The end of dreams

The end of dreams

Posted on May 22nd, 2009 by Christopher Guerin

I am not a Luddite. I love my MacBook, my iPod, and my Blackberry Curve. I have my doubts about the effects on literature and music through digitization, the Kindle, downloading, etc., but I accept the premise that, on balance, such technological progress is a good thing. I also eagerly await the progress of medical science in the areas of Alzheimer’s and hip replacement, two things I worry about. Now, a recent article in The New Scientist reports on a recent conference on Neuroscience, and proclaims, “It will soon be possible to boost human brainpower with electronic ‘plug-ins’ or even by genetic enhancement.”

This isn’t new, of course. For years, Ray Kurzweil has been talking about the Singularity, which will take place in 2045, when man and machine will become one. Others have written about the digitization of consciousness within the next 100 years. One author (sorry, I can’t seem to find the article right now) suggests that we won’t need to travel to visit alien civilizations. We’ll simply build similar receptors and beam entire consciousnesses back and forth across the vastness of space.

Sorry, but all this scares the crap out of me. Think about it. Your mind no longer the extension of your body and vice versa. Really, think about that.

Sure, why not be able to boost your intellect a few points with a “plug-in”? Well, and if, as the article suggests, they can make it cheap enough, we’ll all be able to benefit. In fact, with a little dialing in, we can all be equally brilliant. It reminds me, in reverse, of the Kurt Vonnegut story in which a future society makes the physically strong carry heavy weights, and puts platform shoes on short people, so that everyone is equal.

Of course, the problem is that it won’t stop there. Again, think about it. Do you want to live in your own mind for eternity? What if they take away dreams and you have to be awake all day, every day, for centuries, for ever?

I said “they,” and that’s my real problem. The ultimate slavery will be the enslavement of consciousness by others. I won’t even try to paint that one out — the very words are all that need to be said.

When I was younger, I had a recurring nightmare. It followed a similar pattern each time. I was being held hostage by two other people and forced not to do anything, but to think, faster and faster, along a dizzingly mazy line that my keepers determined, gleefully uncaring how terrified they were making me. Thankfully, I don’t have that dream anymore.

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Christopher Guerin

Christopher Guerin is the author of two books each of poetry and short fiction, a novel, and more than a dozen children’s books. If he hadn’t spent 26 years as an arts administrator, including 20 years as President of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, perhaps he’d have worked a little harder getting them published. His consolation resides in his fiction and poems having been published in numerous small magazines, including Rosebud, AURA, Williams and Mary Review, Midwest Quarterly, Wittenberg Review, RE: Artes Liberales, DEROS, Wind, and Wind less Orchard. His blog, Zealotry of Guerin, features his fiction and poetry, including his sonnet sequence of poems after paintings, “Brushwork." He is the V.P. of Corporate Communications at Sweetwater Sound, Inc., the national music instrument retailer.