Category Archives: Brain in a jar

The evolution of human evolution

Advancements in technology and medical sciences have changed the basis on which evolutionary dominance is measured. It used to be that more physical and social characteristics were dominant when labor was more physical and relationship communities were more stable. Abstract mental fitness (Especially in areas of mathematics, process dynamics, technology adoption, and forecasting) has become a much more important factor in society. At the same time, other factors that are less well considered are having an important impact on human propagation. For example, free-time and moral comfort lead to increased average birth rates.

War has discriminatly killed and ended the genetic branch of those who fit the military standards of physical and mental fitness. The result is that the desirable characteristics that the military has identified as valuable in the event of conflict are relatively diminished in the world population. Characteristics such as good vision, strong muscles, dexterity, endurance, focus, ability to learn languages, spatial intuition, coordination, and communication skills are less common than they naturally would be in people. That’s not to say that the military or society had any choice when recruiting our finest to protect our way of life, but it should be in our minds when we make decisions about how we fight. Is it worth harming the evolutionary process of humanity when we could, albeit for additional financial cost, fight our battles with a far higher degree of safety for the innocent? Human evolution has been reversed by this process, and the genetic pool that perpetuates humanity has been damaged by the wars we could not keep ourselves from fighting.

Evolving systems of life and electronics

We marvel at the power and potential of digital computing, mechanical tools, and computer interfaces, but is it any wonder compared to the analogous systems that have evolved naturally with biological rather than electronic mechanisms? Each of us is an independent system–with our own processor, frame, muscle structures for output, and sensory organs for input. Humans thankfully evolve because each of us is different, and different from the bodies that came before us. Further, our likelihood for passing on characteristics to future generations is related to our viability and the functions of our biological systems. We are biological machines.

But biology as we know it is limited by physical constraints on our senses, memory, and life-spans. It may even be the case that biological imagination and creativity are limited by the inherent constraints of neurological chemistry, however, I don’t imagine this is the case 🙂 I cannot see 3000 miles away without a camera and transmission, and I cannot remember the URL of the 473rd web page I ever viewed without electronic logs.

It seems clear that humans are developing electronic and mechanical tools to move beyond the constraints of our biological selves. We use electronics to extend our senses, empower our expressiveness, assist our memory, automate our processing, and improve our life-span. It seems inevitable that the evolutions of biological and electronic systems will begin to merge in order to take advantage of the best characteristics of each. To reach such a state, the interface between these systems needs to be improved. We are working on it already, and it is a ways off, but simply a matter of time. We are truly fortunate that the basic input and output signals of our biological nervous system are electrical.

Invest in Biotech and Information Sciences

If we invest heavily in biotechnology and information services companies (especially genomics, networked centralized computing, neurology, neural network predictive applications, and nerve regeneration) in the next 50 years, many currently living people may have an opportunity to achieve substantially improved and lengthened quality of life and indefinitely extended sentience.

It’s more than a financial return, but it can still be evaluated financially. The return on these investments should be calculated as the return on the securities themselves, plus the return on your other investments over the period of time that your life and investment horizon are extended. It is possible, then, that the net return on biotech and information science investments may be substancially higher than the direct value change for those investment securities.

SOAP, .net, and the ubiquitous internet cloud

Microsoft’s recent major push to develop the .net platform is an attempt to aggregate and brand all internet services into the Windows operating system. And it just might work. SOAP and .net are sometimes referred to as a “cloud” because of the distributed nature of the processing; your machine accesses a server which renders your display based on stored interface components and applications that are potentially stored on different machines anywhere else, controlled by anyone else. I think that it is a key new technology and that it will play an important role in the development of communications technology in the next few years.

What is this technology? And where does it take us?


SOAP and .net use techniques that enable distributed computing and webserving. In other words, they allow web applications to run on independent computers and independent of the look and feel of the web site. Applications developers will want to adopt this technology because it means that they can focus on the application and spend less time on the user interface. Portals will want to adopt this technology because it means that they can integrate many external services and make them available to their users. Microsoft, I believe, is in the process of building this technology into their Windows operating system in order to enable any internet application to be run without leaving the Microsoft-controlled environment.

There is a programming design heuristic that is based on the separation of model, content, controller, and view. SOAP is analogous as it enables the separation of the model. The dominance of this design for programming was very strong, and similarly, the dominance that SOAP enables will likely be very strong. Effectively, The potential of XML is captured through the definition of protocols for the distributed exchange of applications.

What is the risk?

If .net is successful in becoming the dominant channel for web services, then there is a strong likelihood that Windows will combine the operating system and portal functionality to provide the complete computing experience. Microsoft will have the ability to target services, advertising, applications, communications, and other information to each individual. Further, web services will be conveniently available through integrated Windows applications, reducing the need for browser-based web access. Specifically, it will mean that the internet will be able to be re-faced with a Microsoft-branded front-end, and a selection of web services defined by Microsoft.

What is the potential?

In order for .net to become only one of many popular web service aggregators, the SOAP protocol must never give advantage to Microsoft over other aggregators. If SOAP (which stands for simple object access protocol) remains open in such a way that any portal can aggregate any SOAP enabled web service, then the result will be wonderful. Specifically, it will mean that the entire internet will be able to be re-faced with a customizable front-end, and your selection of web services will be personalized and context dependent based on specifications you select.

Wearable Computing

Digital Convergence is about accessing the functionality of a broad array of devices from fewer more pervasive devices. The logical result of SOAP, wireless connectivity, open source software, and increasingly compact hardware is a trend toward a small wearable computer with access to any web service, including personal information, through a customizable interface. In combination with remote device control, biofeedback input devices, and systems for enhancing senses, the implications are astounding.