(This is a longer version of an article that originally appeared in the wonderful Strange Skins fanzine, which you can check out here: https://strangeskinsdigital.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/strange-skins-digital-1/)
Star Trek: The Original Series debuted in 1966 and one of the most exciting elements of it that helped captivate the audience was its broad and coherent setting. Much of this setting will have been familiar to the TV audience from other science fiction TV series including the slightly earlier Lost in Space, and movies including Forbidden Planet and the much earlier Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers cinematic series. This is a universe of futuristic space ships, smart uniforms, ray guns and planets with life forms much like those found on Earth. These basic elements, immediately recognisable to a TV audience, carried on largely unchanged into the later Star Trek series, up to an including Star Trek: Enterprise.
Yet science fiction,
especially of a literary kind, has moved on enormously from this older vision
of the future, reflecting the enormous technological changes that have occurred
in our lives. Away from science fiction, these changes have also prompted a
social movement called transhumanism which looks ahead and considers how these
changes may continue and even accelerate in the future.
A broad concept,
transhumanism often examines computers and artificial intelligence and a key
point here is “the Singularity”; a future event in which artificial
intelligence outgrows the human level and in so doing is able to create further
intelligences of an even higher level. This cascading effect makes it
impossible for mere humans to predict or even conceive of what might happen
next – hence its name. A similar
approach is taken to other advanced technology including genetics,
nano-technology, cybernetics and the possibility of mind uploading – that is
uploading your consciousness into a computer. Greatly enhanced life extension
is another interest.
Some transhumanists
predict enormously radical changes in the future. Ray Kurzweil, a prominent
transhumanist writer, predicts that the Singularity will take place around
2045. Not only that, but by 2099 people will be able to live indefinitely long
life spans and humans and computers will have merged. Beyond that, these new intelligences will start saturating the
Solar System and then the rest of the galaxy with their consciousness with the
creation of planet-sized computers.
These themes have for some
time been reflected in science fiction novels; for example in the works of
authors such as Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks and Peter F. Hamilton. The
internet and the digital revolution have given our real lives elements that
could only be thought of as science fiction to the audience of Star Trek
when it was first broadcast in the sixties.
As readers, we take for granted a much higher level of technology in
science fiction than previous generations.
By contrast, Star Trek’s
future is much less radical than the extraordinary vision of transhumanists
such as Kurzweil. It is interesting to note how Star Trek, in all its
series, has largely avoided taking on a more transhumanist approach. All of its
shows depict a largely human crew, not really any different from the TV
audience of today. This point is
starkly made in an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series itself. In Space
Speed, the genetic superman Khan comments that, “I am surprised how little
improvement there has been in human evolution. Oh, there has been technical
advancement, but, how little man himself has changed."
Whilst Khan is a product
of transhumanist style genetic engineering, the crew of the Enterprise seem to
him oddly unchanged from the original form.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s crew includes the genetically
enhanced Dr Julian Bashir but here it is clear that such augmentation of a
natural human is illegal in the Federation. This is despite other, far more
extraordinary scientific advances found in Trek such as warp drive, artificial
gravity, matter replicators and the transporter.
Although Star Trek
is set in the 23rd and 24th centuries, long after the
proposed date of 2045 for the Singularity, true artificial intelligence seems
something of a rarity. The Enterprise’s computer only rarely breaks through to
full sentience and is largely no different from a contemporary computer, albeit
far more powerful. Data, the android from Star Trek: The Next Generation
is stated to be an artificial intelligence and in some respects at a higher
level than a human, yet he often serves the plot as a Pinocchio like character
rather than being an exploration of machine intelligence and what it implies
for human identity, capacities and purpose.
The most well known
transhumanist element of Star Trek might in fact be one of its deadliest
villains – the Borg. Cybernetic, collectivist organisms who seem to be more
machine than life form, the fact that they can only play a role as the
Federation’s greatest enemy adds further weight to this anti-transhumanist
theme.
It will be fascinating to
see how far the new Star Trek show, Star Trek: Discovery,
incorporates transhumanist elements. There has been some discussion about this
but it has to be remembered that often Trek seems more interested in acting as
a metaphor for contemporary social issues rather than being a rigorously
science fiction themed production. In any event, whilst it might be interesting
to speculate about this, it has to be remembered that the new show will be
seeking mass appeal to a mainstream audience.
It is interesting to
speculate what a fully transhumanist vision of Star Trek might be and
the following is a sketch of this concept.
