They Aren’t Who You Think

Mercury, November/December 2003 Table of Contents

Image courtesy of Don Dixon (www.cosmographica.com).

by Steven J. Dick

If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, they’re likely to be machines, not creatures of flesh and blood.

In its current form, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a search for life that is a product of biological evolution. But we may in fact live in a postbiological universe, one that has evolved beyond flesh and blood intelligence to artificial intelligence, a product of cultural rather than biological evolution.

Although I am not the first to suggest this possibility, the argument has not been given the attention it is due, nor has it been carried to its logical conclusion. We must engage in long-term thinking when we contemplate the problem of intelligence in the universe. I will present arguments for a postbiological universe and describe what it might be like, and I will discuss the implications for SETI.

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