12-03-2018, 05:05 PM
To look at this another way, the 'white matter'/connectivity question is basic to any consideration of the future of artificial intelligence and telecommunications in general. Over time the Earth will become increasingly well-connected, with net-connected humans and eventually true AIs contributing increasing amounts of data. In due course this network of connectivity will cover the Solar System and hopefully reach to the stars. At all times this connectivity will be constrained by bandwidth and the number of connections.
A truly advanced civilisation would want to maximise this connectome, but there are real physical restraints on how much connectivity is possible in real space- so there will also be an imperative towards making the individual processing nodes and actors in this civilisation as smart and independent as possible. I'm not sure that leaves much of a role for human-level modosophonts, although paradoxically an advanced civilisation of this kind could conceivably provide the best possible environment for comfortable modosophont living.
A truly advanced civilisation would want to maximise this connectome, but there are real physical restraints on how much connectivity is possible in real space- so there will also be an imperative towards making the individual processing nodes and actors in this civilisation as smart and independent as possible. I'm not sure that leaves much of a role for human-level modosophonts, although paradoxically an advanced civilisation of this kind could conceivably provide the best possible environment for comfortable modosophont living.