A commission from United States Artists to contribute to the inaugural edition of their new digital publication New Suns: Artists Shaping Ecologies. Their first issue titled Mapping the Horizon- centered around the question: What does the future hold? United States Artists gave us the fascinating challenge to consider what we think the last object on Earth will be. What would its final existing material shape be, and how would it function as a relic? The response had to be illustrated with accompanying text to explain the rationale behind it. Our response was entitled ‘The Extremophile Biocomputer’.

The Extremophile ¹ Biocomputer ² is a biological supercomputer that is a self-sustaining, self-replicating organism, capable of surviving extreme conditions and holding all human knowledge. As well as containing the entire contents of that most double-edged of twentieth century inventions “the World Wide Web”, and copies of all written texts, art and music, it also contains the uploaded consciousnesses of the last remaining human beings as they retreated from reality.Notably, it contains the records of the decline of human civilization, as resources were used up, fought over or destroyed, and the ecosystem collapsed. Sadly, the Extremophile Biocomputer isn’t much to look at, resembling the primordial soup³ from which all life on earth evolved.

Partial List of Contents for the Extremophile Biocomputer

• EARTH ledger of rare resources, (3 of 17) time stamped 2045 at 12.01 CST, 0.2 ppm Yttrium, 0.0001 ppm Scandium, 0.00001 ppm Neodymium
• 2,000,000,000 instances Sense-Times’ facial recognition algorithm captured on 12.24.2105 at 39.9042° N, 116.4074° E
• Baby Shark Dance by Pinkfong MP4, H. 264 video codec and AAC audio code
• ?
• Great British Bake Off season 8 finale-75 minutes. Ranked according to root mean squared error (RMSE) of 0.9525 and BYW algorithm
• CO2 Parts per million (PPM) dataset = 611.28. , Date issued: 11082025, Location: Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii (NOAA)
• Total BTC (bitcoin) in existence 18,588,681,250. 803 BTC stored on Denarium bitcoin coins. (nb. 10 days after extension beyond 21 million worldwide supply.)
• Total memory capacity per global citizen: 2.5 petabytes x 10.9 billion = 27.25 petabytes (27250000 gigabytes)

Timeline of Predicted Events

2020: Google’s AI DeepMind predicts how a protein folds into a unique three-dimensional shape, demonstrating the potential for AI to propel advances in nanobiotechnology ⁴

2028: For the first time, scientists successfully program a computer using a brain-computer interface⁵.

2030: Marine ice sheet instability leads to dramatic sea level rise.

2032: Advances in nanobiotechnology lead to the first living biocomputer, designed with cells as its basic components.

2040 – 2060: Changing weather patterns due to anthropogenic global warming⁶ cause widespread crop failures, forest fires, increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes and other deadly consequences.

2050: Ocean and rain-forest biomes⁷ collapse leading to chain reaction of extinctions.

2060-2120: Resource wars rage globally over water rights and access to viable crop growing, and animal grazing areas.

2061: Human level Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) achieved.⁸

2075: Self-replicating biocomputer cells produced from cultures.

2111: AI becomes capable of recursive self-improvement (Artificial Super-intelligence – ASI).⁹

2118: First human consciousness encoded into a non-human system.

2120: Biocomputers created using cells from tardigrades¹⁰ result in virtually indestructible computational organisms.

2125: War and starvation have caused massive global population reduction.

2128: The Extremophile Biocomputer Project is launched with the aim of storing all human knowledge in a self-sustaining organism.

2135: The wealthy elite of remaining humans create a “virtualization suicide pact”, transplanting their consciousnesses to the Extremophile Biocomputer.

2140: Death of the last remaining Homo Sapiens.

Notes

¹Extremophiles are organisms that thrive in conditions which would be considered extreme for most carbon-based life forms. (Wikipedia-Extremophile)
²Biological computers can perform computational tasks using biologically derived molecules. (Wikipedia-Biological Computing)
³Primordial soup refers to the mixture of organic molecules in evolutionary theory from which life on earth originated. (Miriam Webster)
⁴Nanobiotechnology is a term describing the merger of biological research with various fields of nanotechnology (the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. (Wikipedia-nanobiotechnology)
⁵Brain-Computer Interfaces translate brain signals into commands that can be used to control devices external to the body. (NCBI)
⁶Anthropogenic global warming is climate change that is directly linked to the amount of fossil fuels burned, aerosol releases and land alteration from agriculture and deforestation by humans. (EnergyEducation)
⁷A biome is a large naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat, e.g. forest or tundra. (Oxford Dictionary)
⁸Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the hypothetical intelligence of a machine that has the capacity to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can. (Wikipedia-AGI)
⁹Artificial Super-intelligence (ASI) is AI technology that is capable of surpassing the abilities of the human mind. (Wikipedia-ASI)
¹⁰Tardigrades are micro animals capable of surviving extreme conditions including outer space. (Wikipedia-Tardigrades) or can we use (National Geographic)