Practical Faith in Prophetic Vision

This is an edited transcript of a presentation that I delivered at the Sunstone symposium, about practical faith in prophetic vision. My presentation was the introduction for a panel of presentations from other members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, including Brent Allsop, Bryant Smith, Chris Bradford, Joseph West, Karl Hale, and Kathy Wilson.

I’ll begin with a quote from Joseph Smith, one of my favorites, in fact. This is from Doctrine and Covenants section 121, which he wrote in 1839:

“God shall give unto you knowledge by his Holy Spirit that has not been revealed since the world was until now;

“Which our forefathers have awaited with anxious expectation to be revealed in the last times, which their minds were pointed to by the angels, as held in reserve for the fullness of their glory;

“A time to come in which nothing shall be withheld, whether there be one God or many Gods, they shall be manifest.

“… If there be bounds set to the heavens, or to the seas, or to the dry land, or to the sun, or stars –

“… All their glories, laws, and set times, shall be revealed in the days of the dispensation of the fullness of times –

“According to that which was ordained in the midst of the Council of the Eternal God of all other Gods before this world was, that should be reserved unto the finishing and the end thereof, when every man shall enter into his eternal presence and into his immortal rest.”

Joseph was prophetic.

With our new knowledge, we now navigate depths of the sea that sunlight does not reach. We rocket through the sky at speeds greater than that of sound. Computers that once filled entire warehouses now fit in the palms of our hands. We’ve used them to form the Internet and map the human genome.

We’ve visited the Moon. Our robots are scouting Mars. And private reusable spacecraft are preparing the way for space tourism. We’ve even demonstrated the feasibility of what Harry Potter might call “invisibility,” “levitation,” and “telepathy.”

Technological innovation has progressed exponentially, as has the adoption of new technology. Gordon Moore of Intel Corporation observed in 1965 that the ratio of complexity to cost of computing components was doubling every two years. In other words, for the same price as a computer in 1963, he could buy a computer that was twice as good in 1965. That trend, observed over 40 years ago, has remained true to this day and is known as Moore’s Law.

In 2001, inventor Ray Kurzweil observed that exponential advance has been occurring not only in computing power, but in human technology generally. He also observed, by projecting these trends into the future, that we may soon experience a period of time when technology advances so rapidly and dramatically that, given our current limitations, we could not predict or control the outcome. This theoretical period of time is known as the Technological Singularity.

It appears that the signs of the Singularity are all around us.

Today, high-end desktop computers have quad-core processors. Intel tells us that they’ll be selling us 80-core processors even sooner than Moore’s Law might predict.

Today, we’re able to produce three-dimensional scans of the human brain. Meanwhile, IBM is working on full brain emulations.

Today, we’re learning new ways to extend human life. Soon we may learn how to extend it indefinitely.

Today, contractors for the United States military are simulating Earth down to the detail of groups of 100 individuals. Some day, we may produce synthetic worlds detailed enough to contain persons like you and me.

Mormon Transhumanists advocate practical faith in human exaltation through charitable use of science and technology.