The Technology of Mind and a New Social Contract
The
progress of biology, neuroscience and computer science makes it clear that some
time during the twenty- first
century we will master the technologies
of mind and life. We will build machines more intelligent than ourselves,
and modify our own brains and bodies to increase our intelligence, live
indefinitely and make other changes. We live together according to a social contract, consisting of laws,
morals and conventions governing our interactions. This social contract is
based on assumptions we rarely question: that all humans have roughly the same
intelligence, that we have limited life spans and that we share a set of
motives as part of our human nature.
The technologies of mind and life will invalidate these assumptions and
inevitably change our social contract in fundamental ways. We need to prepare
for these new technologies so that they change the world in ways we want