If you look at the way information technology is adopted by the ‘general population’ you can conclude that communicating is the killer app. (Perhaps communication will always be the killer app!) Therefore it is interesting to think about how nano, neuro and/or biotechnology might evolve communication.

The next step in communication is directly enhancing your body so communication becomes not only ubiquitous but also unconscious. Nanotechnology might provide us with devices small enough to ‘interface’ with on the scale of biological systems. If we achieve this this level of technological enhancement people will be able to sense/grasp/reach/talk/think/feel together.

In Alistair Reynolds‘ Revelation Space he describes an advanced mankind, well into the future, where these technologies are already commodities. He envisions two distinct (and sometimes rivalling) ways for societies to evolve by incorporating these technologies relating to communication. There are the demarchists and the conjoiners. The demarchists use these technological enhancements to improve democracy. By continuous (and sometimes almost unconscious) polling on policy there is almost no hierarchical democracy. The polling system is so ingenious that you (the demarchist) are rated with hindsight based on the ‘correctness’ of the answer.

The conjoiners, on the other hand, have taken a different step altogether. By being so closely connected to each other something that can be considered a hive mind has emerged. A conjoiner is very much an individual (read Stephen Baxter’s Coalescence on hives and hive minds where individuality is almost totally lost) but to a large extend she freely values the hive above herself. The emerged ’super intelligence’ is such a personal improvement that the totality is the transcendence of the individuality. Reynolds coined the term Transenlightenment for this phenomenon.

The demarchist society is interesting because modern political movements suggest this one of the goals. Modern democratic systems are increasingly making use of referenda (polls) and are very much struggling with communication with their constituents (mainly voters.) It is interesting to note that this society has no political parties. In fact you might claim that the societal politics have given way for policy.

But the conjoiner society is even more interesting, I think. In the first place conjoiner society is not so much a society, it is a ‘method’ that is creates small groups of individuals. Not more than a few hundred individuals will form one Nest. This limitation of group size fits nicely with our history. We started out has herds of monkeys! Second is the way evolution is understood to be working. Evolution is not about the survival of the individual but of the species. In the end the choices (consciously or unconsciously) we make, the behaviour/instinct we exhibit are all ‘designed’ to propagate the species. The survival of the species is the ultimate biological goal!

So we might not be interviewing the next Steve Mann in 10 years time. We might be looking for ways to show a collective consciousness!!