Table Of ContentT
HE
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NTELLIGENT
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NIVERSE
by James Gardner
AI, ET,
AND THE
E M C
MERGING IND OF THE OSMOS
NEW PAGE BOOKS
A division of The Career Press, Inc.
Franklin Lakes, NJ
Copyright © 2007 by James Gardner
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Gardner, James N.
Intelligent universe : AI, ET, and the emerging mind of the cosmos / by James
Gardner.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-56414-919-0
ISBN-10: 1-56414-919-6
1. Exobiology. 2. Extraterrestrial anthropology. 3. Life on other planets. 4. Human-
alien encounters. 5. Fermi’s paradox. 6. End of the universe. I. Title.
QH327.G37 2007
576.8’39--dc22
2006030552
T
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Epigraph
Looking back from the year 3000—some 40
generations hence—most of the historical and
political issues that concern us now will have been
forgotten. World War II will seem as distant as the
Battle of Hastings does to us now. The geopolitical
landscape will have transformed into an
astropolitical landscape. Our science will seem
quaint and embryonic. However, the desire to
better know our place in the universe, to push the
frontiers, to explore beyond one more barrier, will
remain.
—Steven J. Dick, chief historian, NASA
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T
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to the memory of Fred Hoyle,
author of the first The Intelligent Universe, whose
scientific imagination soared far beyond the bonds
of his home planet and who sought to touch the
face of that unknown superintelligence, whose
fingerprints he clearly perceived in the mysteriously
life-friendly details of stellar nucleosynthesis.
Fred Hoyle’s intellectual style and blunt manner did
not always endear him to the scientific establish-
ment. As Hoyle’s biographer Simon Mitton notes,
although stellar evolution was the common theme
of the 1983 Nobel award for physics, Hoyle was
suspiciously denied a share of the prize. Some
astronomers, Mitton observes, “still feel that the
[Nobel] academy committed a gross injustice by
declining to split the award three ways, thus
including Hoyle.”1
If the proponents of the many-worlds interpretation
of quantum physics are correct and there are
multiple versions of reality, some of which differ only
slightly from our own cosmos, then I would like to
imagine that in one of those worlds—a more just
and fair-minded world, to be sure, than that which
we inhabit—there is a newspaper archive
somewhere containing an old, yellowed copy of a
1983 issue of The New York Times announcing that
Sir Fred Hoyle, astronomer and astrophysicist
extraordinaire, has just been awarded the Nobel
Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking contributions
to humanity’s understanding of the nucleosynthetic
process by which the chemical elements so utterly
essential to life are forged in the hearts of giant
supernova conflagrations.
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Acknowledgments
Many people helped me in conceiving and writing
this book. So a tip of the hat, in no particular order,
to the following:
Natasha Kern, my literary agent, who possesses
amazing reservoirs of patience, skill, and tenacity.
All the great people at Career Press/New Page Books,
especially Michael Pye and my editor, Astrid deRidder.
The distinguished scientists, academicians, and
futurists (especially Ray Kurzweil, Freeman Dyson,
Seth Shostak, John Casti, Simon Mitton, and Steven
J. Dick) who read the manuscript (or the essays on
which it is based) and offered their insights and
critiques. Any errors that remain are solely my
responsibility.
My sweet and smart wife Lynda—truly, in the words
of songsters Jesse Belvin and Curtis Williams, an
Earth angel—who has an awesome capacity for
love and support.
And, finally, to the beautiful and mysterious
universe itself—veiled cosmic dancer inseparable
from the dance of life—that is both as distant as
the farthest star and as near as the nose on your
face.
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Contents
FOREWORD
by Ray Kurzweil 11
INTRODUCTION
It Takes a Giant Cosmos to Create Life and Mind 17
Part I: Artificial Intelligence 25
CHAPTER 1
Hitching a Ride on the Software of Everything 27
CHAPTER 2
Stages on Artificial Life’s Way 49
CHAPTER 3
Singularities Beyond Singularities 67
Part II: Extraterrestrials 89
CHAPTER 4
The Fermi Paradox Revisited 91
CHAPTER 5
Colonizing the Cosmos at Light Speed 105
CHAPTER 6
The Cosmic Medium Is the Message 115
