The Future of the Mind (50 page)

Even if contact could be made with such a civilization, it might be difficult communicating with them. For example, when we communicate with one another, we break ideas down into sentences, with a subject-verb structure, in order to build a narrative, often a personal story. Most of our sentences have the following structure: “I did this” or “They did that.” In fact, most of our literature and conversations use storytelling, often involving experiences and adventures that we or our role models have had. This presupposes that our personal experiences are the dominant way to convey information.

However, a civilization based on intelligent honeybees may not have the least interest in personal narratives and storytelling. Being highly collective, their messages may not be personal, but matter-of-fact, containing vital information necessary for the hive rather than personal trivia and gossip that might advance an individual’s social position. In fact, they might find our storytelling language to be a bit repulsive, since it puts the role of the individual before the needs of the collective.

Also, worker bees would have a totally different sense of time. Since worker bees are expendable, they might not have a long life span. They might only take on projects that are short and well defined.

However, humans live much longer, but we also have a tacit sense of time; we take on projects and occupations that we can reasonably see to the end within our lifetimes. We subconsciously pace our projects, our relations with others, and our goals to accommodate a finite life span. In other words, we live our lives in distinct phases: being single, married, raising children, and
eventually retiring. Often without being conscious of it, we assume that we will live and eventually die within a finite time frame.

But imagine beings that can live for thousands of years, or are perhaps immortal. Their priorities, their goals, and their ambitions would be completely different. They could take on projects that would normally require scores of human lifetimes. Interstellar travel is often dismissed as pure science fiction because, as we have seen, the time it takes for a conventional rocket to reach nearby stars is roughly seventy thousand years. For us, this is prohibitively long. But for an alien life-form, that time may be totally irrelevant. For example, they might be able to hibernate, slow down their metabolism, or simply live for an indefinite amount of time.

WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE?

Our first translations of these alien messages will probably give us some insight into the aliens’ culture and way of life. For example, it is likely that the aliens will have evolved from predators and hence still share some of their characteristics. (In general, predators on Earth are smarter than prey. Hunters like tigers, lions, cats, and dogs use their cunning to stalk, ambush, and hide, all of which require intelligence. All these predators have eyes on the front of the face, for stereo vision as they focus their attention. Prey, which have eyes to the sides of the face to spot a predator, have only to run. That is why we say “sly as a fox” and “dumb bunny.”) The alien life-forms may have outgrown many of the predator instincts of their distant ancestors, but it is likely that they will still have some of a predator’s consciousness (i.e., territoriality, expansion, and violence when necessary).

If we examine the human race, we see that there were at least three basic ingredients that set the stage for our becoming intelligent:

1. the opposable thumb, which gives us the ability to manipulate and reshape our environment via tools

2. stereo eyes or the 3-D eyes of a hunter

3. language, which allows us to accumulate knowledge, culture, and wisdom across generations

When we compare these three ingredients with the traits found in the animal kingdom, we see that very few animals meet these criteria for intelligence.
Cats and dogs, for example, do not have grasping ability or a complex language. Octopi have sophisticated tentacles, but they don’t see well and don’t have a complex language.

There may be variations of these three criteria. Instead of an opposable thumb, an alien might have claws or tentacles. (The only prerequisite is that they should be able to manipulate their environment with tools created by these appendages.) Instead of having two eyes, they may have many more, like insects. Or they may have sensors that detect sound or UV light rather than visible light. More than likely, they will have the stereo eyes of a hunter, because predators generally have a higher level of intelligence than prey. Also, instead of a language based on sounds, they may communicate via different forms of vibrations. (The only requirement is that they exchange information among themselves to create a culture spanning many generations.)

But beyond these three criteria, anything goes.

Next, the aliens may have a consciousness colored by their environment. Astronomers now realize that the most plentiful habitat for life in the universe may not be earthlike planets, where they can bask in the warm sunlight of the mother star, but on icy-cold satellites orbiting Jupiter-size planets billions of miles from the star. It is widely believed that Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter, has a liquid ocean beneath the icy surface, heated by tidal forces. Because Europa tumbles as it orbits Jupiter, it is squeezed in different directions by the huge gravitational pull of Jupiter, which causes friction deep inside the moon. This generates heat, forming volcanoes and ocean vents that melt the ice and create liquid oceans. It is estimated that the oceans of Europa are quite deep, and that their volume may be many times the volume of the oceans of Earth. Since 50 percent of all stars in the heavens may have Jupiter-size planets (a hundred times more plentiful than earthlike planets), the most plentiful form of life may be on the icy moons of gas giants like Jupiter.

Therefore, when we encounter our first alien civilization in space, more than likely it will have an aquatic origin. (Also, it is likely that they will have migrated from the ocean and learned to live on the icy surface of their moon away from the water, for several reasons. First, any species that lives perpetually under the ice will have a quite limited view of the universe. They will never develop astronomy or a space program if they think that the universe is just the ocean underneath the ice cover. Second, because water short-circuits electrical components, they will never develop radio or TV if they
stay underwater. If this civilization is to advance, it must master electronics, which cannot exist in the oceans. So, most likely, these aliens will have learned to leave the oceans and survive on the land, as we did.)

But what happens if this life-form evolves to create a space-faring civilization, capable of reaching Earth? Will they still be biological organisms like us, or will they be post-biological?

THE POST-BIOLOGICAL ERA

One person who has spent considerable time thinking about these questions is my colleague Dr. Paul Davies of Arizona State University, near Phoenix. When I interviewed him, he told me that
we have to expand our own horizon to contemplate what a civilization that is thousands or more years ahead of us may look like.

