Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then I contradict myself
(I am large, I contain multitudes)
- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
We are poised at the cusp of a historic transformation of the human race, one that has been largely mediated by technology. While the contours of these changes are visible, the big picture is fragmented and is still emerging. One of the possible outcomes of these changes is the emergence of the Grand Unified Transcendental Internet (GUTI) as an emergent property of multiple technology-driven developments that have enabled the bridging of cyber-physical-biological worlds today.
The cyber-physical bridge enabled by a number of technologies that were around for several decades now, although they are today known under the common rubric "Internet of Things" (IoT). The physical world is our familiar 'real life' where a lamp lights up when we turn on a wall switch. The cyber world is also well-known as the world of email, web browsing, streaming video and multiplayer games. But can we switch on a lamp by sending an email? If so, we have bridged the Cyber and Physical worlds. This is also what numerous sensors and actuators of IoT can do easily. Of course, IoT has also other dimensions such as 3D printing, Smart Cities, "Software-Defined-Everything", or anywhere-anytime-anything connectivity.
Integration of the cyber world with the biological world has been slower in coming, but the pace of integration is rising fast. The giant strides in genomics in the last decade was enabled by digital technologies which played a critical role in managing the reading, sequencing, annotation and analysis of the terabytes of data that genomics often has to deal with. Subsequently, the emergence of technologies such as CRISPR/CAS9 which enables easy editing of live DNA, is set to make transformational changes in a variety of areas from controlling aging, healing diseases, or creating designer babies, high-yielding, disease resistant crops, or "clean" meat that is produced by culture, not by slaughter.
An even more interesting field is cognitive computing where a direct brain-computer interface (BCI) has been available for some time. As of now, BCI has been used largely in experimental situations including controlling prosthetic devices or even fighter planes and vehicles. The most exciting developments in this domain, however, are yet to come. For instance, can we "download" a brain into a computer and "upload" it back to the brain later? Can we connect two brains? A brain and a thinking bot? A pet's brain with the master's?
This opens up the vision of a new Internet built atop the cyber-physical-biological foundation, one that brings together many millions of human brains connected to the Internet without an intervening computing device, which could also be directly connected to plants, animals, IoT devices, software robots, and even bacteria. Welcome to the GUTI!
So far there was no direct communication possible between these disparate groups of living and non-living entities. However, today we have reach a stage where we have to redefine what is life, with scientists already having both created cyborgs as well as minimalist, artificial DNA. Both these developments can lead to entirely new definitions of what life is, and what augmented life or virtual life is.
Even so, technology is not really a barrier for the emergent GUTI. It's just a matter of time before the technology is developed. More important are the questions of what such an internetwork could do: would it be an incoherent mess of quadrillions of messages per millisecond flashing around? Can the incoherence be managed? Would coherence emerge? What would be the emergent properties of such a network? Would federations of beings (live and non-live in real-life, although no such distinction would exist in GUTI) spontaneously emerge? What are the ethics of the GUTI ecosystem? Would the beings of GUTI be subject to laws of physics or some other system of laws? What would be the interlingua of GUTI? Would it be possible that our insights, epiphanies, intense emotions such as anger or jealousy, or moments of orgasmic pleasure, can be shared with other beings?
It is perhaps too early to predict, or perhaps it is impossible to predict given the Schrödingerian nature of GUTI. Yet, such a vision of an all-encompassing, multi-being, directly-connected network of thoughts, ideas, needs, urges, emotions, and insights promises to be almost spiritual in nature.
