Following on from my last post about the fabric or reality here’s another in a similar vein. Both are from the cutting room floor in the sense that I’m doing a second (and hopefully final) edit of one of my new books (The Future: 50 things you really need to know) and these didn’t make the cut for one reason or another.

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Consciousness is difficult to get your head around. It’s essentially thoughts, or awareness, generated by the interaction between the human brain and the outside world, although some might argue that it’s your mind not your brain doing this. Perhaps it’s simply awareness of self or of one’s own thinking.

Consciousness is somewhat problematic in that we cannot currently define it let alone understand exactly how it works or replicate it. Where, for example, does consciousness reside? Is the brain separate from the mind, and if so, how is it separate? Until we can answer these questions, we will never be able to create an artificial intelligence (AI) that will truly rival human beings. Machines are already very smart, but they are a very long way away from being able to criticise their own thinking or create their own problems. In short, can a machine ever really be described as intelligent if it does not really think in the true sense of the word?

Thinking about this issue in a slightly different way, perhaps new forms of intelligence will emerge from new forms of chaos. For example, think of the way that shoals of fish move around or swarms of bees interact. Maybe, the wisdom of crowds will evolve into something resembling a ‘hive’ consciousness – billions of human brains unknowingly connecting with each other to create a superior form of instinctive intelligence.

In a book about the future, and the fringes of current thinking, it is worth probing two areas that relate to human consciousness, both of which are somewhat metaphysical and philosophical. The first is how do we know that what we currently understand as consciousness (i.e. being alive) is not merely a Matrix movie-like dream or simulation? How do we know that we even exist? If you are interested in this I would recommend another book in this series, which is 50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Need to Know. That’s a cheap way of digging myself out of a large hole.

The second thought is whether or not it could be possible for human consciousness to reside or move outside of the human body. This will sound a little crazy, but we need to consider this for two reasons. First, this could link to discussions about a human soul, which links to various spiritual and religious ideas. Second, if we are trying to turn ourselves into immortal beings (transhumanism) or build true thinking machines (AI), this could lead to the development of devices that could ‘hold our souls’ – or at least an individual consciousness.

Some religions, of course, may argue that this happens already. Some faiths, for instance, believe that after a person dies, their spirit or soul leaves the old body and passes to that of another animal or even a plant. Maybe one day it will be discovered that this is true or that it is possible for a soul to pass into, or somehow inhabit, inert objects or materials such as rocks. Or that consciousness contains some kind of unknown energy that can be housed in things such as buildings or disrupt other unknown energy fields.

And what of animals? They have brains, but do they possess consciousness? This is an ethically charged area, not least because if you deny animals consciousness (or knowledge of their own existence) this can be used as a justification for killing them.

And what of plants? Could we one day discover that they possess some kind of limited consciousness? It’s not impossible that consciousness is actually a continuum and that all living things have some level of self-knowledge.

And if you think that’s a bit unlikely I have another idea for you. What if it were one day possible to introduce, or remove, memories from the head of an individual via pharmacological intervention. You could then make people believe that something had happened to them even when it had not or, conversely, remove the memory of real experiences. And, of course, the individual could be made unaware that such an intervention had ever taken place. The military would have an obvious interest in what could perhaps be termed ‘pharmaceutical reality’ due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and so to would some victims of serious crime. But what if governments or corporations (or even parents) started to alter reality in this manner? Perhaps it would start, innocently enough, with a desire to remove the stress and strain of everyday living via neural implants, but who is to say that it would stop there?