combining it with other indicators such as financial and employment status, shopping habits and online activity and then making adjustments to an individual’s “social credit” . Future developments in such behavioural influencing may well include more direct intervention such as organic and inorganic agents to promote docility and conformance. Alteration of germ lines could see such interference made heritable. Eventually perhaps nano machines designed to infiltrate human hosts and allow a direct read write interface to their neural system: every being on earth monitored and error corrected every moment of every day. Given past reaction to terrorist threat it is reasonable to assume that significant intervention in personal behaviour will be promoted as indispensable regardless of actual efficacy or need.
It is said that life exists on the edge of chaos. It is possible that balance can be maintained. We need not fall into absolute chaos or surrender to absolute control. Unlike the aliens in my story we know of no other life in our universe, we have no database of outcomes upon which to draw, our sample size is one, just us. As the pace of our human universe accelerates the horizon closes in and the near future become increasingly difficult to predict.