NBIC stands for Nano Bio Informatic and Cognitive. Each has its own fundamental unit, in order: atom, gene, information bit, and neuron.
NBIC is a fast developing area of research. The goal is to merge these domains through and across each other, collecting data at each of these levels and being able to manipulate and control at each of these levels. Turn humans and our environments into data, sensors and more or less linear input-output devices. The “bug-ification” of humanity under the guise of transhumanist ideals. Interesting the different meanings of the word ‘bug’, come to think of it… a very simple lifeform, an error in a system, to listen in or spy on someone, to bother or annoy someone.
Despite its transhuman overtones NBIC itself is a nice example of the influence of tectonics. Multiple layers stacked up and interacting as tiers or plates shifting and moving through/into/around one another, partially merging yet remaining what they are and all at the same time causing frictions, tensions and stress, ruptures, eruptions and chaotic change. Yet that chaos is also ordered both within layers and above them, top down and bottom up are synced up in this way ‘under surfaces’ and quite naturally, beyond any need for this syncing to be organized deliberately by intentional minds.
Identifying the fundamental units of the various layers would be a key part of learning how to control them. We see these efforts already underway in things like smart dust, biodigital human authentication, gene therapy injections like the covid jabs, even CBDCs are an attempt to establish a new fundamental unit for economics and finance. Each unit can then be linked up through extended systems an digital processes to other units, merging layers in new ways. Nature or God has already created this setup where they are already merged intricately into a vast system. But clearly some people are not happy with that and want to make their own connections, forge their own controls and recreate the world. You might want to ask yourself how society and your life will be different in 3, 5, 10 years from now and without your consent or input, just as you might like to consider what are the motivations and underlying psychological states of the people who are developing and pushing all of this technology. Or not, most people don’t care.
Regardless, playing with this level of reality is going to get messy. I’d hate to be so chiche as to invoke the Jurassic Park lines about playing God and fucking around with nature too much, but. The point is more that this deep tectonic work must be truth-centered, must adhere to reality at the basic as well as at higher levels of truth. To disregard truth at this level of power would be catastrophic in ways we cannot imagine. How many of the creators of this technology are also philosophers? Not many, but certainly some. Also there is the fact that nature has many self-correcting mechanisms in-built and the deep tectonic layers simply won’t make themselves amenable to certain types of manipulations and falsifications. We must learn, culturally and over time, how to transfer and transition these NBIC type manipulations and deep probings into positive channels of expression and potentials that inherently limit possible harmful and uncontrolled reactions. A more or less libertarian mindset will be needed to achieve this, which is what I think is coming and already being built underneath all of this hyper-leftist woke neoliberalism that we see going on today. Thought policing and cancel culture will extent but also rarify, be limited to only actual threats to the world-controllers while everything else good or evil will be allowed. This is already more or less how things are playing out. The good news about this is that it implies degrees of autonomy and opt-in or opt-out with regard to these intrusive new technologies. If you want to use them, great. If not, then ok you don’t have to. Different worlds will begin to be built, more so than they already are for example across spans of socioeconomic status; we will have new world-divergences along the lines of technological status, how ‘transhuman’ or how bug-ified you want to be or allow yourself to be.
