What is Human?

    A recent hike poses here as metaphor as we humans trek further into the unknown. 

     Reputable science tells us children born today could easily live into their 100's.
     Please allow a brief scenario. Were I to experience cognitive issues and if a chip or device was available to correct the malfunction, I'd be in for it. Artificial or transplanted organs are real and medical science is thresholding new realities. Immunotherapy is getting more precise, our manipulation of DNA offers both hopeful and fearful potential. Our influence on life, longevity and denial of death is surging exponentially. 
     Imagine it is 2040 and for any number of reasons air quality has degraded so as to threaten lung function, so medical science responds with perhaps adapter kits or even newly engineered lungs to accommodate rotten air. 
      Despite that this current era of the human epic has a sizable percentage of foodies and others who love to eat, what if bio engineering finds a way to produce our "food" without all of the resource drain. We might waste less water and energy by producing a new kind of nutrition product. We learn that our digestive system is less important than it used to be. Our hip and knee replacement become even more amazing with outcomes that turn us into unbreakable people. Hearts, livers, kidneys, vascular systems all morph and change as we humans trend toward what science fiction identified as cyborgs.
      On an assignment years ago I sat on cybex machine next to NBA star Len Elmore. He joked that someday athletes would be mechanically enhanced and not have to nurse knee injuries. 
      Efficiency, durability, algorithmic actuarial analysis, expanded life ranges, medical discovery, scientific adaptability, and a quest for immortality collude and we find ourselves "evolving" in ways the human animal never danced to the Darwinian waltz.

       are there dangers on this path

     I think we are on that inevitable journey, because if we can, we will. If science and medicine can fix us and slake our fears, we will take that path. 
    We are slowly ebbing into a new kind of human, already. High Tech billionaires just up the California highway from my quiet village are investing millions in medical research labs to find ways of beating death. Steve Job's illness and death sent a message to the creators of the communications technologies that have changed human behavior, that despite all the wonders of their creations, and all the money they amass, humans still die. Even the rich and famous. 
    I don't run wildly into the future screaming for death's embrace and I don't know anyone who does. If you were a billionaire with every human comfort you can imagine it is understandable why you would want to hang on to it for as long as possible, maybe even forever. And with a billion or a few, you can spend on targeted research to help you find the new fountain of youth. All of us reap the sewing of those seeds of desire for a more perfect human and longer existence.

choosing the path

    So perhaps more scientifically wise than we have ever been and now augmented by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the golden age of medical research we humans  are capable of making decisions that we once described as "playing God."  Though I think that was ever so, we have  tools now that are more powerful and change inducing than ever. 

    We are at an interesting juncture in the path of human evolution. And when some of our brightest and most influential set goals of expanding life to new horizons and seriously aspire to immortality, and when we point our technology and inventions to those outcomes, there is something else to put on the agenda.
    It's my two cents worth that now is a time to consider what does it mean to be a human? What makes us human? What are the intrinsic characteristics of a human being? 
     I know of no place where that is registered, certified nor even understood. There has been no reason to do so. 
     Now, as we can see a future where technology and science can extend and change our lives in historic metrics, should we not consider what that means? How synthetic, or artificial or chipped do we become before we cease to be the creature we have been when flesh and blood were the arbiters of life and humanity. How "human made" do we become before we cease to be human?
    If death were to be eliminated or at least deferred for ranges previously unimaginable, and if we did not need our biological bodies, or significant portions of them, how do we change? And how do we know we are changed or changing?
      Interesting questions I think. Implications I believe. Millions of we bipeds also owe a measure of our humanity to an understanding that human life also frames a spiritual dimension. How would that be affected?

      See you down the trail

TO BE HUMAN

Cambria Ca

     There's a great wheeze about three theologians sitting around and discussing when life begins.
     "We believe life begins when the egg and sperm cells unite. It is at that moment, even before the zygotic process that life begins," observes one of the scholars.
     "Well, I understand your view," the second nods, "but we think life doesn't fully bloom until the fetus emerges from the womb and breaths independently for the first time. It is as though the oxygen in the lungs, free from a maternal link, signals the beginning of life," the theologian opines.
      "Well, those are wonderful ideas, and beautiful too I might say," the third says scratching his goatee, "but as for me, I says life begins when the kids leave home!"

     But seriously folks.....
     The older I get the more I sense there is almost nothing of the most profound nature of human existence where we can find consensus. Our differences emerge early. So with that as prelude:
     I wonder if any of you have given thought to what it means to be a human being? How do we classify human existence? What is our hard line definition? What makes it so? Heart beat, brain function, blood flow, vital signs? What?
     
     Let me stretch this question with a few posits. Many of us are hopeful that new medical processes and technologies will improve and even extend life. Immuno therapy offers new horizons. Wonders to ponder in gene engineering, in vitro diagnoses, cloned, banked or engineered replacement parts and organs, interaction with neural circuitry, other brain health advances, and in fact a cascade of innovation and discovery that we have yet to threshold with understanding. People talk now of pushing life expectancy, and with a confident expectation.

