“Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don't fit in?”
Margaret Atwood
The Indonesian capital of Jakarta is sinking. Literally sinking. At a terrifying rate of 11 inches (25cm) every year, for the past ten years. Blame the swampy soil. Blame rising sea levels. Blame poor urban planning. Blame centralized bureaucracy. Blame overpopulation - it is home to 11 million people (for perspective, America’s largest city - which is also sinking - has 8.5 million). What has the Indonesian government decided to do about this? Relocate. A new capital city is being built from scratch in the East Kalimantan province of Borneo, on the other side of the Java sea and roughly one thousand miles from Jakarta. They have named it Nusantara, which means "islands in between".
Though construction is expected to take at least a couple of decades, the ribbon-cutting ceremony is planned for August of 2024. With an investment of $35 billion dollars, Nusantara will house government offices and 1.5 million civil servants, and promises to be a green hub for businesses and education as well. The project’s so-called eight main principles include “designed according to nature”, “universally inspired”, “circular and resilient”, and “safe and accessible”. Its slogan: “A GLOBAL CITY FOR ALL”.
What future awaits the 9.5 million souls that remain in Jakarta? Well, authorities hope that the city’s infrastructure can be “revitalized” and that it can keep functioning as the centre of the archipelago’s economy; chronic flooding and mid-century forecasts of near-total submersion be damned. And what future awaits the fauna and flora - and indigenous people - of Borneo? As is the case with most “eco-city” projects, the brochure is quite vague about it.
“Equitable Views” - Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, also in construction, is estimated to cost US$500B.
A similar ethos appears to be animating the tech industry lately. In his keynote address during Microsoft's Build developer conference in late May, CEO Satya Nadella unveiled some of the company’s new AI related products, while reassuring the audience of the profound benefits these will have on a global scale, not least of which is “equitable growth”. Here is an excerpt:
“We don't build just because we want economic growth. We want economic growth so that we can have human development index growth. We want education and prosperity and standard of living to go up everywhere. That's why we build, that's why we innovate. That's why technology exists. It's not for technology’s sake, but it is for that broad impact. And to me, this all came together in January when I was visiting India, […] at some level it motivated me to go into this next wave with that much more rigor to ensure that this time around, this technology reaches everybody in the world. […] the things that we build can in fact make a difference to 8 billion people, not some small sort of group of people.”
That sounds nice. But the reality is that we still live in a world where 18,000 people starve to death every single day. Where hundreds of millions of our brothers and sisters still don’t have access to a safe drinking water source. Where toilets are still the exception rather than the norm in many regions (including Mr. Nadella’s home country). Where more than half of American adults read below sixth-grade level (a problem affecting hundreds of millions around the globe). Where internet itself is out of reach for one third of the population.
So the idea that “this time around” the most advanced technology ever created will make it into the hands of every person on Earth (“in days and weeks, not years and centuries”), seems slightly overpromising. And given the levels of economic and social inequality in Silicon Valley’s own backyard, I’m extra skeptical when I hear computer wizards give big speeches about “impact”. But hey, whatever helps you sleep better at night.
Also, I can’t help but wonder how Microsoft’s employees themselves must feel about the story they’re being told. After all, more than 200,000 tech jobs have been abruptly eliminated this year in the U.S. alone. On March 14th, Mark Zuckerberg shared with his workforce an update on Meta’s “Year of Efficiency”, bluntly asserting that “leaner is better” and highlighting the goal to “keep technology the main thing”. In the memo he said: “I believe that we are working on some of the most transformative technology our industry has ever seen. Our single largest investment is in advancing AI and building it into every one of our products. We have the infrastructure to do this at unprecedented scale and I think the experiences it enables will be amazing.”
For whom exactly it will be amazing remains to be seen, of course.
But my favorite tech moment so far in 2023 has been Apple’s launch of its augmented/mixed reality (XR) $3,500 headset. If nothing else, it is undoubtedly a marvel of engineering - the company has 5,000 filed patents to prove how much work went into its development. We can excuse the price point, given how every technological breakthrough tends to start in similar fashion. Perhaps one day we will also understand its real value. I, for one, found it hard to watch the announcement trailer (below) and not be reminded of SNL’s commercial parodies. Even The Economist relaxed its usual editorial sobriety a bit, and dubbed the Vision Pros “high-end porn goggles”. So that’s that.
It was Julian Huxley who originally popularized the idea of transhumanism in his 1957 essay of the same name. “We can justifiably hold the belief that these lands of possibility exist, and that the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted”, he said.
And here we are, livin’ the dream!
While the transhumanist movement in its current form may not have a unified set of goals or a central governing body, it comprises a diverse range of intellectuals, scientists, technologists, futurists, and philosophers who envision - and actively seek - a future where humans can overcome all sorts of physical, cognitive and emotional limitations. They are defenders of “morphological freedom”, i.e. the right to modify and enhance one’s body and brain at will, by utilizing every available tool, such as genetic engineering, organ transplants, nanotechnology, robotics, 3-D printing, biotechnology, cryopreservation and artificial intelligence.
“I sometimes think these guys watched The Matrix, and they thought the agents were the good guys.”
Many people get their morphological freedom fix through seemingly innocuous tattoos and piercings. Countless more have benefited from devices like hearing aids and prosthetic limbs, and various methods of plastic surgery. And the toolkit continues to evolve through more sophisticated interventions like puberty blockers and genital mutilation (sorry, I meant to say “affirmative care”), going all the way to chip implants and brain-computer interfaces (e.g. Neuralink), which can help augment memory, regulate mood, and mitigate disease.
For key players in the movement, including some renowned entrepreneurs, innovators, investors and their fabulous enterprises, immortality is the Holy Grail, even if the only path to achieve it in the end is through mind uploading, or merging human consciousness with machines. If all goes well, we could finally dispense with that tireless blood pumping muscle inside our chest that takes up so much energy. No need for digital health passports then, thank goodness.
Genesis of Transhumanism
“I believe our mind clones, these digital versions of ourselves, will ultimately be our best friends.” - Martine Rothblatt, author of The Apartheid of Sex and CEO of United Therapeutics
The transhumanist future holds many promises, I suppose, amongst which is the chance to migrate from sinking cities (and islands) straight to the cloud, and thereby escape the “frustrations of our existence” on this cruel and erratic planet.
Singularity for all!
In the meantime, we must live with the fact that production of electronics flourishes on the broken backs of “artisanal miners”; we pretend that renewables will produce the necessary energy to power the world; we turn a blind eye to how billionaires continue to increase their share of global wealth; we allow a spiraling mental health crisis to create unprecedented societal dysfunction; we indulge the rise of totalitarian impulses, even in countries where democratic institutions are presumably strongest (article below); and we speculate on whether or not angry aliens from outer space will land on our shores one day, and put us out of our misery.
In a recent episode of Integral Justice Warrior, the interviewer asked presidential candidate Marianne Williamson about the opportunities (“not just the challenges”) of AI, in a clear attempt to get her take on the technology’s upside potential. Her response was quite emphatic: “I think the opportunities afforded by AI to destroy our species far outweigh the opportunities created to help us in any particular area. They say ‘AI could help us feed everybody, AI could help us handle climate change’ …. B.S.!!! Let me tell you something: we could feed everybody right now. It is not a lack of AI that’s keeping us from it, but a lack of heart. […] We don’t need more technological help. We need more heart, we need more compassion, we need more forgiveness, we need more love, we need more conscience. Technology disconnected from the human heart? I can’t think of anything more dangerous.”
And I thought there wouldn’t be anything on which I could agree with her.