Radical Evolution 突变
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品牌: Joel Garreau
基本信息·出版社：
Broadway Books
·页码：400 页
·出版日期：2006年
·ISBN：0767915038
·条形码：9780767915038
·装帧：平装
·正文语种：英语
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内容简介Taking us behind the scenes with today’s foremost researchers and pioneers, bestselling author Joel Garreau shows that we are at a turning point in history. At this moment we are engineering the next stage of human evolution. Through advances in genetic, robotic, information, and nanotechnologies, we are altering our minds, our memories, our metabolisms, our personalities, our progeny–and perhaps our very souls. RadicalEvolutionreveals that the powers of our comic-book superheroes already exist, or are in development in hospitals, labs, and research facilities around the country–from the revved-up reflexes and speed of Spider-Man and Superman, to the enhanced mental acuity and memory capabilities of an advanced species. Over the next fifteen years, Garreau makes clear in thisNew York TimesBook Club premiere selection, these enhancements will become part of our everyday lives. Where will they lead us? To heaven–where technology’s promise to make us smarter, vanquish illness, and extend our lives is the answer to our prayers? Or, as some argue, to hell–where unrestrained technology brings about the ultimate destruction of our species?
作者简介JOEL GARREAU is a student of culture, values and change. The author of the bestsellingEdge City: Life on the New FrontierandThe Nine Nations of North America,he is a reporter and editor atThe Washington Post, a member of the scenario-planning organization Global Business Network, and has served as a senior fellow at George Mason University and the University of California at Berkeley. He has appeared on such national media as Good Morning America, Today, The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, NBCNightly News, ABC’sWorld News Tonight, and NPR’sMorning EditionandAll Things Considered. He lives in Broad Run, Virginia.
From the Hardcover edition.
编辑推荐From Publishers Weekly
Washington Postreporter Garreau takes readers on a cross-country trip into the future as he interviews scientists and other thinkers grappling with the implications of our newfound—and, to some, frightening—knowledge of the genome. Highlighting what he calls "the Curve"—the rate of exponential change in technology—Garreau (Edge City: Life on the New Frontier) breaks the central part of his book into four scenarios. In "Heaven," genetic engineering will make us stronger and healthier, help us live longer and metabolize our food more efficiently. "Hell" resembles the island of Dr. Moreau: science runs amok, we cripple the genome of our food supplies, and babies are born with unexpected deformities instead of the improved characteristics promised by gene therapies. The "Prevail" scenario might also be called Muddling Through: even if we make a mistake now and then, we will figure out how to slow potentially harmful changes and speed up potentially beneficial ones. Last, "Transcend" considers that humans might conquer the difficulties that lie ahead and emerge into a new age beyond our wildest dreams. Science buffs fascinated by the leading edges of societal and technological change and readers concerned by the ethical issues that change presents will find much to ponder in Garreau's nonjudgmentallook into our possible futuresAgent, John Brockman.(On sale May 17)--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Scientific American
What's in store for humanity? It is becoming clear that we will use our growing technological powers to transform not only the world around us but ourselves, too. Many forms of human enhancement are already routine--sports medicine, psychotropic mood drugs, wakefulness and alertness enhancers, cosmetic surgery, drugs for sexual performance. Much more will become possible in coming decades.Joel Garreau's Radical Evolution joins several recent titles that attempt to make sense of the radical future possibilities for our species. The potential prospects include superintelligent machines, nonaging bodies, direct connections between human brains or between brain and computer, fully realistic virtual reality, and the reanimation of patients in cryonic suspension. As enablers of such miracles, Garreau mentions especially "GRIN technologies"--genetics, robotics, information technology and nanotechnology.The focus of Garreau's book, however, is not on the nuts and bolts of the technology itself but rather on what it will all mean for us humans. His reporting skills well honed by his work as a journalist and editor at the Washington Post, Garreau is constantly on the lookout for the human story behind the ideas. Biographical sketches of the people he has interviewed for the book get approximately equal airtime with their opinions about human extinction and transcendence. The bulk of one interviewee's beard, the size of another's collection of musical instruments, the length of a third's pants: as Garreau knows all too well, these are the indispensable rivets to hold the attention of the current version of Homo sapiens while we try to ponder whether we will have indefinite life spans or whether the world will end before our children have a chance to grow up.Garreau organizes his material around several scenarios. Unfortunately, these are not very carefully delineated. It is not clear whether all of them are meant to represent separate possibilities.In the Curve Scenario, information technology continues to improve exponentially, and this progress bleeds over into adjacent fields such as genetics, robotics and nanotechnology. In the Singularity Scenario, "the Curve of exponentially increasing technological change is unstoppable" and leads, "before 2030, to the creation of greater-than-human