      Years ago I covered rookie training camp for an NBA team as a participant. I checked into a room at the college, was issued all the material and was expected at work outs, practice sessions, meetings, and ate at the training table. Everybody was very understanding that I was just a reporter, but they seemed to appreciate I was busting my butt to report a story.
      One day I was in the training room, nursing an old knee injury on a cybex machine, flexing the knee. Next to me was a genuine star, Len Elmore. Even back in the 70's he was not only a great athlete, but an intelligent and deep thinking man.
      As we flexed away, Elmore said that perhaps someday the professional jocks would be more artificial-better working mechanical knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists and etc. 

     I can't tell you how many times over the years that idea has marched across my brain. But now we live with a kind of fulfillment. The idea of a cyborg is no longer an outrageous fantasy.
     Wouldn't a patient with brain loss jump at the opportunity of an implanted chip that could make up the deficits, or failing kidneys accept an synthetic transplant, or a failing heart supplanted by a technology, etc, etc, etc.
    In fact the dawn on this age has already come and we living into it, but I suspect without a longer arching view about what does it mean, where does it end, what are the implications?

    There are some in silicon valley with seemingly unlimited financial power and an interest in pushing the boundaries of old fashion physical death, even to the point of eliminating it. For some it is personal, for others, it is an art of science.
   There are creative and great minds pondering the coming impact of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and have sparked an important debate about weaponizing computers, robots, and giving machines sanction to take human life.
     See, we have backed into a future where the very existence of a human life can be extended, mechanized or artificialized while never defining the nature of a human life.
     When do we cross a Rubicon and evolve not so fully flesh and blood and human aspiration but also manufactured or engineered and algorithmized?  What makes us human?
     Does the fact that our lives are finite, even fragile make us more fully human than say a future iteration where bio mechanics or living cellular chips or some such can make us almost immortal? Is there a point where machine intelligence is so much more efficient as to render human instinct, spiritual inclination or devotion, creative musing, sensuality, and a range of human emotion as out of date, no longer valuable, irrelevant?

      Before this rambles into some shadow game of Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Arthur Clark and company, it seems some basic definition, delineation, or understanding might be helpful. It won't be easy. Like those theologians talking about the beginning of life, we'll be taxed by a diversity of thought but in the asking we might learn a bit. And it could make a big difference someday, perhaps not so much to us, but to our grand kids, who already live in a world vastly different than our own.
    

     growing

San Luis Obispo

   All it takes is a little blue sky and a patch of sun and an urban sideway becomes a mini vineyard.

From Griffin Park, Cambria

     We enjoyed the recent eclipse but failed to bring home a great shot. Still after stumbling from sleep a few times between 3:00 AM and 5:30 AM you need to show something for your efforts. We are only human.

    See you down the trail.

WHAT IS LIFE?

DEFINITIONS OF LIFE

   Do you think it is possible to reach a place in the progression of human life where we cease to be human? That begs a number of questions, not the least of which is what is a human being?

    Nicholas Wade wrote in the New York Times of a call by eminent biologists to stop the use of genome editing that could change how human DNA is inherited. While it might cure genetic diseases it could also be used to change qualities like intelligence, physical development and more.

The scientists are concerned the technique will be used before the human race understands the ethical challenges such technology presents. Remember the old potboiler The Boys From Brazil? Imagine the bruisers the NFL could breed, for example!

     This exciting new science develops as humans continue to demonstrate a propensity to screw up and to exercise lack of judgement.

     A lawyer in Huntington Beach is a poster child of such.

Matt McLaughlin has proposed a California ballot proposition that would authorize the killing of gays and lesbians. It's a case that tests limits of free speech, but has caused a reaction that questions why can't something that would be illegal be stopped.  In the meantime some are trying to get McLaughlin disbarred. 

     So, back to the rise of amazing and fantastic science and the potential of human idiots and miscreants to get their hands on such. 

    We should never halt the progress of advancing knowledge, but we have probably reached a cross roads where ethics and implications need to be studied and weighed more arduously than ever.

     We are flirting with cyborgs as we implant new knees, shoulders, hips, heart valves and etc. A chip, placed in the brain to limit the effect of a neural and muscular disorder is a wonder, and so too is the potential of similar procedures to halt dementia. But is there a point at which we change what it means to be human?  This question is probably more relevant when considering artificial intelligence, though we are beginning to blur the lines and draw more closely to a change in the evolution of human life. Biology and nanotechnology present us with new horizons.

      There are bright minds and deep thinkers among us and they are pondering what used to be the stuff of science fiction and fantasy.  Do you think the balance of humanity is up for such deep thinking? Or are we populated by larger numbers who would rather prioritize their own desire to live longer, or to birth beautiful children, or create NBA superstars who can fly, or breed warriors who fight wars with unending force, etc?  What do you think? How should we enter this future?

POTPOURRI
An oddball assortment of images stuck in the corner file

 Spring fresh

   Palm Springs Patio mellow

  Patience at Lampton Cliff

   Hearst Castle via telephoto

 Barrel Room setting for a Zin Fest Weekend Winemakers Dinner at Le Vigne

  Wow & delicious!  

   See you down the trail.