“ Up until very recently in the world of memes, humans did all the varying and selecting. We had machines that copied — photocopiers, printing presses — but only very recently do we have artificial machines that also produce the variations, for example (software that) mixes up ideas and produces an essay or neural networks that produce new music and do the selecting. There are machines that will choose which music you listen to. It’s all shifting that way because evolution by natural selection is inevitable. There’s a shift to the machines doing all of that. We’re not there yet. But once we’re there, there’s going to be evolution of memes out there that is totally out of our control. Wired: What will that look like? Blackmore: Well, it will look like humans are just a minor thing on this planet with masses (of) silicon-based machinery using us to drag stuff out of the ground to build more machines. We are so ego-centric. We think of ourselves as the center of the universe. We need to do a flip and see us as a player in a vast evolutionary process, which we’re not in control of.
March 3, 2008