Given the dangers of space travel, he believes that such beings will have abandoned their biological form, much like the bodiless minds we considered in the previous chapter. He writes, “
My conclusion is a startling one. I think it very likely—in fact inevitable—that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the evolution of intelligence in the universe. If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, I believe it is overwhelmingly likely to be post-biological in nature, a conclusion that has obvious and far-reaching ramifications for SETI.”

In fact, if the aliens are thousands of years ahead of us, chances are that they have abandoned their biological bodies eons ago to create the most efficient computational body: a planet whose entire surface is completely covered with computers. Dr. Davies says, “It isn’t hard to envision the entire surface of a planet being covered with a single integrated processing system.… Ray Bradbury has coined the term ‘Matrioshka brains’ for these awesome entities.”

So to Dr. Davies, alien consciousness may lose the concept of “self” and be absorbed into the collective World Wide Web of Minds, which blankets the entire surface of the planet. Dr. Davies adds, “A powerful computer network with no sense of self would have an enormous advantage over human intelligence because it could redesign ‘itself,’ fearlessly make changes, merge with whole systems, and grow. ‘Feeling personal’ about it would be a distinct impediment to progress.”

So in the name of efficiency and increased computational ability, he
envisions members of this advanced civilization giving up their identity and being absorbed into a collective consciousness.

Dr. Davies acknowledges that critics of his idea may find this concept rather repulsive. It appears as if this alien species is sacrificing individuality and creativity to the greater good of the collective or the hive. This is not inevitable, he cautions, but it is the most efficient option for civilization.

Dr. Davies also has a conjecture that he admits is rather depressing. When I asked him why these civilizations don’t visit us, he gave me a strange answer. He said that any civilization that advanced would also have developed virtual realities far more interesting and challenging than reality. The virtual reality of today would be a children’s toy compared to the virtual reality of a civilization thousands of years more advanced than us.

This means that perhaps their finest minds might have decided to play out imaginary lives in different virtual worlds. It’s a discouraging thought, he admitted, but certainly a possibility. In fact, it might even be a warning for us as we perfect virtual reality.

WHAT DO THEY WANT?

In the movie
The Matrix
, the machines take over and put humans into pods, where they exploit us as batteries to energize themselves. That is why they keep us alive. But since a single electrical plant produces more power than the bodies of millions of humans, any alien looking for an energy source would quickly see there is no need for human batteries. (This seems to be lost on the machine overlords in the Matrix, but hopefully aliens would see reason.)

Another possibility is that they might want to eat us. This was explored in an episode of
The Twilight Zone
, in which aliens land on Earth and promise us the benefits of their advanced technology. They even ask for volunteers to visit their beautiful home planet. The aliens accidentally leave behind a book, called
To Serve Man
, which scientists anxiously try to decipher in order to discover what wonders the aliens will share with us. Instead, the scientists find out that the book is actually a cookbook. (But since we will be made of entirely different DNA and proteins from theirs, we could be difficult for their digestive tracts to process.)

Another possibility is that the aliens will want to strip Earth of resources
and valuable minerals. There may be some truth to this argument, but if the aliens are advanced enough to travel effortlessly from the stars, then there are plenty of uninhabited planets to plunder for resources, without having to worry about restive natives. From their point of view, it would be a waste of time to try to colonize an inhabited planet when there are easy alternatives.

So if the aliens do not want to enslave us or plunder our resources, then what danger do they pose? Think of deer in a forest. Whom should they fear the most—the ferocious hunter armed with a shotgun, or the mild-mannered developer armed with a blueprint? Although the hunter may scare the deer, only a few deer are threatened by him. More dangerous to the deer is the developer, because the deer are not even on his radar screen. The developer may not even think about the deer at all, concentrating instead on developing the forest into usable property. In view of this, what would an invasion actually look like?

In Hollywood movies, there is one glaring flaw: the aliens are only a century or so ahead of us, so we can usually devise a secret weapon or exploit a simple weakness in their armor to fight them off, as in
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
. But as SETI director Dr. Seth Shostak once told me, a battle with an advanced alien civilization will be like a battle between Bambi and Godzilla.

In reality, the aliens might be millennia to millions of years ahead of us in their weaponry. So, for the most part, there will be little we can do to defend ourselves. But perhaps we can learn from the barbarians who defeated the greatest military empire of its time, the Roman Empire.

The Romans were masters of engineering, able to create weapons that could flatten barbarian villages and roads to supply distant military outposts of a vast empire. The barbarians, who were barely emerging from a nomadic existence, had little chance when encountering the juggernaut of the Roman Imperial Army.

But history records that as the empire expanded, it was spread too thin, with too many battles to fight, too many treaties bogging it down, and not enough of an economy to support all this, especially with a gradual decline in population. Moreover, the empire, always short on recruits, had to enlist young barbarian soldiers and promote them to leadership positions. Inevitably, the superior technology of the empire began to filter down to the barbarians as well. In time, the barbarians began to master the very military technologies that at first had conquered them.

Toward the end, the empire, weakened by internal palace intrigues, severe crop shortages, civil wars, and an overstretched army, faced barbarians who were able to fight the Roman Imperial Army to a standstill. The sacking of Rome in A.D. 410 and 455 paved the way for the empire’s ultimate fall in A.D. 476.

In the same way, it is likely that earthlings will initially offer no real threat to an alien invasion, but over time earthlings could learn the weak points of the alien army, its power supplies, its command centers, and most of all its weaponry. In order to control the human population, the aliens will have to recruit collaborators and promote them. This will result in a diffusion of their technology to the humans.