Posthuman Blues

Astronomer David Darling was on late-night radio a few days ago. He was fascinating, every bit as articulate about anti-gravity UFOs and ET supercomputers as his book "Equations of Eternity" is about cosmology.

One of the ideas he discussed was his personal conviction that consciousness is a field "tuned into" and individualized by organic brains. In other words, we're tapping into a universal commodity with organs evolved to do just that. We (normally) perceive such a small piece of reality because the hyper-awareness implied by disembodied, "raw" consciousness is simply unnecessary -- and even potentially harmful -- to organisms such as ourselves. Our bodies require constant physical attention; if we could access the entirety of the universe, many of us would probably keel over from sheer information overload. Of course, this is a species that can't even handle Dish TV.

The transhuman imperative, as I see it, is to upload ourselves into this vast, barely tapped reservoir of awareness. I think advanced aliens have taken a similar evolutionary route, originating as carbon-based life on rocky, terrestrial worlds and eventually learning how to transcend gross matter while retaining something of their individuality -- whatever "individuality" might entail for nonhumans.

This juxtaposes the "afterlife" debate with the SETI debate in a most unfashionable manner. But that's part of the fun.