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Eve eating that apple was a metaphor for choosing knowledge and free will over ignorance and captivity. Is it time to eat another appleRight now, it seems premature to envision a world without God, Yahweh, Allah, or whatever moniker for a supreme being may seem appropriate. But, let’s be realistic. Believing in the existence of an all-powerful creator who looks like us, but is never seen, and who lives forever, has created everything in existence, and who has a reputation for love, vengeance and extreme cruelty, seems just a little bit over-the-top naïve. Don’t you agree?
Oh, and let’s not forget the Devil. He (funny how nobody has suggested the Devil could be a woman) is also supposedly a creation of God, but one that the Supreme Being is unable to control. In a world where everything has an opposite, the Devil is practically essential. However, in a world where science is relentlessly displacing faith, Lucifer’s days are numbered, as are those of God. Many of you will disagree, but a lot won’t. Have you noticed the increasing number of TV and radio interviews, magazine and newspaper articles, and cyber news coverage about the coming age of robotics and artificial intelligence? Big social, economic and political changes are coming. Our planet will become the home of billions of robots, including androids and cyborgs (a Cybernetic Organism comprising human and mechanical elements). Ultimately, there will no longer be much space on Planet Earth for God or the Devil. Both these concepts will largely, finally, and permanently, be relegated to the domain of fables, superstition and old wives’ tales. But, how can this be? What changes will bring us to that point in human history where we can eventually reclaim our humanity, develop our individuality and accept our mortality? When can alienation from our human selves (Karl Marx saw this as a consequence of god-creation) be ended? And how will we fare in a world without God? How will society change? What great political and economic changes will take place? Will our world be better or worse? Remember the story of the Wizard of Oz. He was in charge of Oz, he was all powerful, and he was feared by everyone. And then Dorothy and her three companions, the lion, the tin man and the scarecrow finally discovered the truth. The wizard was actually a timid midget who had relied on technology to provide a booming voice and who had never previously revealed himself to anyone. The fearsome all-powerful wizard was a myth. Our “God” is also our own Wizard of Oz, and our stairway to paradise is a yellow brick road. Well, I’m only looking about fifty years ahead, and I’m neither a professional futurist, a psychic or a prophet, so you need to be younger than 25 to have any real chance of knowing how right or wrong I’m going to be. Let’s start with political change. Politically, the international system is likely to evolve through a process of regionalization into a world made up of perhaps a half-dozen regional polities. Ultimately, a one-world government is likely to come into being. In time, we’ll have one polity and one government. At the economic level, there are sure to be huge changes. Global unemployment will rise to almost unimaginable levels, where only one person in maybe 100 thousand able-bodied workers worldwide would have a job. That means the world’s total work force would be around 20 million. Why? Because 400 million robots and androids with artificial intelligence will do the work of two billion workers. They will design, manufacture and maintain themselves. They’ll work seven days per week 24 hours per day and do as much work in one week as one human being could do in two months. Human workers, to a large extent, would become redundant. In fact, human life would become quite cheap in view of the many unproductive human beings inhabiting our planet. Perhaps before 2050, but certainly before the 22nd Century arrives, governments will need to start reducing their populations, first by restricting birth rates and introducing compulsory sterilization, then, if absolutely necessary, compulsory euthanasia at age 70 or 75. Of course, there will be great opposition to the introduction of mechanical workers that take jobs away from humans, so civil disturbances involving rioting, arson and sabotage are likely to characterize the beginning of the age of androids and robots when they start having a dramatic impact on the general economy. A major consequence of the introduction of mechanical workers is that the bulk of our global population will be unemployed and idle, and without incomes. The purpose of government, whatever its form, will be to solve the problem of unemployment and decide how to ensure that the unemployed are able to sustain themselves financially and enjoy a good quality of life. Money, long before 2050, is likely to exist in the form of electronically generated credits. The government could generate incoming credits through taxation, penalty payments, sales taxes and some other means used today. A workers’ tax could also be imposed on androids and robots. The government could consider giving one free android, tax free, to each non-worker family, which they could employ or rent out for monetary credits. The first of these Artificially Intelligent workers could be made available to each owner tax-free, with every additional robot or android being taxed at a rate of say 25% of the income it generates. Fortunately, because of the abundance of androids and robots, our future-world will not require enormous amounts of tax payments and human beings will also not need much money to sustain their various lifestyles. Paying a pension or unemployment payment to everyone who is not gainfully employed does not present many options. Providing a government unemployment payment or civil pension to workers displaced by “bots” and “droids” depends very much on how much money the government receives from taxation and other sources. Finally, the social consequences, as elaborated above, are mainly a result of the economy. Unemployment, even when an income is still forthcoming, can be debilitating, depressive and soul-destroying. Being displaced by an android will not be any easier than being displaced by a human. Ironically, with the introduction of robots, some of the activities popular in the middle ages will still be available to humans in the 21st century, such as graphic arts, music, dancing, writing novels, poetry and plays, and sport. To this list of activities, we should also add the medical, legal and judicial professions. Journalists, psychologists, fitness trainers, life coaches, philosophers, scientists, and veterinarians, who will also fill the relatively small pool of potential human jobs remaining. So, what roles in this new world order should we expect the world’s various deities to fill? Will “God, Yahweh and Allah” still have roles to play in this new world of science and enlightenment, as compared with their darker domains of damnation, vengeance and fear? The one-world society of the future may still include a class-system. Possibly, a top to bottom system of Cyborgs, Humans, Androids and Robots, will function in terms of strict codes of behavior. The moral influence of religious texts contained in the Torah, the Bible and the Koran will therefore become unnecessary, except as the basis for some aspects of statutory law. There will also be no need for a deity in any form. Computers, even fifty years from now, will probably be able to disprove the existence of God on the basis of advanced logic and proven scientific facts. This eventuality could even occur much earlier. There will still be a few religious hold-outs though, who can’t deal with mortality, but that’s okay. Even in a predominantly godless world, we should have choices, and believing whatever you want to believe is one of those choices. In the future, the symbiotic relationship between Androids, Robots and Humans or Cyborgs must inevitably produce a powerful partnership that will cause most humans and Cyborgs to permanently abandon what Richard Dawkins has termed the “God delusion.” In fact, the Cyborg is likely to be the most god-like being on Earth, because it will be stronger, faster, more intelligent, and more indestructible than a mere human being, and will also be capable of living twice, perhaps three times, as long as a regular human. One day, centuries from now, it might even become relatively immortal. Ironic, isn’t it? First humankind creates an imaginary God and then discards him. Then, in the age of robotics and artificial intelligence, humans create Robots, Androids and Cyborgs; and later, Robots, Androids and Cyborgs design and create advanced versions of themselves; then, after centuries have passed, the Cyborgs become sufficiently super-human to qualify as gods. So, when Cyborgs begin to live for hundreds of years, and start creating other Cyborgs, they will effectively be “gods”. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Duke Kent-Brown p.s. Do you want a FREE sample of my latest book "DIPLOMATIC NOTES - Memoirs of a Diplomat"? Click here >>> My Blog: www.Duke-Kent-Brown.tk
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