The purpose of society is to assign unpleasant chores. This can be a matter of life or death.
The US economy could function with half its present labor force. Most workers are kept busy providing redundant services, from wasteful bureaucracy to delicious fast food to investment banking. The biggest job program is healthcare, about one sixth of the economy. The government distributes trillions in benefits and subsidies, yet real unemployment remains high.
It feels like the world is waiting for a change, something fundamentally new.
The best way to transform the world would be to raise living standards by increasing productivity with technology: cheaper solar cells, better electric motors and energy storage, telecommuting, automation, smarter robots. Virtual reality could simulate a higher quality of life. The problem is to somehow make this happen. It's like some unknown force is always making things go wrong, from wars to communism.
A crucial new insight may emerge from artificial intelligence research. It certainly seems plausible - which means something completely unexpected is likely to happen instead. The best outcome of AI research would be a better way to link brains to computers, if such a thing is possible. Mind Extension software may be the first step on the road to mind immortality.
Closely linked to the user's thoughts, it might become an extension of their awareness. An evolving family of smaller programs, ME software will attempt to extract most user memories and personality traits during their lifetime, and create a virtual copy of their core essence.
Firstly it would track every detail of its user's life, which might require a human-brain-level processor. Its priority would be to create a timeline, with receipts, diary entries, recorded conversations, public records, web logs, sounds and movies.
To organize this data, the software would look for hidden patterns and cycles. It would build up a profile of interests and habits. Polls and surveys will determine the user's personality, help find like-minded individuals, and generate occasional advice.
After a few trillion research dollars, the software may even try to deal with mankind's education problem. Teaching techniques have hardly improved since the first century.
Instead of semi-coherent lectures and rote memorization, this software would track and manipulate user motivations, knowledge, and skills; using the best available metaphors and easiest drills for each intelligence level.
ME software should be impossible to subpoena in court cases or by employers or parents; protected by encryption, hidden data, and false data. It might be compiled differently for each user.
However, there is a time when this data could be released to an improved version of itself. When the user has passed away, the software logs could be used to recreate part of their personality.
Long after the distant year 2050, our resurrected user could begin a new existence as a high-resolution simulation, inhabiting something like a self-improving videogame.
To make sense of all the accumulated data, AI software would have to recreate portions of the user's life first, with all their experiences and thoughts during that time.
Which brings us to the famous Simulation Argument. It's very plausible that, at first, a simulated ME user won't know that they aren't a real person, as they relive the most interesting or important periods of their mortal years.
If current computer trends continue, this new age may dawn by the second half of this century.
The first primitive Mind Extension programs may appear by the late 2020s. By then, there will be over six billion people online, and far more digital cameras than people. Supercomputers as powerful as a human brain may also exist then. (My original prediction for that was ten years later.)
This is important: if you are currently a computer simulation, there's a high probability that you created yourself.
The most important SF novel ever written? Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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