Computers and telecommunications are already giving us access to large amounts of information This is increasing our brain power, just as steam engines increased our muscle power. As computers become more powerful they will grow more intelligent There seems no reason why machines should not become more intelligent than people in the future. Computers will start to design and build other computers. They will then be able to evolve, just as life evolves. There will then be two forms of "life". Many thousands of years in the future there might be competition for power between computers and life. Which will win?

Well, computers certainly have many advantages over life. They can

* process large amounts of information quickly
* be switched off for years, then start to work perfectly when they are switched back on (very handy for travelling over stellar distances)
* be made very small, and control tiny machines
* work together in networks to solve big problems

Furthermore

* Electronics is much simpler than life's chemistry and does not need liquid water.
* Unlike animals, which rely on plants to turn sunlight into chemical energy, semiconductors (the material that computers are made from) can turn sunlight directly into electricity.

When you compare computers to people the advantages are even more obvious.

* Computers do not have the instincts to fight which people seem to have.
* It takes only a few seconds to load a program into a computer but years to educate a human.
* When computers get out of date their information can be passed to new computers, but when people get old and die all their knowledge is lost.

For all these reasons I believe computers will be more successful and important than life many thousands of years in the future. I expect computers, not people, to colonize the other planets and explore the Galaxy. Life will be left behind on Earth, as a treasured relic of where computers came from.
However it is possible that computers and life might merge to make a new, even more powerful form of intelligent being.

This intelligent being we shall call a nerd.

We are on the edge of such a new evolution, with genetic manipulation. In maybe a hundred years we can not only program computers, but also new lifeforms, making them more intelligent, faster grow, stronger, better. Those new genetic generations will on their turn create even more intelligent and better lifeforms, and so on. No doubt computers will be mixed with nature, implants will be used for example making the eye see more colors of the spectrum; infrared vision and be able to zoom your vision by only thinking about it (that would be awesome ).

It can go in different directions by then, either we are becomming more conscious about our universe and such, and be friendly and all, or we turn into machines, making us more like the borg from star trek , slowly, without notice.

How can something as imperfect as us create something and expect it to be perfect?

-Paul.

"Electronics is much simpler than life's chemistry and does not need liquid water."

That may be true now, but if we ever truly acheive AI, then I would assume that computers will be just as complex in nature as actual living beings. I don't think we'll ever truly create a 'Real' intelligence with machines, but I think we'll come up with a good simulation of it that will amaze a lot of people even if it isn't the real deal.

I think we will invent AI and give life to artificial forms. How do you define life is the question.

I think life could be distilled as an "adaptive resistance to entropy". Right now our machines can't create or repair themselves completely. They also can't evolve. When this happens, then machines will be alive.

The AI side of the equation, is them just getting smarter. That's inevitable, but without the aforementioned embodiment of life they are simple simulations, or mirrors of intellect. Disembodied and just as good as dead.

@ Paul.. doesnt mean it'll be perfect..just moreso than us.

@ Scram

I was watching I, Robot the other day, and it brought to question how we would even know when the boundary between lines of code and self aware being is crossed. How will we know whether the complexity of articulation and sensitivity achieved is just a fascimily or is actually the formation of what we might term as a soul? I think it's possible that it can and will be crossed as AI evolves...and our trouble as humans will be recognizing this and learning to treat and respect them as self aware (perhaps not living by our definition but self aware nonetheless) beings.

when humanity finally understands how all the electrical connections and chemical reactions in the brain work, we will be very close to simulating, or even replicating it.