The UFO Singularity (22 page)

By the same token, I could also argue in the defense of these researchers, somewhat, by admitting that an invisible target is awfully hard to shoot. UFO craft aren’t best known for putting themselves out in the open for all to see, and thus, it is also understandable, to some degree, why so much emphasis is rested on the processes of data compilation. I believe that Collin Bennett may have said it best when he noted, “As any secret agent will tell us, the secret of success in this profession is not to look like James Bond, but to look like absolutely nothing at all. This is
the secret of invisibility.”
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Bennett’s wisdom doesn’t end there, however. In fact, his musings on the current state of UFO research are perhaps some of the finest in terms of characterizing the underlying aliment, and not merely the overt symptoms:

There is a need to construct a New Ufology which gets away from the passive listing of countless case histories from the past. Ufological studies should be integrated with the latest developments in psychology and mathematics, along with up-to-date Postmodern views on Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing.
⁹

Sharing these sentiments, it was with similar reasoning in mind that I chose, with this book, to focus on the potential technological developments of the
future,
rather than to solely examine case histories and past analyses. Granted, with this book we have spent a good bit of time discussing the way expected future technologies could have already been developed elsewhere in the universe, or even here on Earth, for that matter. We’ve looked at how the resultant civilizations could fit into the framework surrounding the greater UFO mystery. Then again, we have also spent time looking back to mystery airships of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as that most pivotal period in our history, the Second World War, during which the necessity for technological advancement may have served as the catalyst for the beginnings of a host of highly advanced, “futuristic” technologies. My reasons for doing this, however, are nonetheless
geared toward understanding a few key factors that may very likely be underlying the greater UFO phenomenon. For one, looking at the potential existence of advanced aviation technology more than a century ago outlines the ways that
independent private operations
might exist behind the technology witnessed in at least some UFO reports, rather than just circumstances involving the ever-ubiquitous “they,” which we assume, largely, to be government entities. (For a more thorough analysis of subversive private operations related to UFOs, and the potential for so-called “breakaway civilizations,” review the written works of authors Joseph P. Farrell and Richard Dolan.) In other cases, it may simply have been that the beginnings of certain advanced scientific innovations had their genesis during a period such as World War II; if the latter were indeed the case, and what we might call “flying saucer technology” has its roots in this era—an idea that many have proposed through the years—then a strong argument for the careful suppression of this technology can also be made.

I have, on occasion, even received a few startling stories from people who have contacted me, which seemed to hint at suppression along these lines. Granted, I can hardly speak to the veracity of any such claims, knowing full well the kinds of things some people will say and do for attention (particularly in this field of research). In at least one instance, an individual who had been in contact with me about a vivid UFO encounter she and another witness had shared several years beforehand, made the claim that
she had been approached by an individual in plainclothes attire, much like the various classic encounters with alleged Men in Black seen throughout UFO literature. The witness claimed that this strange man
specifically
told her “not to share any more information with Micah Hanks,” with further promise that if she did, she would be visited again. Needless to say, the witness requested anonymity, and after being told this otherwise rather fanciful series of events, the individual who shared the story with me made no further attempts at contact. Admittedly, this tale bears more than just a passing resemblance to the sorts of MIB encounters related by the likes of John Keel and, more recently, researcher Nick Redfern in his book
The Real Men in Black.
I’m left to guess whether the incident really occurred or not, whether the witness was indeed “visited” again, and whether there really might be groups or individuals out there seeking to silence the claims of UFO witnesses.

Though this certainly could be a probable scenario, at least a few of the reasons a group might do this have indeed been made clear already. Returning again to the work of Nick Redfern, this time as outlined in his book
On the Trail of the Saucer Spies,
it was a concern among many intelligence officials, especially during the Cold War years, that some UFO researchers might actually be using their apparent interest in extraterrestrial phenomenon as a cover, while their real interest could be aimed at obtaining secret information about advanced air craft, which might later be passed along to enemy nations.
¹⁰
For
obvious reasons, this would have been a
very
legitimate concern, especially given the pressure and paranoia that stemmed from what, at the time, were realistic threats of mutually assured destruction during that era.

And yet, although I’ve made it clear already that I don’t attribute the entirety of my hope in unraveling the UFO mystery to extraterrestrial sources, my interest in the activities of secret aircraft is also cursory, at very best. I would not debate, of course, the tantalizing nature of any idea involving secret aircraft resembling saucers, or even the ominous, silent triangles whose shadow alone could darken entire football fields, being produced here on Earth. However, if this were the ultimate truth underlying the UFO enigma, and I were suddenly exposed to this clandestine knowledge sometime today or tomorrow, I would no doubt accept it—perhaps loudly retorting something akin to “I told you so”—and then move on.

Of far greater philosophical interest to me are the
other
potentials tucked away within the study of UFOs, which are far broader than anything as simple or obvious as the old “we built them” or “they traveled here from Zeta Reticuli” arguments. To pursue these, of course, would become a speculative endeavor, at least in part, but that hasn’t seemed to thwart our progress much yet within the context of this present essay. Whether or not my reasoning will bear any fruit, perhaps time will tell—though I warn readers now that my intended meaning here, especially with regard to how
time
may be involved,
could be somewhat misleading at the outset. If you will, I kindly ask that you humor me just a while longer.

