Singularity Countdown

Possible ethical concerns aside, the exhibit Our Body the Universe Within is a fascinating reminder of the potential for modular, replaceable limbs and organs of our post-human future. The stark collection of preserved bodies and organs bring the cadaver to the layperson, nearly an open source anatomy.

Just as interesting as the specimens on display is the history of anatomy and medicine itself. The exhibit describes how Galen performed brain surgery and removed cataracts in the second century AD, and emphasizes that research into further improvements were suppressed for over a thousand years by the Catholic church.

It fails to mention that Galen himself worked as well under religious suppression, and that his techniques for cataract removal were documented in De Medicina, a text written over a century before Galen's birth.

However, the process of cataract removal was actually developed by Sushruta, an Indian physician in the 6th century BC, considered the father of surgery. Sushruta, additionally, developed plastic surgery, with many techniques remaining unchanged into modern times.

And what's this to do with the Singularity?

Imagine for a moment where we might be right now were it not for these centuries, these millennia, of religious suppression and persecution of scientific and medical research. Then think of how long we want to continue to hold things up with the current corporate suppression of research.

Open source computer programming is in the process of demonstrating, in a profound and visible fashion, the raw power of collaboration. Hundreds of thousands of programmers are daily combatting the powerhouses of Microsoft and IBM, often from within the ranks of corporate society. Millions of users are embracing and enjoying the results, such as with the Firefox browser and Open Office. Open source software will certainly influence the direction of the Singularity, whatever form that takes.

As much medical progress as we've seen this past century, it's tempered by the tragedy of the anti-commons. Research itself is prohibitively expensive, partly because researchers need to purchase even the right to research from a dozen related patent-holders, even when there is little chance of creating a marketable product from the research. And with the ability granted by our courts to patent genes, it's not even clear who could own your own cellular material in the end.

With Open Source Biotechnology, we could see an exponential explosion of progress. We need to rethink our current system of intellectual property across the spectrum. Having genetic research freely available could spur the ailing industry that has largely forgotten that it should act first in the benefit of the patient, rather than the all-mighty dollar.

And the secret? One can become wealthy with open source as well, and benefit from all the free help available from other open source practitioners.

Medical research, by the way, was not suppressed by all cultures during the European blackout of the early Catholic church. Cataract surgery itself was improved in Iraq by Ammar ibn Ali of Mosul, a Muslim ophthalmologist, around 1000 AD. It may not, in the end, be the West that heralds the Singularity.

What I was reminded most from visiting the Our Bodies The Universe Within exhibit, was that our bodies belong to ourselves. We need to reclaim that. When we are able to freely follow our own paths of research, without regard to profit, but simply for the purpose of bettering ourselves, then we will be well on our way to the post-human.