intelligence," which proceeds to improve itself "at such a rate as to exceed comprehension." There is a Heaven Scenario, which serves as a rubric for a future in which "almost unimaginably good things ... including the conquering of disease and poverty, but also an increase in beauty, wisdom, love, truth and peace" are happening pretty much on their own accord, without deliberate steering. Garreau associates this view with the distinguished inventor Ray Kurzweil. We are told that one of the early "warning signs" that we are entering the Heaven Scenario is that the phrase "The Singularity" enters common usage.There is also a Hell Scenario. The chief talking head assigned to this scenario is Bill Joy, who was a co-founder of Sun Microsystems. In April 2000 Joy published a bombshell article in Wired entitled "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," which described how the author had come to the realization that advances in genetics, nanotechnology and robotics will eventually pose grave threats to human survival. The article argued for the relinquishment of some lines of research in these fields. Since then, we learn, Joy has got divorced, quit Sun, and put the book he was preparing on hold. "Overall his affect was markedly flat," Garreau writes.One of the early warning signs that we are entering Hell is that "almost unimaginably bad things are happening, destroying large chunks of the human race or the biosphere, at an accelerating pace." Aside from Bill Joy, the chapter on the Hell Scenario features appearances by Francis Fukuyama, Martin Rees, Bill McKibben, Leon Kass and Frankenstein. The common denominator of these fellows is that they have confronted the potential for catastrophic technological downsides. But their worries are not all of the same kind. For example, while Joy focuses on direct threats to human survival (such as bioterrorism), Kass, who is chairman of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, is more concerned about subtle ways in which our quest for technological mastery could undermine the foundations of human dignity. These very different sorts of concerns could have been kept more clearly distinct.Garreau's last scenario, Prevail, extols the human knack for muddling through--"the ability of ordinary people facing overwhelming odds to rise to the occasion because it is the right thing." The defining characteristic of the Prevail Scenario is that human beings are picking and choosing their futures in an effective manner. The main representative selected for this scenario is Jaron Lanier (the guy with the large collection of musical instruments). Lanier dreams of creating more ways for people to share their thoughts and experiences, and he is fond of pointing out that faster computer hardware does not necessarily lead to equivalent improvements in the usefulness of the software that runs on the computers.In the final chapter, Garreau asks: "Will we forever keep mum about our obviously intense desire to break the bonds of mortality? Or should we lift the taboo and start dealing with it?" His implied answer is yes. He then asks, "Shall we be bashful about these lines we are crossing because we do not have a way to make them meaningful?" At this point, Garreau has a constructive proposal: let's create some new rituals. Perhaps, he suggests, we should have "a liturgy of life everlasting as a person receives her first cellular age-reversal workup." Why not indeed?In the meantime, there is still some work left to do in the laboratories. If we develop the cure for aging in a timely fashion, while steering clear of the disasters that Joy and others have foretold, we may one day get to enjoy indefinite life spans with much improved physical and mental capacities--and some cracking new ceremonies, too.Nick Bostrom is in the faculty of philosophy at the University of Oxford. Many of his papers are available at Nickbostrom.com--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From The Washington Post
Far-fetched as it may sound, the first person who will live to be 1,000 may already walk among us. The first computer that will think like a person may be built before today's kindergarteners graduate from college. By the middle of this century, we may be as blasé about genetically engineered humans as we are today about pierced ears. These sorts of predictions have a habit of sounding silly by the time they're supposed to come true, but there's a certain logic to them. Joel Garreau calls that logic "The Curve."The Curve is the untamable force of exponential growth that propels technological progress. It's the compound interest on human ingenuity. The fact that computing power has doubled every 18 months, right on schedule, for the last four decades is a manifestation of The Curve. So is the rapid expansion of the Internet and the recent boom in genetic technologies. According to the inexorable logic of The Curve, if you want to get a sense of how radically our world will be transformed over the next century, the best guide will be looking back at how much things have changed, not over the past century, but over the past millennium.Garreau, a reporter and editor at The Washington Post, has sought out the scientists who are driving The Curve's breakneck acceleration and the major thinkers who are contemplating its implications. His breezy, conversational book, full of mini-profiles and chatty asides, is a guide to the big ideas about the future of our species that are circulating at the beginning of the 21st century.As he tramps around the country meeting futurists and technophiles, Garreau becomes acquainted with researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) who are trying to abolish sleep and invent cyborg soldiers. He meets "transhumanists" for whom genetic enhancement promises a kind of messianic salvation. He also meets