On account of the observed effects of things such as time dilation, which we discussed previously, we know that the real, physical nature of time is not the observed constant that it appears to be, at least relative to human perception. In theory, aspects of what we would recognize chronologically as “the future” do already exist. So why, then, are humans incapable of perceiving such things, perhaps as literal “memories” of the future? Arguably, our limited ability to perceive certain aspects of what we refer to as “time” stem from our existence as three-dimensional, biological organisms. We are trapped within a perceptual illusion, which we recognize as being an ongoing chronological progression through the world around us that continues throughout the course of our lives. Though we seldom think about it, we are innately influenced by a variety of forces that exist in our universe, and by the manner in which those forces act on our physiology, and even our consciousness.

In his book
A Brief History of Time,
Stephen Hawking makes a few brilliant points regarding what he calls “The Arrow of Time,” and how thermodynamic principles might be used to explain why human perceptions of time only tend to work with regard to our ability to perceive memories of the past. To illustrate this, he begins by explaining the known processes by which a computer stores information, and then relates this to entropy, and finally to the likely processes comprising human cognition and memory:

Before an item is recorded in a computer’s memory, the memory is in a disordered state, with equal probabilities for the two possible states… after the memory interacts with the system to be remembered, it will definitely be in one state or the other, according to the state of the system.… So the memory has passed from a disordered state to an ordered one. However, in order to make sure that the memory is in the right state, it is necessary to use a certain amount of energy…this energy is dissipated as heat, and increases the amount of disorder in the universe. One can show that this increase in disorder is always greater than the increase in order of the memory itself. Thus the heat expelled by the computer’s cooling fan means that when a computer records an item in memory, the total amount of disorder in the universe still goes up. The direction of time in which a computer remembers the past is the same as that in which disorder increases.

Our subjective sense of the direction of time, the psychological arrow of time, is therefore determined within our brain by the thermodynamic arrow of time. Just as a computer, we must remember things in the order in which entropy increases.
¹¹

Hawking goes on to argue, based on the weak anthropic principle, that the very existence of intelligent life like ourselves must rely on the universe being in a state of expansion through time. In this state, the universe grows outward, trending ever more toward a state of disorder as time progresses. “Thus,” Hawking says:

…intelligent life could not exist in the contracting phase of the universe. This is the explanation of why we observe that the thermodynamic and cosmological arrows of time point in the same direction. It is not that the expansion of the universe causes disorder to increase. Rather, it is that the no boundary condition causes disorder to increase and the conditions to be suitable for intelligent life only in the expanding phase.”
¹²

This brings to mind a very interesting question. In the event that certain aspects of entropy could be reversed or nullified, and more specifically, through technology that changed these sorts of things relative to an individual, how would such a being be capable of perceiving time? If a physical being could harness the literal ability to prevent the entropic processes that govern their perception of time and overall longevity—in other words, if they could achieve immortality—then how might their perception of time change, or would it?

In truth, immortality alone may not be enough to do the trick. The physical processes underlying cognitive activities expend far more energy, and thus
increase
universal disorder, than the order that is achieved by functions of the mind such as creating a memory. What we would need, in addition to technology that would aid the reversal of entropy’s influence on the physical body, would be more efficient processes that could similarly influence entropic influence on human cognition.

The concept of reversing entropy has been a point of argument since long before now; physicist Erwin Schrödinger discussed this as far back as 1943, in his book
What Is Life?,
inspiring the later use of a term Léon Brillouin created for this, which he called
negentropy.
¹³
The idea of negentropy has at times also been closely linked to discussions involving free energy—which, as a brief aside, is interesting to note here if we consider the expected use of vast and limitless power sources many have proposed for the function behind various UFO craft. The connections here might strongly suggest that harnessing an ability to reverse or manipulate the effects of entropy would almost be requisite for the kinds of technologies UFOs seem to utilize. Of course, the same could be said of any other intelligent race that seeks to expand their universal horizons in such a way, and hence, humans can’t be left out of the running here, either. And though we’re still a good way from achieving methods of reversing entropy in order to change human physiology—or perhaps even human perception of time—when we consider many of the expected advents of Transhumanism, there may indeed be factors present that could allow us to rethink the apparent limitations entropy imposes on beings like ourselves.

Kurzweil and others within Transhumanist circles have spoken extensively of things like nanotechnology (which my colleague Alexei Turchin also mentioned briefly, in the last chapter) for use in miniaturizing computer systems and furthering human technology on the near-atomic scale. Eventually, this kind of technology will also
present us with new ways we can improve ourselves as individuals, but of equal relevance to the discussion of nanotech for use in computing processes and the reversal of entropy is the concept of
reverse computation.
This could be defined as computation that manages to conserve energy by maintaining and performing operations that
preserve
a system, rather than creating entropy (released as heat) through more destructive operations, the likes of which are still in use with present-day computers. Successful demonstrations have already shown that reverse computation can be achieved, though the technology is obviously still in its infancy.
¹⁴
However, we already know from the few existing studies that the process does result in both a reduction in energy input, as well as the expected resulting decrease in heat dissipation, both of which
greatly
increase the overall efficiency of any system that may utilize such processes.

Bringing this back to the concept of nanotechnology, in his paper “A Physicist’s Model of Computation,” Edward Fredkin addresses why the use of microscopic components would allow a computer to operate at its absolute maximum levels of efficiency:

If [a] computer is built out of microscopically reversible components then it can be perfectly efficient. How much energy does a perfectly efficient computer have to dissipate in order to compute something? The answer is that
the computer does not need to dissipate any energy.
[author’s emphasis]
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