How our mastery of biological, physical and cyber “base code” is transforming how we think about the future
As we increasingly master the “base code” that underpins the biological, physical and cyber worlds we inhabit, how do we use this power responsibly?
I’m sure that every generation has a point where its members believe they are at a pivotal point in human history. Sadly, generational exceptionalism rarely stands the test of time. Yet despite this, I believe that we truly are approaching a pivot point-not because of global warming, over-population, rampant resource abuse, or a myriad other critically important issues that we’re currently grappling with, but because of what I refer to in my 2018 book Films from the Future as our increasing mastery of “base code.”
To use an analogy from digital technologies, our phones, our computers and tablets, our smart devices, the internet, banking, healthcare, education, supply chains, and pretty much everything else that we rely on, all depend on complex strings of ones and zeroes embedded in code, and massive arrays of microscopically small switches that are part of the compute substrates that this code runs on. Master this “base code” of ones and zeroes and you can, in principle, control the world.
