Mapping the millennium: Innovative creators

WHAT separates humans from animals and ever more advanced machines? We create art - Art, storytelling and humour are wonderful things. Early into this millennium (say, 250 years), these will be among the only surviving vocations left from those we know today.

This "computer thing" will have blown over, reading and writing will have turned out to be a fad and the occupations of lawyers, doctors, taxicab drivers and especially MBAs will have all been relegated to the dustbin of historical curiosities.

We will take the knowledge resulting from dozens of new revolutions - genetic engineering, quantum computing, nanotechnology, computational biology - and use that knowledge to extend and improve our lives. Our inventions will continue to take over tasks that most of us would prefer not to spend time on. This includes envisioning, building and repairing other more complex machines.

In time, we will successfully design new intelligent life forms. These may be electronic, biological or most likely a hybrid of both.

The leap from Dolly and Deep Blue to actually creating the next living thing is enormous, but it is hardly any more surprising than what humankind has accomplished in the last 1,000 years. Eventually these new creations will replace us as the most intelligent species on earth. Will this be a threat? Is it possible that these superior entities will revolt and threaten our very existence? Could be, but I think not. Our machines will grow to appreciate us not for our intellect but for our creativity. You see, what is so special about us is that we make art. In a future when intelligent machines and invented life forms will reason and do our donkey work, human artists will become the most valued and irreplaceable of professionals. They will remain unique in an automated world. Painters, sculptors, writers, actors, choreographers, architects, animators, cartoonists and even people who can decorate a decent Easter egg will achieve unprecedented fame and fortune. In the new millennium it is a certainty that technology will continue to change our lives and alter our children's destiny. Most of humankind's greatest discoveries have yet to happen. Each new question will demand thoughtful answers and, frequently, new rules of conduct for society. I am counting on our art to keep us human and on our humour to keep us sane.

BRAN FERREN

The writer is the president for research and development, creative technology, at Walt Disney Imagineering.

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