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The integration of human beings will proceed in another dimension than that
of human culture, a dimension of depth. We conceive of a realization
of cybernetic immortality by means of very advanced human-machine systems,
where the border between the organic (brain) and the artificially organic
or electronic media (computer) becomes irrelevant. Such hybrid organisms
would survive not so much through the biological material of their bodies,
but through their cybernetic organization, which may be embodied in a
combination of organic tissues, electronic networks, or other media. With
communication through the direct connection of nervous systems to machines
and to each other, the death of any particular biological component of the
system would no longer imply the death of the whole system. Such
metasystems will be evolutionary selective, in that they will have
advantages for survival in an evolving environment. This is a cybernetic
way for an individual human person to achieve immortality.
It is an open question whether such cybernetically immortal cognitive
systems that would emerge after the next metasystem transition should be
considered as individual beings ("meta-beings"), or as a society of beings
(a ">super-being"). It is clear that the different levels have very
complicated interactions in their effect on selection, and hence we need a
careful cybernetic analysis of their mutual relations.
The creative act of free will is the "biological function" of the human
being. In the integrated meta- or super-being it must be preserved as an
inviolable foundation, and the new qualities must appear through it and
because of it. Thus the fundamental challenge that the humanity faces now
is to achieve an organic synthesis of integration and freedom.
The future immortality of the human person does not imply its frozen
constancy. We can understand the situation by analogy with the preceding
level of organization. Genes are controllers of biological evolution and
they are immortal, as they should be. They do not stay unchanged, however,
but undergo mutations, so that human chromosomes are a far cry from the
chromosomes of viruses. Cybernetically immortal human persons may
mutate and evolve in interaction with other members of the super-being,
while possibly reproducing themselves in different materials. Those human
persons who will evolve from us may be as different from us as we are
different from viruses. But the defining principle of the human person will
probably stay fixed, as did the defining principle of the gene.
Should we expect that the whole of humanity will unite into a single human
super-being? This does not seem likely, if we judge from the history of
evolution. Life grows like a pyramid; its top goes up while the basis is
widening rather than narrowing. Even though we have seized control of the
biosphere, our bodies make up only a small part of the whole biomass. The
major part of it is still constituted by unicellular and primitive
multicellular organisms, such as plankton. It is far from obvious that all
people and all communities will wish to integrate into immortal
super-beings. The will to immortality, as every human feature, varies
widely in human populations. Since the integration we speak about can only
be free, only a part of mankind --- probably a small part --- should be
expected to integrate.
But it is the integrated part of humanity that will ultimately control the
Universe. This becomes especially clear when we realize that the whole
Cosmos, not just the planet Earth, is the arena for evolution. No cosmic
role for the human race is possible without integration. The units that
take decisions must be rewarded for those decisions, otherwise they will
never take them. Can we imagine "human plankton" crowded in rockets in
order to reach a distant star in ten, twenty or fifty generations? Only
integrated immortal creatures can conquer the outer space.
