Juliano Pinto kicks out the first ball at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil in a robotic mind-controlled exoskeleton designed by neuroscientist Dr. Miguel Nicolelis. Photo from Neuro Gadget
What will Mitakuye Oyasin mean in the future?
You won’t believe the change that’s coming
By James Davies What if there had been no Columbus, no European discovery of the New World—given enough time, what kind of civilization would the aboriginal inhabitants have built? Harry Turtledove envisioned such a civilization in one of his alternate history books, and of course, it was a cruel, cold place bereft of European enlightenment. I read the whole story, but I was giving him a mental middle finger the whole read. The Lakota were hunter/gatherers. You can maintain a loose confederation of about 50,000 people at that stage. If you decide to farm a river bottom, it might increase slightly, but not much. Once these farming villages are connected by roads, one village becomes the most important, that importance initially based on trade and commerce. The population increases markedly, as do the stratifications and behavioral constraints within society. Eventually a priest class replaces animistic shamans, and they build great temples and pyramids in the important village, which becomes a city, and at that point hunter/gatherer individual liberty takes a sharp left turn. This has happened in Africa, in Asia, in Europe, and this was happening in Central and South America when Columbus hit the beach at San Salvador. It appears to be the template by which all human progress is bound. Harry Turtledove just ignorantly assumed these priest class twisted super civilizations would be the template for all future aboriginal cultural progress. But he didn’t stop there. No, he wrote a whole book where he removed all those pesky aboriginals from the New World and replaced them with homo erectus, so that when Europeans “discovered” America, they would be the first humans here, and this was probably how he reconciled the dissonance of European destruction of aboriginal culture. Had the New World aboriginals been left on their own the great civilizations of Central and South America would have eventually battled each other for supremacy, just like the Mediterranean based civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Carthage and Rome did. The North American tribes would have been the barbarians, and their first contact with the civilized South would not have gone well, just like it didn’t in Europe. The South would invade the North, divvy up the regions into militarily occupied economic territories. Eventually the Barbarian chieftains would form an alliance and attack their oppressors with a massive army. A Dark Age would ensue, and much scientific and technological progress would be lost, rediscovered, and eventually become the foundation of a modern world. Had this happened in the New World, it would be thousands of years from now, probably around the year 4000—a civilization technologically advanced as this one would have formed, but peopled with nothing but aboriginals. Ships would sail across to Europe; maybe piloted by some intrepid Lakota Columbus, maybe find a bunch of albino homo erectus instead of Wasicu. Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it, Harry Turtledove. This is where our story takes a surprising turn. Because in the year 4045 something inevitable arrives, something the general population was warned about 50 years before, but something society largely ignored. Consumer addicted people are too busy obsessing over celebrities and sports. A corporate oligarchy, hiding in plain sight, has been slowly eating at the foundations of freedom and democracy, militarizing the police force, increasing the surveillance state, and they are poised to take over this super advanced aboriginal society, but an event like no other in human history arrives, and within two decades their world no longer exists. Social institutions crumble, consumer driven economies bottom out, celebrities and sports are utterly ignored, organized religion evaporates. What could cause such a thing? A super volcano? A lethal virus pandemic? A giant meteor strike from space? Extraterrestrial invasion? No, something that crept up exponentially on their hypothetical society just as it is settling in on ours now—the Technological Singularity (TS). You never heard of it? Not surprising. The single most important event in human history, only decades from fruition, and you never heard of it? Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam described the TS in 1958: "...ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.” This definition has been corrupted by misguided people like Stephen Hawking to mean artificial intelligence will be beyond human control. That’s all nonsense. Neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis designed an exoskeleton that allowed a paraplegic to not only kick out the first ball of the 2014 World Cup, but feel his foot kicking the ball. Artificial intelligence will not be created separate from humans, but will be technological enhancements augmenting our present intelligence and physical capacity. Even if hostile AI was developed, it would find the technologically enhanced human minds beyond its power to conquer. Most scientists believe the TS will arrive by 2045. In our alternate aboriginal reality it arrived in 4045, but it will always arrive, you can’t stop it, it is nothing to fear, and once you are transformed by it, your old humanity will not be missed, and Mitakuye Oyasin will take on meaning we never imagined. (James Davies can be reached at: skindiesel@msn.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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