Looking at the impacts of the
computer browser, the printing press and psychoanalysis could help prepare the
world for AI
AMONG THE more sombre gifts
brought by the Enlightenment was the realisation that humans might one day
become extinct. The astronomical revolution of the 17th century had shown that
the solar system both operated according to the highest principles of reason
and contained comets which might conceivably hit the Earth. The geological
record, as interpreted by the Comte de Buffon, showed massive extinctions in
which species vanished forever. That set the scene for Charles Darwin to
recognise such extinctions as the motor of evolution, and thus as both the
force which had fashioned humans and, by implication, their possible destiny.
The nascent science of thermodynamics added a cosmic dimension to the certainty
of an ending; Sun, Earth and the whole shebang would eventually run down into a
lifeless “heat death”.
