18 THE SHAPE
OF THE FUTURE

• Paulo Vaz VAZ is an associate professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) Communication School and a researcher at CNPq. He has an MA in philosophy from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and a PhD in communication from ECO-UFRJ, and he completed his postdoc at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He teaches courses that investigate the role of information and communication technologies in the passage from modernity to post-modernity. His published articles and books include “O inconsciente artificial” (Unimarco, 1997).

The formulation of the laws of nature by modern science has allowed human beings to use a variety of natural processes. Many discoveries have contributed to this: the constitution of atoms and the subsequent appearance of nuclear energy; genetic code, orientating the synthesis of proteins; and the appearance of drugs that alter cognition and feelings, among others. Thus, what makes us think now about the future is no longer violent social transformation, caused by political forces, but the immense power of human action triggered by technical objects associated with our knowledge and control of natural processes.

Although there has been a change in the institutional origin of those who are authorized to speak about the future, the human sciences ought to formulate some essential questions about the catastrophic forecasts that have been made by the scientists of nature. How are these future predictions made nowadays? To what extent does this method underestimate the role of ideas and social structure in the effective formation of the future? And why does the predominant form of conceiving the future limit the possibilities of action in the present, in the pursuit of a desired future?

By focusing social debate on the anticipation of a catastrophic future and the means still available to avoid it, rather than inviting us to think about what would be possible and desirable, many scientists restrict discussion to the need to maintain the present, instead of examining the possibility of changing it. We consequently tend to provoke the desire to retain the present and to link our wishes to the immediate, leaving little room for discussion about the future that we can and want to build.

The predominant form of this anticipation basically consists of a simulation operation. It presupposes, first of all, the identification of technological fields with dynamism to transform the present. [1] From there, it measures the rate at which scientific knowledge and its technological applications have been advancing, and then extrapolates the overcoming of current limits and even the human condition.

Based on certainty regarding the continuity and development of scientific research, academics view our limitations as a mere technical obstacle. Thus, their logic is as follows: by cloning a mammal, for example, this indicates the approach of human cloning; likewise, given the continuous increase in computer processing capacity, it is suggested that some years from now, machines will be more intelligent than people. The correlation between a mental state and an arrangement of neurons also serves to affirm that, in future, thanks to the advancement of research, we will be capable of chemically altering our mental states with precision.

This type of simulation exercise underestimates society itself and the values that characterize contemporary Western cultures. Cultural values cannot be treated as “mere obstacles”, given that they define not only which technical objects [2] will be accepted, but also, and more profoundly, the decisions about what will be researched. Put another way: many products are being researched, but which ones will be accepted, given society’s values? And which ones will be researched, if research is increasingly orientated by the market?

Recognizing the importance of this aspect, we may highlight five values present since early on in Western cultures that still guide social discussion about the legitimacy of the use of technical objects. As we will see, decisions about the adoption of technologies are relatively decentralized. According to market logic, technical objects are also goods to be consumed.

We tend to provoke the desire to retain the present and to link our wishes to the immediate, leaving little room for discussion about the future that we can and want to build.

The first value consists of the separation between healthy and unhealthy. Disease is seen as a departure from normality and the natural. So, in a nutshell, it is this departure that requires and authorizes artificial intervention to reestablish a natural state. [3] If the legitimacy of a technological intervention depends on the preexistence of an abnormality, we may, with some irony, note that a society that uses technical objects ever more – and medications are a technical object – will also be one that multiplies the number of diseases and sick people who need intervention to reestablish their wellbeing.

