This episode of "Shots of Awe" is brought to you by Norton.
One of my favorite lines by Terence McKenna,
to sum up the human man machine story,
is that human beings-- the goal of humanity
is to effectively turn ourselves inside out.
To actualize the human imagination.
To literalize the human mind with our creativity.
To turn our tools-- these technological scaffoldings.
As you turn them into extensions of mind
to expand the boundaries of mind.
You know, Kevin Kelly, co-founder of "Wired,"
calls technology the seventh kingdom of life.
The Technium subject to the same evolutionary forces.
Human beings taking matter of low organization,
and we put them through the filters of the human mind.
And we extrude space shuttles and wireless communication
networks and smartphones.
With the Industrial Revolution, we
transcended the limitations of our muscles.
With the Digital Revolution, we transcended the limitation
of our minds.
With the Biotechnology Revolution,
we will transcend the limitations of biology
by turning the software of life into something
that is programmable.
We will upgrade biology.
With the Nanotech Revolution, we will transcend the limits
of matter by patterning the atoms the same way we
pattern bits of information into digital space.
The whole physical universe will become like the Pixar universe,
as manipulatable and as fluid as the digital cosmos is.
The physical cosmos will be programmable
at that point when we pattern the atoms like this.
So consider these implications.
Consider then the context in which
this places mind, in which this places life.
You know, as Bucky Fuller used to say,
life is an antientropic phenomenon.
Life moves away from entropy towards greater self
organization-- greater patterns.
Upwellings of patterns and structure.
This is life.
This is mind.
And as David Deutsch said in his book, "The Beginning
of Infinity," if you look already
at the physical topography of the city of Manhattan.
That's the topography in which the forces of economics
and culture and intent have trumped geology, right?
Literally, the forces of mind create
more physical topographical change
in the forces of geology.
Mind has trumped matter.
And as Ray Kurzweil in his magnificent, magnificent book,
"The Singularity is Near," it turns out, my friends,
that we are central after all.
We're not just a pale blue dot.
Our ability to create virtual models in our heads
combined with our modest-looking thumbs
was sufficient to usher in a secondary force of evolution
called technology.
It will continue until the entire universe
is at our fingertips.
Having invented the gods, we can turn into them.
That is the human story.
That is turning ourselves inside out.
That is actually analyzing the human imagination.
What is within becomes without.