So what comes next? How do we pursue what comes next? Should we pursue what comes next?
We find a lot of questions here and very few answers. Let's look at each possibility and see if we can find examples of a bootstrap already occurring.
Inorganic -> Biology II
Biology -> System III
Society -> Supersociety
Intelligence -> Superintelligence
We find some complications in predicting the next bootstrap because we now have four different frames through which to achieve it.
We first consider that the inorganic may not have finished bootstrapping at all. The biological impressively leveraged patterned forces to an entire new system, but perhaps the carbon based bootstrap precedes a second emergent pattern that can reach a coherent system.
If we look and changing our frame of reference we will find all sorts of bootstraps that have occurred because of patterned forces.
The forming, expanding, and dying of galaxies reside at one end of the time and distance scale where we see emergence of entities, with diversity and interaction.
On a much smaller scale, science uncovers a number of inorganic patterns that get manipulated to produce unique behavior. The conditions for some of these patterns to sustain themselves may take an intelligence to produce.
Consider for example, an set of inorganically based neurons that have produce an intelligence that can sustain itself and spread itself. Given what we know about electricity and the forces involved, perhaps this kind of bootstrap has already occurred 'somewhere' out in the universe. Many AI researchers actively try to pursue this kind of bootstrap.
Consider what would identify something as a unique Biology II instead of just another branch of our current biological bootstrap. The underlying economics of this Biology II will not use reproduction as the basis of its new economics.
Consider something like 'the borg' in Star Trek. Now this example has a bit of intelligence mixed in(otherwise it wouldn't be a very good story), but let’s pretend that the borg didn't have an evil intelligence at its center, but instead just operated on the basis of 'assimilation'. This system seeks to draw resources to itself and grow.
You may find some merit in looking at general, base elements and considering, 'what system do I want to work here' and then arranging the elements in such a way that the elements pursue that agenda. The bootstrap emerges out of that we don't expect.
You can see the areas of personalized medicine and nanotechnology here. You can also see the underlying threats of things like the gray goo scenario.
In the end we still have the economics of patterned forces at the inorganic level, but we look for ways in which those forces emerge to pursue something other than 'survival of the fittest.'
To date, biology has spawned two different bootstraps, the society bootstrap and the intelligence bootstrap. What can we consider and say about a possible third system that could emerge out of biology?
We have two systems, one that values resource allocation, and one that values the observation of time. Do we just start picking out other things that exist and doing thought experiments?
Let's take something like 'physical connection'. In this thought experiment, our biological system begins to value having as many connections with other entities as possible. Consider a being that, when it encounters another being, can read its DNA and assimilate that DNA into its own. So in this system, to maximize the spread of your DNA you have to physically inhabit the same physical space as as many other beings as possible and then diversify out into the universe as far away from many of those entities as possible to ensure that you don't fall prey to some galactic event that wipes out all beings that you've connected with. In this pattern I can see a number of very valuable patterns emerging around very fast space travel and communications. What becomes important? Finding other entities, getting there, and then spreading out.
We see postulation about biological entities by people like Freeman Dyson that proposed a type of animal that evolves for interstellar travel.
We can discount anything on that scale directly impacting us here on earth though. Genetic engineering raises issues that lead to odd and potentially horrifying things that we see in fiction like specifically designing predators for war or chimeric efforts like the island of Dr. Moreau.
In the end, the economics of biodiversity must produce a system that revolves around something other than grouping or time observation. We also have the added component that the bootstrap must move 'up'. Biology has bootstrapped a number of extraordinary systems in the inorganic space. We talk about these as structure and environment. But these systems do not reside 'above' the biological and find their basis in a known area of operation. This becomes much more important at the next two levels where we have a much richer area of 'known' areas to develop new systems in.
Society allocates resources and has produced, at the top of its evolution, the use of cash money economics to allocate things efficiently. This gets much more difficult because we have filled our world with things based on the pursuit and allocation of cash/resources that operate at lower levels. Culture(and the governments that it spawns) and art get produced at these 'known' levels. We have difficulty speculating about what kind of system the pursuit of resources could produce 'beyond' the known areas. The heart of this book proposes arranging a universe in a way that accelerates the collection of knowledge needed to figure this out.
We can enable this next bootstrap by reforming and targeting the way our money works. We can cause the reconfiguration of our pursuit of cash such that they develop exponentially and produce institutions that transcend our 'known' areas. Big dreams, but we have to start somewhere.
This one may not play out the way many expect. This bootstrap goes beyond just faster intelligence. Faster intelligence gets us there faster because the bootstrap builds on top of the underlying structure of science. But what will the superintelligence be? What systems will emerge when science becomes so basic to a thing that a systems surrounds and supersedes it?