The main thrust of the article is that in the very near future humankind will develop technology that will create computers that are superhumanly intelligent, resulting in the demise of the human race. Written in 1993, this article was six years ahead of The Matrix.

While the more cynical of us may believe that if and when computers can think they will naturally conclude humankind is worthy only of extermination, there are of course, other possibilities.

Will great networks of computers suddenly “wake up” once a certain critical mass of programming and information has been input? Unlikely.

However, as more human beings interconnect with technology to each other, via mobile devices and even blogs like this one, I see communication becoming more like an ocean, with tides and swells and currents. Information–ideas–will flow in predictable and liquid (or perhaps viral) fashions.

I see computers and humankind becoming inherently dependent on each other. Someday philosophers may ask, “Where does the computer end, and the mind begin?”

Until then, let’s not fear the unfortunately named “Singularity” (for which physicists must be slapping their foreheads!). Let us embrace the possibility that the sum of the knowledge collected by the human race may one day be available at our fingertips, resulting not in a super intelligence, but in an efficient repository of collected memories that enhance–not replace–our individual genetic ancestral memories.

And never forget that no amount of intelligence is a replacement for wisdom. The ability to creatively and thoughtfully apply knowledge is as important as the knowledge itself.

Can modern humans assume we are so much more enlightened? Do we not tell stories of creatures that we have never seen? Do we not draw pictures of creatures both fantastic and demonic? Does this mean we believe? That we think it true? Have we not yet learned that one cannot trust everything just because it is written? Does this wisdom apply any differently to our ancestors?

Scholars and academics should take heed. A thousand years from now, should humankind be fortunate enough to still exist, what will our children think of us? Will they look at our strange pictures and hear our strange stories and think that we must have not know better? That because we revealed our imaginations in a tangible form that we thought it a complete and total reality?

A part of me does believe. Despite science and religion I do wonder at worlds we cannot comprehend. But I trust future generations not to scoff as if I were a brainless caveman with no sense of my own because cavemen were not brainless and our very existence proves it. I prefer our future kin realize that those that came before them had rich imaginations that not only entertained but informed, ignited new visions, and perhaps changed the way they look at their world, their universe, reality itself.

Do not belittle me because of my imagination. Do not belittle the caveman for his. His imagination is the root of the ancient racial memory that binds us all to our past just as our collective imagination is what binds us to our future. Our ancestors believed in exactly what they needed to believe to bring us this far. We must believe what will take us along the next leg of our journey.

Then why do we go to see them in real life?

I believe we go to stand great works of art not to merely make them a part of our brief lives, or to say that we saw them to our friends, but to make ourselves part of their history. So millenia from now, long after we are gone, in the ongoing life of the masterpiece, somehow we become part of its history. That like the great leaders and the untold millions before us, we too stood before the masterpiece and gazed upon it.

That we too became, in our own way, a part of history that although may never be recorded, can never be denied. Like Michaelangelo, I stood before David. I was there.

The masterpiece becomes our witness to these micro-histories in the making, repeating over and over for every person. May they have long memories.