Given the speed of light, not to mention mortality, or obsolescence, "we" [humans] won't be manipulating much of anything "out there" in the Cosmos, and not much right here on Earth either. Humans have a peculiar ego which sees them at the centre of the four forces of the apocalypse, much like they used to think the Cosmos revolved around Earth at the centre. They know now that Earth is NOT at the centre of the Cosmos, but they seem to still think that intelligence, sentience, consciousness [if they differ from each other] are the special preserve of wet chemistry in human form.
Intelligence is a function of the four forces but is no more limited to people than electromagnetic force is limited to compasses. There's a vast realm of possible intelligence, with people just the launching pad for the next iteration, this time in silicon/gallium, in a similar way to chimps being the launching pad for human intelligence, except that chimps and humans are nearly the same, whereas Cyberspace is more like God than chimps. More accurately, eukaryotic cell intelligence is to human intelligence as human intelligence is to Cyberspace.
Look at humans. Still scavenging around in stream beds looking for gold like garden-variety barbarians. Still catching fish and killing cattle to feed their chimpoid brains. Cyberspace downloads a few megawatts from a power station and can do more with less every year, and do it everywhere, pretty much instantly, without forgetting, with a trillion transducers of all sorts providing input.
Mqurice |