The second value is a very archaic principle, which probably dates back to before the emergence of Western culture, and consists of the belief that individual effort is needed to have pleasure, or that a benefit is only legitimate if there is a cost. While abnormality authorizes an intervention, the principle of “necessary” effort or suffering concerns the use of objects that “improperly” provide some kind of wellbeing. This value is found, for example, in criticism of medications that produce pleasant mental states and the use of narcotics – considered to be artificial paradises that provide pleasure without effort. However, concern for this issue is longstanding, and Plato’s Gorgias dialogue [4] already placed it in a very precise initial formulation: in one passage, the philosopher distinguishes between a beauty achieved through gymnastics and another obtained through cosmetics; and also proposes that a punishment would purify a soul that has committed a crime. Thus, effort to achieve an objective or punishment to redeem an immorality is like suffering that, if inflicted for “good” reasons, becomes a condition for a benefit.

The third value, which also tends to appear in criticisms of the use of technical objects, is deeply culturally embedded and similar to the value that links pleasure to suffering. It is the value of equality applied to the conditions of a competition. In any and all social situation that could be described as a contest evaluating individuals’ performance, equality will appear as a value used to question the use of technical objects. (An immediate example of this type of criticism is doping in sport.) If we observe criticism of the use of medications that improve cognitive performance in schools and universities, and at work, for example, it is possible to even identify the joining of this value of equality with the previous one regarding costless pleasure.

The fourth value is autonomy, and one of its opposites, dependency. For a long time, autonomy was framed in terms of an individual’s independence in relation to other human beings, especially the capacity to question their beliefs and commands. Nowadays, however, it is also used to describe the relationship between an individual and technical objects. From this value there arises, for example, concerns about internet access or the use of narcotics and many medications that affect our moods (such as anti-depressive and anxiolytic drugs), as well as gadgets that are becoming practically an integral part of individuals’ lives. [5]

The fifth value concerns the dilemma regarding experiences with the potential to affect the human condition, confronting the Christian structure of Western culture with the fact that new technologies have the capacity to directly affect the thoughts and existence of our species. The suspicion that human beings are invading the domain of the sacred or the creator generates a fear that may be observed in two dimensions: the first is of an ethnical kind, and resides in the prohibition for humans to act as god – although new technologies give us power over the future of living beings and even ourselves. We fear losing control of this domain, as could happen if genetic manipulation leads to the creation of organisms that destroy human life, for example.

The second dimension is sometimes characterized as a fourth narcissistic injury6 caused by the development of modern science: after Copernicus proposed that the Universe does not revolve around Earth, after Darwin showed that the human being is merely an animal, and after Freud conceived that our actions are not dictated by our conscious will, we may now feel anguish due to a possible lack of distinction between living beings and machines, caused by new technologies.

Technology is increasingly leading people to believe that life and thought are mere organized matter and that machines are becoming more and more like living beings. And, in fact, it is increasingly possible to radically conceive of thought as something programmed by natural selection, as it has become more frequent to see that machines are capable of simulating mental processes previously considered to be the prerogative of humans.

When we analyze contemporary conceptions about the origin and destination of thought, the immediate reference is the appearance of the computer and DNA. What disturbs us now is our capacity to construct machines that simulate our thought. Although still to only a limited degree, computers can simulate cognitive processes such as memory, problem solving, choice and forecasting – mental capacities that previously led us to believe that our mind was either a metaphysical sphere forever separated from physics, or something without an equivalent in the animal world, as the result of culture. What makes us uneasy is not just that machines seem so human; it is also what genetic engineering, neurology and new theories about the natural selection process show us: how similar we may be to machines.

What makes us uneasy is not just that machines seem so human; it is also what genetic engineering, neurology and new theories about the natural selection process show us: how similar we may be to machines.

Discussion about thought therefore inevitably becomes an ethical debate about the limits and legitimacy of the human attribution of thought to non-human entities. The question “What is thinking?” is now inextricably linked to the question “Who thinks?” Introspection or the study of other cultures is not enough; what is at stake is the attribution of thought to non-humans by a human observer. Would it be anthropomorphic of us to refuse to accept the existence of thought in machines or living beings? Or would we be losing the distinctive nature of thought – an understanding or qualitative experience of the world provided by consciousness – if we were to attribute thought to machines? Should we continue to think about non-humans based on the certainty of consciousness itself, which distinguishes us from other living beings, or should we seize the opportunity to wonder about human thought by equating its functioning to that of a computer, thinking that robots lie in our origins, that we are made up of robots, and that, from a certain point of view, we are merely robots that went from “know how to” to “that know”? [7]

Many of the questions and actions that will shape our future include cultural and ethical values, to be found in everyday decisions affected by the interest and happiness of each individual. The legitimacy, necessity and attractiveness of technical objects therefore call for social discourse to articulate beliefs and values, guiding us in our appraisals regarding what we are, can be and should be.