Set two hundred years
after a technological singularity on Earth, the crew of the United Society
Starship Enterprise are largely machine-based cyborgs, with only a certain
amount of organic tissue in the computational matrix of each crew member being
found to be necessary. The crew are
cybernetic avatars of the artificially intelligent mind of the ship itself –
mobile extensions of the Enterprise, who assist with operations on planetary
surfaces to enhance its mission of exploring and surveying the galaxy. Each
crew member is very different in appearance and abilities from the others, both
in their functionality for their mission speciality and some degree of personal
aesthetic enhancement, including the use of further, replaceable biological
elements.
When not in physical
operation, each crew member integrates back into the machine mind of the ship.
Each crew member has their own, individual intelligence, at a level far beyond
the human, but these are still part of the collective whole of the ship’s
intelligence, which is as far beyond them in intelligence as they are beyond
the human. They each have their own
unique personality and identity, as it has been found that diversity amongst
the crew helps with the overall completion of mission objectives. When
integrated with the ship’s intelligence, they interact instantaneously in a
virtual environment.
If a crew member should be
damaged when on a mission, the damaged part can be repaired or replaced very
easily. Indeed, if the crew member should “die” then their consciousness can be
copied from its most recent update in the ship’s intelligence and downloaded
into a new robotic avatar. Each crew member is therefore functionally immortal.
Avoiding the fantasy of
faster-than-light travel of Star Trek, this new show would depict a star
ship using real science, possibly involving a fusion or even anti-matter driven
engine. Travelling at around a tenth or
even as much as a third of the speed light, it would take decades to reach
other stars and yet to the mostly inorganic crew, this is not a difficulty as
they would spend much of the journey inoperative physically, engaging in
social, hedonistic and educational delights in their perfect, utopian virtual
world.
Their mission is to survey
the part of the galaxy they are able to reach in their star ship, to seek out
new worlds and analyse them for possible conversion to the planet-sized
computers that their star spanning Society seeks to construct. Earth, long
since altered into a pristine wildlife park for its native life forms, has
through humanity spawned a post-human culture intent on saturating space with
consciousness. Yet planets with any form of life, no matter how humble, are
treated with reverence and, in accordance with the Society’s Primary Direction,
safeguarded from interference and studied for scientific information.
Sometimes they encounter
other members of their Society, for example if they return to nearer the Solar
System, the centre of the Society. The
Society, a post-human culture, is enormously varied and includes natural humans
(unaltered biologically from humans of pre-Singularity times), completely
artificial life forms, intelligent machines of all kinds and even genetically
enhanced humans and animals (including intelligent apes, dolphins, lizards
etc). Life extension has become so powerful that it is possible to encounter
humans who were born in the twentieth century.
The majority of the
Society’s interaction is carried out in a virtual environment to which they all
have access. This virtual environment is far greater in extent, fidelity and diversity
than the inhabited galaxy. Indeed many citizens of the Society consider the
virtual their primary world and reality something they only engage in when
unavoidably necessary.
For the last 150 years,
small, artificially intelligent probes the size of footballs have been
spreading out across space as initial surveyors, and the crew of the Enterprise
are following up data sent back by these original pioneers. The initial surveys, travelling at up to 50%
of the speed of light, have pushed the frontier back to about 50 light years
from Earth’s Solar System. There are around two thousand stars (and a similar
number of planets) within this volume of space and to date around 20% of these
have been surveyed to any significant degree.
The Society’s long term goal and dream is to one day discover alien
sentient life, which has so far been entirely undetected.
7 comments:
It is possible that the writers for the series have difficulty creating a transhuman character that they think that the audience would find appealing. Data may have the combined knowledge of every member species in the Federation, but cannot use contractions, and has difficulty understanding, MM-hm" and "Unh-unh".
Yes, I think there's a lot in what you say on this point. My vision for a transhumanist Star Trek, for example, might be interesting to some, but I'm not convinced it would attract a large mainstream audience.
Motivation is the most important part of our progress . With transhumanism and minds uploaded to virtual reality , motivation to have more , to know more , to go somewhere , .... is all really gone . Same like videogames players these days .
You never played any video game then. or got lost in a good book.
basically every video game at least plays on the "have more" and theres a whole lot in the "go somewhere/know more" departments.
just because theres different spaces to explore than the physical one doesnt mean that those impulses are suppressed/gone.
i'd like to see your peer reviewed source on motivation being gone.
Star Trek Discovery has wisely solved this problem, with Transhuman characters and sentient AIs as well as robots.
Yes, but the transhumanist cyborg character turned out to be an enemy effectively. Rather re-establishes Trek's anti-transhumanist stance again.
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