The Future of Life

Cooperation is the key to the future evolution and survival of life, each species learning to work together cooperatively, facilitating information exchange with a higher probability of survival. Human cooperation takes the form of groups, families, communities, tribes, nations, trading blocks and now the beginnings of a truly global society; all maximising individual potential through the group's potential.

The human species is also linked to all other species on the planet through the web of life, currently undergoing enormous stress from global warming. In the near future our species will be linked via the internet to billions of additional electronically coded objects, computing devices and databases, generating an enormously powerful global intelligence.

Beyond biological life, the first forms of artificial life are now emerging, including intelligent software agents and robots. Intelligent agents are a particular class of computer software program, designed to provide autonomous and cooperative problem solving support to humans through the application of knowledge-based methods.

As well as being equipped with the ability to perform information-related tasks such as discovery, filtering and negotiation, agents are already being equipped to learn from experience, problem-solve and think creatively. In effect they will become decision partners with humans, explaining and exploring alternative scenarios, discovering new sources of knowledge, recruiting other specialised agents and when necessary replicating and evolving more powerful variants of themselves. Already they assist humans in e-commerce, economic simulation, medical diagnosis, engineering maintenance and financial trading; gaining information or expertise on a specific topic by drawing on knowledge sources linked to the web.

Agents are a classic example of alternate forms of emergent artificial life- A-Life, in contrast to biological life or B-Life and mark a significant milestone in the evolution of the symbiotic relationship between human and computer-mediated intelligence.

By 2050, the symbiosis of A-Life and B-Life or Meta- life, cooperating via the Intelligent web, will be a common feature of our civilisation.

Intelligent robots are designed to learn and evolve progressively. They also have become more complex with the flexibility to act autonomously and simulate human behaviour and emotions. As with intelligent agents, they learn from the experience and the interaction gained in their physical environment in the same way that humans learn.

Eventually life on earth, both biological and artificial, will link with other life forms in the galaxy as an extension of the web of life on earth. From current research, it seems highly likely that life has the capacity to spontaneously generate in any environment capable of supporting complex auto-catalytic biochemical reactions.

For example life forms have been discovered in deep underwater volcanic vents and underground oil shales, so it is likely that other planets with similar environments revolving around main sequence stars will also have the capacity to support life. The first ‘other’ life forms may have already been discovered on Mars in the form of fossil bacteria and potentially exist on moons such as Jupiter's moon Europa, or Saturn’s Titan where signatures of water and hydrocarbons have been sensed.

The proven capacity of human life to create another life form in the laboratory is now very close to reality and will provide an enormous impetus to the next phase in the evolutionary trajectory of life.
This has ceased to be a purely philosophical conjecture. If life is confirmed on Mars or elsewhere in the solar system, the implications will be beyond estimate, providing critical evidence that life has the capacity to kick-start wherever water, complex carbon based molecules and appropriate energy sources co-exist. And if primitive life forms are ubiquitous throughout the universe, then it is also probable that higher intelligence such as mammalian, primate and human-like species will also eventually emerge, as a statistical outcome of the process.

The SETI- Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence project represents the first serious attempt to contact other intelligent life in the universe. This project represents a major mind shift by humans; acknowledging the real possibility of intelligence elsewhere in the universe and taking pro-active steps to exchange information with a view to future co-operation. The space exploration program is a similar acknowledgment that the boundaries of life must extend not just to the ends of the earth or even the outer limits of the solar system, but eventually to other star systems and galaxies.

Autonomous missions to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are already producing a huge expansion of our knowledge of other worlds. A probe to the Moon will assess whether water is available there, enabling a colony to be established and a manned mission to Mars is already on the drawing board.

By the time such missions within our own solar system become commonplace, probably by the middle of the 21st Century, the technology to explore other star systems via autonomous intelligent probes and perhaps ‘seed’ other worlds with life, will be well advanced.
This is not an ad hoc trend. It follows the same consistent pattern that life has taken through the centuries, continually pushing the boundaries of its potentiality. It applies the same drive that extended the capabilities of the horse with the automobile, terrestrial travel with air travel, and the boundaries of the old world with those of the new world. The push-pull ratcheting effect of evolution will ensure that this trend continues.

The human species capable of advanced technological innovation has existed in the universe for only several hundred thousand years. This species has now taken the first tentative steps to leave its planet of origin. Its descendants will over the next few thousand years begin to transform the universe on a cosmological scale.

Over time Meta-life will adapt and morph into much more flexible and abstract information-based forms, in order to withstand the extremes of extraterrestrial exploration and the requirement for vastly extended life-spans. One form will be the inter-stellar von Neumann probe, with human/web intelligence, capable of self-replicating and refuelling. These are likely to be released as early as the end of the 21st century. As they reach their target stars, copies will be made from available elements such as iron and nickel. The process will then be repeated over and over. Within the comparatively short timescale of less than a billion years, they will explore the entire galaxy and from there seed other galaxies.

According to a number of leading physicists and cosmologists, it is possible that our particular universe, initiated by the big bang, is but one of many, inflating eternally; perhaps only one an infinite number of universes all existing within a larger meta or multi-verse.

Leading cosmologists such as André Linde have postulated that it may be theoretically possible to induce an initial quantum fluctuation coupled with the addition of extra mass to establish the conditions for the creation of a universe artificially. This opens up the possibility that in the far future universes may be designed to specification; capable of evolving carbon-based life like ourselves or perhaps alternative life forms based on other exotic forms of matter.

Professor Frank Tipler, a major physicist and mathematician, in his book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, postulates that life may be capable of infinitely delaying the end singularity or Omega boundary point of a universe by processing an infinite amount of information, preserving true immortality for a future meta-life.

Alternatively, if life is capable of achieving the immense level of intelligence as predicted, it is also likely to possess the capability of seeding a universe either in physical or simulated form which will support its continued existence, recreating the conditions for the spontaneous re-emergence of life.

Finally it is postulated that life has been selected by the evolutionary process within the universe, as the most efficient form of information processor. This capacity will eventually accelerate it to unimaginable levels of intelligence, while at the same time extending the life of the universe and by implication its own existence.

This therefore is Life’s future.