naysayers who fear that all this so-called progress is far more likely to lead to auto-annihilation than to techno-bliss. Garreau lays out three alternative futures for our species: a happy ending that he calls the Heaven Scenario, a tragic ending he calls Hell and a middle scenario he calls Prevail, in which humans somehow manage to muddle through the ethical and technological jungle ahead without creating paradise on Earth or blowing ourselves up.In the Heaven scenario, genetic engineering, robotics and nanotechnology make us happier, smarter, stronger and better-looking. Man and machine gradually meld as we transcend the physical limitations of our bodies and become immortal. Humans evolve into a new species of post-humans as different from us today as we are from chimps. We become like gods.According to Vernor Vinge, one of several eccentric scientists whom Garreau interviews, The Curve will continue to get steeper and steeper until it eventually goes completely vertical in a rapturous moment he has dubbed "The Singularity." At some point this century, but probably no later than 2030, Vinge believes that humans will build the last machine we'll ever need -- a device so intelligent it will be able to reproduce rapidly and create new machines far smarter than humans could ever imagine. Practically overnight, our social order will rupture, and our world will be transformed. There's no guarantee that will be particularly pleasant.Many of the thinkers Garreau interviews are less than sanguine about humanity's prospects. Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, warns that technology is empowering individuals to do evil on a scale never before imagined. A single rogue scientist will soon be able to engineer a plague capable of wiping out humankind. Even well-intentioned scientists could accidentally do something catastrophic, such as releasing a swarm of self-replicating nanobots that would suck the planet dry of energy -- turning the world into the "gray goo" of Michael's Crichton's fanciful novel Prey. In such a one-strike-and-you're-out world, it's hard to imagine we'd last very long.Francis Fukuyama and Bill McKibben's Hell Scenarios are less apocalyptic. They fear that the coming technologies will upend societies and sap life of its meaning, gradually leading us into the dehumanized hell of a Brave New World. They'd like to manage The Curve through government regulation or by taking the Amish approach of forswearing objectionable technologies.But just as inescapable as The Curve's upward trajectory may be humankind's uncanny knack for rolling with the punches. Garreau's Prevail scenario is "based on a hunch that you can count on humans to throw The Curve a curve." Even if technology seems to be a force out of control, we'll always find some way to direct it toward our desired ends, Garreau suspects. Jaron Lanier, the inventor of virtual reality, envisions a version of the Prevail scenario in which humans use technology to build tighter and tighter interpersonal relations. Our bodies become less important as our social bonds strengthen. The Internet, according to Lanier, is an early step down this path to global interconnectedness.If these scenarios sound outlandish, that is only because it's hard to look so far into the future without getting whiplash. But Garreau argues that the stakes in thinking all this through are enormous. We "face the biggest change in tens of thousands of years in what it means to be human," he writes. It's an exhilarating adventure our species has embarked upon. It might be a little less terrifying if we knew where we were headed.Reviewed by Joshua Foer
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
FromBooklist
We are facing "the biggest change in 50,000 years in what it means to be human," writes Garreau, of theWashington Post,thanks to the swiftly evolving GRIN technologies, that is, genetic, robotic, information, and nano. To get a sense of the possible implications of these paradigm-altering developments, he speaks with scientists who fall roughly into two opposing mind-sets: those who view technology as a stairway to a heaven in which humans perfect the body and greatly extend the mind, and those who see a grimly hellish future in which self-replicating microbes, nanobots, or "enhanced" humans turn viciously against their creators. Clarifying and companionable, Garreau explains astonishing discoveries, ponders just how intimately connected we are to our digital tools, surveys speculative fiction classics, and profiles such visionaries as heaven-inclined Raymond Kurzweil, hell-fearing William Joy, and Jaron Lanier, the virtual-reality guru, who offers a less extreme, more commonsensible vision of the future based on humankind's muddled but powerful instinct to do the right thing. The technoscenarios Garreau explicates are riveting, and of acute importance, as is his reminder that there is much more to life than technology, no matter how amazing it gets.Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Advance praise for RADICAL EVOLUTION
“An eye-opening exploration of how cutting-edge 21st-century technologies, in embryonic form right now, pose the stark alternatives of a real lifeUtopiaor
Brave New World… Garreau has an eye for the anecdote that throws much of this Buck Rogers technology into compelling human terms… Excellent scientific journalism on the challenges arising from a real tipping point in human relations.” Kirkus (Starred Review)
“How weird, how soon? That’s the question that dominates the debates about the coming of ‘post-humanity.’ With his customary journalistic acumen and wry humor, Garreau has the answer: much weirder than you imagine, much sooner than you expect.” — Stewart Brand, author ofThe Clock of the Long Now: Time and ResponsibilityandThe Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T.
