Research to Date

A technological singularity would be the most revolutionary, rapid growth of technology that has ever occurred. Ray Kurzweil, certainly one of the most influential authorities on the subject, explains this change with the Law of Accelerating Returns. (1) An extension of Moore's Law, which originally described the exponential acceleration in computer hardware developments, it explains that the evolution of all human technology has followed an exponential curve. Billions of years passed before the first single-celled organism emerged, and hundreds of millions more to unintentionally create such an intelligent being as Homo sapiens. Since the development of science quite recently, human technology has come to a point that is unmatched by all technology from our past, combined. (2) This is the most basic assumption of my research, because without an exponential curve, the effects of human culture and biology would not approach the urgency it causes right now.
Anthropology must recognize these rapid changes in the light of exponential expansion of technology, as they change our mental and physical capacities by melding the brain and the rest of the body with computers, they enhance our biology by allowing us to engineer genes and neurons to increase favorable traits, and give us access to all the world's knowledge. The implications go far beyond anthropology and will necessarily be explained by interdisciplinary study and collaboration with realms outside of academia, within the internet user community that generates useful new inventions and applications.
To get a sense of just how far technology has come and how rapidly our societies have changed, take for example the progression of the internet search engine. For those who can remember, less than 20 years ago the search engine was something utilized only among an elite few, certainly not part of public consciousness. After the rise of internet search engines during the 1990's, the unlimited availability of information has become a normal part of life, embedded in every aspect of cultures affected by the internet, and accepted and perpetuated by "Generation Z" faster than any generation has latched onto a technology. The parallel with human biological evolution helps materialize this idea in one's mind: once a simple mammal evolved certain beneficial features, it builds off of every new characteristic previously attained and eventually turns into something that exceeds the original until it is so different as to become another species or genus. Transition
The term "Cyborg" (Cybernetic Organism) describes a biological organism that has been mixed with machine technology to enhance its natural capabilities. Humans are already cyborgs because of the intimate nature of their relationship with the internet. Brain-Computer Interface Technologies (BCI's) are remarkably more advanced than just 10 years ago and it is now possible to control electronic material by translating brain waves into demands in a computer. Companies such as CyberKinetics, Neurosky, and OLogic have created BCI technologies that allow a human brain to control a computer by turning brain wave signals into mathematical algorithms that evolve to "learn" the correlation between certain wave patterns and the desired command. Transition
Advances in human-machine interface technology are progressing in more ways than just reading brain waves to influence a computer, although I cannot stress the importance of that enough. Many researchers are questioning the functionality of immobile plastic pieces like keyboards and non-interactive screens that limit the user's interaction with a computer. In 2006, Jeff Han of New York University introduced an intuitive, touch screen computer that nearly eliminates human-machine interface barriers by conforming to the user's hands instead of the user conforming to the computer. This type of computer intuitively reacts to a person's hands on the screen as if they were moving real, physical particles. (3) Going even further, Researchers at the MIT Wearable Computing Lab have created the most interactive computer system to date that can be projected on any surface by the user. The most remarkable characteristic is that a camera attached to the body can recognize simple hand gestures such as taking a picture by creating a square with fingers or drawing a watch on the wrist. It then takes the picture or connects to the internet to project the desired information onto the surface the user has chosen for the moment. This kind of revolution in computer technology should do away with the traditional computer that keeps users in one place and limits information retrieval from the web. Being able to connect every physical environment we confront with unlimited information about objects in that space will expand human capabilities beyond the imagination. Human biology is being fundamentally altered as well by manipulating preexisting organic material, and creating nano-scale robots, both used to augment the body.
Nanotechnology is accelerating faster than my research can keep up with, and the understanding of nanorobotics will usher in a new age of medicine, biotechnology, and computer technology by using nanoelectromechanical systems to assemble nanoparticles that will eventually be able to target certain biological structures (e.g damaged cells) and fix them inside the body. If we develop the ability to extend human life as long as we want by repairing damages on the cellular and molecular level, then human illness would theoretically diminish. This of course has enormous implications for human values regarding life and death, and what it means to be human in the first place. Our species certainly is something special, and the most incredible thing that makes us special is our unique intelligence that has far surpassed any other organism we've encountered. This brings me to my next point: scientists are coming closer to understanding our intelligence so much that artificial machine intelligence is something to be taken seriously.
Artificial intelligence has been developing for over half a century, starting with the most basic program such as the General Problem Solver in 1957, which could find mathematical proofs for theorems. (2) From the ideas put forth so far in this 50 year discussion, the question is not whether A.I will develop beyond human abilities, but when it will evolve to such complexity. The influence of A.I can be seen in the cars we drive, search engines, bots and spiders scanning through unfathomable amounts of data, powering search engines and personal computers. We are at a point where A.I is used by government agencies, companies, schools, and individuals only for recreation. Most of the data translation people are able to accomplish would be impossible without some sort of A.I program behind it. Take for example a spider bot. Its function is to scan data, analyze, and file certain information at speeds and with precision that humans could never accomplish alone. Without this type of computer program, the internet would not exist as it does now, giving anyone the ability to find almost any information on the web.
To put this information into perspective and appreciate the incredible implications for our future, consider this: The human brain evolved over millions of years to reach the state it is in now, the most intelligent organism on the planet. That brain then became conscious of itself and is now manipulating naturally occurring elements so far as to create entirely new non-biological intelligent beings. This is all a naturally occurring process just as a beaver dam occurs naturally through selection pressures to create the beaver. The questions for anthropologists are vast. My research focuses on the current state of BCI, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and RFID's, and their affects on human interaction while using these technologies. Internet use and availability of technology to the average consumer in industrialized areas has become not just a luxury or recreation, but so much a part of daily life that it is nearly impossible to avoid.
Developing technology that extends lives by making humans part non-biological and incapable of degeneration will transform our morals, values, and culture beyond recognition. Artificial intelligence is assumed to develop to a point where human and robot minds are indistinguishable, or to go beyond human minds in their ability to process qualitative information. For cultural anthropology, the most interesting aspect of the changes is in the shift of identity and the enormous changes in communication techniques. Suddenly, humanity will find itself in a society influenced by non-biological minds with their own opinions and their own cultures. A global consciousness will develop out of the countless communication technologies by connecting distant ideas. We already see this in the age of the internet. For me, many of the questions are unanswerable but somewhat predictable. I will describe the relevant technologies and incorporate them into the group's collaborative study.


1.) http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=1%23691
2.) http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
3.) http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/