However, despite all our intellectual efforts, we know little about what the future will be like and what genetics, neurology and computing will permit human beings to be and do. There are two reasons for this essential lack of knowledge. One is part of the human condition: there is always a certain amount of uncertainty about the future that is impossible to eradicate. The other reason is about our culture. More and more, our predictions feature catastrophic content, and are therefore made in the hope that they are not materialized. Consequently, instead of reducing our uncertainty, projections may add to it.

Predictions are partial and ephemeral. The shape of the future is much longer lasting, as it is defined not by any content, but by how a particular culture favors a way of knowing the future, this place of irreducible uncertainty, and it stipulates whether its contours respond to utopian desires. Accordingly, we may conclude that the shape of the future is the essential and determining element in the way a culture relates to time.

For around two millennia, from Plato until at least the 17th century, the temporal split that ordered experience in the West was the separation between the ephemeral and the eternal. However, from the end of the 18th century to the mid-20th century, the temporal split that ordered human experience was between the present and the future. Conceived from the concepts of progress, revolution and liberation, this cultural way of relating to time saw the present as something limited, the past as something to be overcome, and the future, if not a place of realization, then at least an opening, a possibility to stop being what we are and to free ourselves.

Today, our way of looking at the future – which emerged in the 1960s and became hegemonic in the late 1980s – also favors the temporal split between present and future. The latter, however, is anticipated as likely to be catastrophic if our current practices continue. Besides not being conceived as limited, our present is seen as something that ought to remain. The utopian orientation abandons the future and anchors itself in the present, now thought of as a place where all individuals can be happy, as a place where suffering, by right, should not exist.

The preservation and idealization of what exists is the other side of the future as a risk. It is our responsibility to include questioning of the present and the need to reflect about the future we want to build, and to reinforce the connection, now weakened, between our desires and the future.

• [1] As mentioned previously, the most dynamic fields are information and communication technologies, genetics and neurology.
  [2] Broadly defined, technical objects are all products that require intention, knowledge and transformation of nature for their existence. Accordingly, the definition includes everything from the rods chimpanzees use to “fish” for termites and the polished rocks of our ancestors to the technical objects that have marked modern, contemporary societies, such as the printing press, car, aircraft, television, medications, computers and cell phones.
  [3] Social debate about cosmetic surgery immediately clarifies what is at stake. Typically, a corrective surgery does not generate any contrary reaction, but this does not apply to elective surgeries, such as cosmetic operations.
  [4] Cf. Plato, “Gorgias”, 463c-465e; 477a-478c.
  [5] Although the first smartphone appeared in 2002, it is common today to hear people say they cannot imagine their lives without these devices. In just over 10 years, this product seems to have gone from the status of accessory to an indispensable object for individuals’ sociability.
  [6] Narcissus is a character in Greek mythology who fell in love with his own image reflected in water. For the relationship between people’s knowledge and self-image, what matters in this myth is not one’s love for oneself at the expense of commitments to others. What is of interest is indifference toward what exists; the fact that, out of everything there is in the world, Narcissus only sees himself. With regard to knowledge, narcissism therefore means reducing what the world can be to the dimensions of human desire; it means limiting our knowledge by making the world a mere mirror of our desires. Cf. Bruce Mazlich, “The Fourth Discontinuity”, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
  [7] This distinction was proposed in Gilbert Ryle, “The Concept of Mind”, London: Penguin Books, 1963.