Book review
Natalia P. Sharova,
PhD, Dr habil (Biology), Deputy Director of N. K. Koltsov Institute of Developmental Biology of Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of Laboratory of Biochemistry of Ontogenesis Processes, Russia
Address: 26 Vavilov st, Moscow, 119334, Russia
E-mail: npsharova@bk.ru
Article ID: 020570007
Published online: 10 November 2021
HANDLE: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12656/thebeacon.4.020570007
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.4.020570007
Quoting (Chicago style): Sharova, Natalia P. 2021. “The Future of Human Evolution and Technocratic Ideology.” Beacon J Stud Ideol Ment Dimens 4, 020570007. https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.4.020570007
Language: English
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In my book review of Vaclav Smil’s recently published book Growth, I focus on perspectives of technocratic ideology with respect to human evolution. Can we measure future evolution of homo sapiens quantitatively or in some other way? I study Smil’s approach to the problem and show its key strengths and deficiencies. Key words: growth, globalization, technocratism, human evolution, STS studies
Technocratism is one of modern scientific ideologies. It is based on the belief that every side of human life may be measured, optimised and rationalised. In regard to human evolution, technocrats assume that it will soon lead to the appearance of a new species of hominids. An instructive example is Ray Kurzweil’s hypothesis of ‘The Singularity’, a soon fusion of human beings with software carriers and human mind with CPU capabilities that would provide the homo sapiens with digital immortality. Another example of technocratic ideology is Yuval Noah Harari’s theory of homo deus. According to Harari, the homo deus, the next step of human evolution armed with the power of artificial intelligence (AI), will reach the levels of globalisation, digitisation and body / mind transformation that are difficult to imagine today.
A soberer alternative to technocratic ideology recently appeared as a result of international scientific seminar WE: The Dark Side of Evolution led by Wolfgang Sassin. Sassin suggested a term homo billionis, the next generation of humans who would adopt herd behaviour due to unrestricted and uncontrolled globalisation.
In his Growth, Vaclav Smil takes over the discussion about the human evolution and the AI’s role in it. He understands growth as a strictly evolutionary process. The author tries to connect growth as a biological / social category with inevitable evolutionary changes of every species and artefacts on the planet, including the homo sapiens species itself. It is obvious that Smil treats the both notions of growth and evolution as broadly as he can. According to Wolfgang Sassin, Smil focusses on growth from the beginning of life on the Earth. Quantitative growth is the parameter he uses to chart the “result“ of evolution. With respect to our modern civilisation Smil states: “the progress of societies and economies, not so linear, encompasses both decline and renewal. The trajectory of modern civilization, driven by competing imperatives of material growth and biospheric limits remains uncertain.” Smil overlooks for the reasons and mechanism of evolution, as many researchers do when they try to trace what happened in the past. Darwin was the first to speak of selection, pointing to something more than mere massive environmental change and consequent existential competition for scarce resources.
What is ignored in the Smil’s view that he describes as anti-technocratic is the phenomena of symbiosis and parasitism during the process of growth. Sassin has recently demonstrated that very different forms of life may cooperate for mutual benefit and thus gain an advantage in the fight for prey. The evolutionary mechanism understood beyond the limits of technocratic ideology is not only about scarce inanimate resources, but always about other forms of life that a given form of life lives “in collaboration.” But symbiosis may also turns into parasitism if one part does not allow the others to benefit from their coexistence. Wolfgang Sassin drew my attention to the fact that when Smil said “The trajectory of modern civilization remains uncertain,” he failed to elaborate on one decisive difference in the past fundamental changes that led to the evolution of species, namely the factor of time. Of six or seven major species extinction phases that opened up niches for resilient species to fill via random mutations slowly, only the impact of the meteorite occurred in an incredibly short time. If one positions itself in the present situation of the flora and fauna of the planet, the current human-related challenges to the Earth are equivalent to the impact of a meteorite. Homo sapiens as a global multibillion phenomenon has a devastating effect on the Earth’s biosphere similar to a second meteorite, modifying the processes of symbiosis and parasitism via its growth almost instantaneously.
The Smil’s understanding of evolution deals much with the AI, both as an actor and side effect of the humanity’s growth. But to what extent can the empirical Science–Technology–Society (STS) studies accept the idea of AI’s transforming the world and human, as an evolutionary force?
Theoretically the AI may serve as a marker of human evolution. The homo sapiens species has passed a long way from gathering / hunting to farming, then to industrial production, and finally to the state of ‘informational society’, where the AI plays a more important role every year. Most of the concepts of the future evolution of human are about the AI’s ‘domestication’, control and improvement of humans as a multibillion-figure phenomenon in the situation of further growth of population. However, Smil does not propose any instruments for assessing the AI’s involvement in the modern processes of growth, be it growth of humanity or its informational imprint. Growth raises some important questions about the AI but does not make any attempts to suggest answers that would satisfy biologists, sociologists or anthropologists. The book is overtly anti-technocratic but Smil seems to be more occupied by ideological struggle with technocrats than by search for techniques of assessing human evolution.
© 2021 Natalia Sharova. Licensee The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) that permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
