This utopian, end-of-history description might ironically turn out to be the end of human history as we know it. Moravec suggests a scenario in which some robots are able to break loose from the control of humans: “This marks the point where the genie finally gets out of the bottle,” and humans find themselves faced with superintelligent machines. Under conditions of extreme competition between robots, Moravec does not expect humanity to last long. But “the takeover will be swift and painless” Moravec says. That’s because “machine intelligence will be so far advanced, so incomprehensible to human beings, that we literally won’t know what hit us.” Robots will “find human activity interesting from a historical perspective,” and they will remember us “as their ancestors”; According to Moravec, “We are their past, and they will be interested in us for the same reason that today we are interested in the origins of our own life on Earth” (Platt 1995b). In Moravec’s scenario, humans are reenvisioned to remain part of the history of the world, that is, part of technological history, but this time not as prime subjects, but rather as objects. As Moravec puts it, “The robots will be a continuation of us, and they won’t mean our extinction any more than a new generation of children spells the extinction of the previous generation of adults” (Platt 1995b).
To those who consider Moravec’s forecasting a tragedy, he replies that “reversing the evolution of technology” would be even more disastrous. He therefore suggests reconciling with that future. We should “try to catch up with technology by accelerating our own evolution.” As he puts it, “We can change ourselves . . . and we can also build new children who are properly suited for the new conditions. Robot children.” Since technology has a rationale and a history of its own, since it responds to its own laws of evolution and since it is autopoetic, humans have nothing much to do other than to accept this technological reality. And besides, should his prognosis happens it will be “the ultimate form of human transcendence” (Platt 1995b).
Conclusion: Network Cosmology and the End of History
The digital discourse’s underlying theory of network technology and its place in society—its network cosmology—has been discussed by way of three central narratives:
• The naturalization of network technology. The digital discourse’s theory suggests network technology is a natural construct, the technological condition’s return to the order of the natural world, and an overcoming of the techno-human chasm. Contrary to the Industrial Revolution, the digital revolution is not so much an expansion of culture and rationality as it is a return to nature. This theory further implies a direct link between technological forms and social forms; technology, according to this theory, determines the shape of society.
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