Eyeborg: The Singularity Is Coming, Along With Hot, Calorie-Challenged Post-Humans

If you want to become a cyborg, or post-human, the best way is to hardly eat anything and drink a lot of Pinot Noir. Basically what a Ralph Lauren model consumes. Read more about Ralph Lauren models and how they are calorie-challenged here.

What does this have to do with cyborgs? Stay with me here for a sec. Ever since I started putting cameras in my empty eye socket I have gotten to know the post-human crowd, because I am sort of a post-human now. So what is a post-human? Its what many clever people are saying human beings will evolve into.

..a post-human is a hypothetical future being whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards.

Like an enhanced human being. Or a cyborg. So for example, weak and puny human filmmakers need to hold an external camera. I will eventually have a kick-ass eye camera as an extension of my body.

The guru and leader of the post-human crowd is Ray Kurzweil. He is a genius inventor and futurist who, for example, invented text and speech recognition technologies. This guy really does have a lot of credibility. You can check out his extensive credentials on his Wikipedia page.

He believes in this thing called the Singularity, which means that technology will soon join with humans to form the post-human: a single new cyborg entity.

In Kurzweil’s words from his website:

Within a quarter century, nonbiological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge. Intelligent nanorobots will be deeply integrated in our bodies, our brains, and our environment, overcoming pollution and poverty, providing vastly extended longevity, full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses (like “The Matrix”), “experience beaming” (like “Being John Malkovich”), and vastly enhanced human intelligence. The result will be an intimate merger between the technology-creating species and the technological evolutionary process it spawned.

And it’s coming soon…

I set the date for the Singularity—representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability—as 2045. The nonbiological intelligence created in that year will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today.

Ray and a whole bunch of really, really smart people think that, in about 40 years, technology will have grown so exponentially that humans will be able to extend their lives indefinitely by augmenting and altering the body – essentially by becoming cyborgs.

Check out Ray Kurzweil from his TedTalks speech…and regard his nifty chart below.

So here’s the thing – if you can make it to 2045 in good shape you will make it to the Singularity. If you are relatively healthy, nanobots and other biomedical doodads can keep adding years to your life as advances come along. Maybe….forever.

Whoa.

So how to do this? How do we stay as healthy as possible so the Singularity can do its thing?
According to Kurzweil and company…eat like a Ralph Lauren model!

That is, eat as little as you can to actually avoid starving. So an adult male should eat only 1800 calories a day versus the recommended 2500. The post-humanist/singularity crowd, who are extremely clever but also a tad cultish and maybe a bit OCD, aren’t trying to look like a clothes hanger for misgonystic stylists. There is some real science to suggest that your body will be in better shape and you will live longer if you severely restrict your calories.

Julian Dibbel sums it up well in this excellent article he wrote for New York magazine a few years back. He embedded himself in the Singularity scene and practiced what is called Calorie Restriction (or CR) for two months. He ended up losing 21 pounds in that time. Jeezus.

In lab studies going back to the thirties, mice on severely limited diets have consistently lived as much as 50 percent longer than the oldest of their well-fed peers—the rodent equivalent of a human life stretched past the age of 160. And it isn’t just a mouse thing: Yeast cells, spiders, vinegar worms, rhesus monkeys—by now a veritable menagerie of species has been shown to benefit from CR’s life-extending effects.

As a bonus there’s this stuff found in red wine called reservatrol that is some kind of anti-oxidant thingy that Singularity types also say you should be consuming. So have another Pinot Noir! It will help you become an immortal cyborg. Woo!

Look, its quite possible that they are totally wrong and and the last thing I want is for someone to read this to justify going anorexic. Hey, I am already a cyborg and I would rather put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger than give up high-quality cheese and carbs and especially both together (like Poutine! A Canadian delicacy). And I also don’t want to anger my Singularity pals – they don’t consider themselves anorexics and make every effort to maximize their nutrition.

I just couldn’t help thinking that maybe through some ironic accident a bunch of Ralph Lauren models may end up becoming cyborgs that live forever. Or at least a really long time. It’s kind of cinematic.

Let’s go through the checklist here. In order to make it to the Singularity you need to be as healthy/preserved as possible in 2045 so you can take advantage of nanobots and technology.

From what I have gathered you need to: Hardly eat anything on a calorie restriction diet; Drink tons of Pinot Noir; Not be adverse to radically altering your body (ie plastic surgery); Marry a rich guy who can afford Cadillac cyborg health care in the future.

Sounds like a Ralph Lauren model to me. Of course much younger people will luck into it by virtue of their age – but Ralph Lauren models will, not only be relatively young (in their 50’s) when 2045 and the Singularity comes, but their calorie restricting Pinot Noir guzzling ways will reduce years and preserve them perfectly for posthumanism. Perhaps more so than other people in their 50’s.

There you go – that’s why Ralph Lauren models will end up being immortal cyborgs of the future. And a bunch of clever thin scientists. And maybe you too. So put down that bacon cheese burger, fatty, and get a pitcher of Pinot!

Rob Spence is a director and producer in Toronto, Canada whose work has appeared on Discovery, Vision, Space TV and the CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation), for which he made the controversial documentary, Let’s All Hate Toronto. Currently, he is in development on a documentary about how video and humanity intersect escpecially with regards to surveillance. That’s where the whole cyborg thing comes into it. Learn more about the Eyeborg here.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.