“Joel Garreau lives well ahead of the curve — even the really big Curve he describes in these pages. One of our foremost chroniclers of change and historians of the future, he’s done it again.” — Bill McKibben, author ofEnough: Staying Human in an Engineered AgeandThe End of Nature
“Joel Garreau has hit upon something critical here, something most of us see daily and struggle to make sense of: That human technology may be advancing faster than our ability to adapt, leaving us ill-equipped to measure and manage the consequences. This is a timely, important book, and a fascinating read.” — Nathan McCall, author ofMakes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America
“It isn't often an author gets to herald the biggest news in the last 10,000 years. But you'll get the full, uncensored, mind-blowing report here in this entertaining and surprisingly deep book.” - Kevin Kelly, author ofOut of Controland Wired editor-at-lar...--This text refers to theKindle Editionedition.
Review
Advance praise for RADICAL EVOLUTION
“An eye-opening exploration of how cutting-edge 21st-century technologies, in embryonic form right now, pose the stark alternatives of a real lifeUtopiaor
Brave New World… Garreau has an eye for the anecdote that throws much of this Buck Rogers technology into compelling human terms… Excellent scientific journalism on the challenges arising from a real tipping point in human relations.” Kirkus (Starred Review)
“How weird, how soon? That’s the question that dominates the debates about the coming of ‘post-humanity.’ With his customary journalistic acumen and wry humor, Garreau has the answer: much weirder than you imagine, much sooner than you expect.” — Stewart Brand, author ofThe Clock of the Long Now: Time and ResponsibilityandThe Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T.
“Joel Garreau lives well ahead of the curve — even the really big Curve he describes in these pages. One of our foremost chroniclers of change and historians of the future, he’s done it again.” — Bill McKibben, author ofEnough: Staying Human in an Engineered AgeandThe End of Nature
“Joel Garreau has hit upon something critical here, something most of us see daily and struggle to make sense of: That human technology may be advancing faster than our ability to adapt, leaving us ill-equipped to measure and manage the consequences. This is a timely, important book, and a fascinating read.” — Nathan McCall, author ofMakes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America
“It isn't often an author gets to herald the biggest news in the last 10,000 years. But you'll get the full, uncensored, mind-blowing report here in this entertaining and surprisingly deep book.” - Kevin Kelly, author ofOut of Controland Wired editor-at-large
“Radical Evolution" is truly outstanding. I was hooked. It reads like a thriller, informs like a textbook, engages like a love note. Garreau is, truly, an artist.” - Eamonn Kelly, co-author,What's Next: Exploring the New Terrain for Business
From the Hardcover edition.
文摘Chapter One
Prologue
The Future of Human Nature
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
–Henry Miller,Tropic of Capricorn
This book can’t begin with the tale of the telekinetic monkey.
That certainly comes as a surprise. After all, how often does someone writing nonfiction get to lead with a monkey who can move objects with her thoughts?
If you lunge at this opportunity, however, the story comes out all wrong. It sounds like science fiction, for one thing, even though the monkey–a cute little critter named Belle–is completely real and scampering at Duke University.
This gulf between what engineers are actually creating today and what ordinary readers might find believable is significant. It is the first challenge to making sense of this world unfolding before us, in which we face the biggest change in tens of thousands of years in what it means to be human.
This book aims at letting a general audience in on the vast changes that right now are reshaping our selves, our children and our relationships. Helping people recognize new patterns in their lives, however, is no small trick, as I’ve discovered over time.
For example, there’s the problem you encounter when asking people what they’d do if offered the chance to live for a very long time–150 years or more. Nine out of 10 boggle at this thought. Many actually recoil. You press on. Engineers are working on ways to allow you to spend all that time with great physical vitality–perhaps even comparable to that of today’s 35-year-olds. How would you react if that opportunity came to market? There’s a question that gets people thinking, but you can tell it is still quite a stretch.
We live in remarkable times. Who could have imagined at the end of the 20th century that a human augmentation su
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