Was I serious when I suggested that people might someday become more like cephalopods (see Jaron's World, April 2006)? At the time I was thinking about the way some cephalopods, such as the mimic octopus, can appear to morph into different objects. I wondered whether people using computers could someday pull off the same trick (within virtual reality, presumably) and how that ability might expand the range of human expression. My guess is that being able to turn into whatever comes into your mind—or, more profoundly, to simulate a concept or way of being instead of just talking about it—will lead to a new kind of expression, which I call postsymbolic communication.

This may sound wildly speculative, but yes, I really was serious. In fact, I believe we are seeing early signs of the cephalopodization of our species right now. One arena in which the transformation is beginning is in massive online virtual worlds. Second Life is probably the best example. I serve as a technical advisor to Linden Lab, the company that administers Second Life, but really, most of what I have done is watch in delight and amazement as thousands of creative individuals have signed up, logged in, and built an entire virtual planet.

In this new world, people can create fanciful avatars—digital representations of themselves—as well as buildings, artwork, clothing, and assorted other objects and services. These virtual elements can also be bought and sold. Second Life is the most authentic example yet of an Internet-based business. Compare it to Google: The ads on Google are often for things to buy in the physical world, like cars, flowers, or real estate. Why? Because more and more of the things you might get or do exclusively on the Internet are already available for free to entice you to visit sites where you will connect with those ads! But when people buy and sell a virtual house, jacket, or whatever in Second Life, it is truly money being spent on bits of information within the Internet, with no reference to events in the physical world.


As much as I am enjoying the unfolding of Second Life, I can see that it has limitations. The powers of invention that users can bring to bear in the virtual world are channeled through menus and sliding controls built into the program's user interface, so the differences between various avatars or buildings or other things are only skin deep. Don't get me wrong: Being able to change skin is a huge thing, and in fairness, that is most of what cephalopods can do, at least as they've evolved so far. (Give the cephalopods time, though—maybe a few hundred million years—and they might eventually evolve ways to use their morphing as the basis for intelligence and a civilization, just as humans did with spoken language.)

Obviously, a small set of menus and sliders cannot represent all the things that people can communicate to one another. Great writers change language itself in the process of writing. English was never the same after Shakespeare. The same can be said about music in the wakes of musicians like Igor Stravinsky or Louis Armstrong. Those people invented new menus and dials. In a similar way, we reinvent ourselves every day as we communicate with friends or lovers.

If our ability to invent new bodies and worlds could become a form of expression as deep as language or music, then it ought to be possible for morphing people to convey ideas and feelings just as deeply as great writers or musicians do (or, for that matter, as great lovers or great parents do). I believe that is actually happening already, if only in a limited way and on a modest scale. A small number of people, mostly mathematicians or scientists, have developed the skills to create deep simulations—meaning those that can change the underlying thinking that motivated the simulation in the first place—with enough ease and speed to give a precocious peek at some of the wonderful qualities human communication might encompass in the future.