Project Vision 21

Francisco Miraval

At a recent meeting with a group of new friends, one of them (whom I just briefly met once before) compared with Google, but I don’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. Perhaps it was a compliment, perhaps it was not.

This is what happened. We were talking about different topics and, in that conversation, I provided some information I thought it was relevant. After one of those answers, my new friend said, “You are like Google, but human.” He said it in a positive way, almost congratulating me. I could only say, “Thanks.” But that unexpected comparison got me thinking.

On one hand, it is nice to be compared with such a large and successful global company that have even hired Ray Kurzweil (in late 2012) to focus on reaching immortality for humans by 2045, that is, the so-called “singularity” that will create trans-humans.

On the other hand, precisely for what I just said, there is no comparison between this write and Google. Such a comparison is not only impossible, but also absurd, irrelevant, and, in my opinion, even disrespectful.

Just because I happen to know a few pieces of information (the same ones other will easily find online) doesn’t mean I am a “Google in human form.” In addition, I don’t know if I want to be(come) a “human Google,” mainly because I don’t even know yet what it means to be truly human.

It is also painfully clear that the ephemeral and insignificant accumulation in my mind of some trivial information (unfortunately, often confused with “knowledge”) will never get humans to be(come) immortal in just three short decades.

Why, then, my friend made such a comparison? Was he amazed that, after many years of learning, I have a few things in my mind I can access without the need of first accessing an online search engine?

I must emphasize my friend never said anything improper. Quite the opposite, I felt his expression included a touch of happiness, perhaps because he found a comparison he thought it was proper to use to “congratulate” me for my knowledge.

I know very well that Google has become a kind of “external memory” for post-modern human brains, leading to the attitude of “Let’s not waste our time trying to remember what we can find in Google.” That attitude, of course, assumes the omnipresence of this search engine in our lives, its infinite knowledge, and, therefore, our perpetual dependency of it.

And that’s problematic, at least for me, because it seems we are losing our own humanness by putting all our hopes in a given technology, regardless of the virtues of that technology,

Yet, from a different point of view, what would happen if Google (thanks to the genius of Kurzweil and his astronomical budget) truly brings immortality to humans in about 30 years? If that happens, then the expression “human Google” will have a different meaning. It will no longer be a doubtful compliment, but a definition.