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The term hyper-being was coined during a “Bold Ideas” group meeting chaired by Marv Langston, then Deputy Chief Information Officer of the U.S. Department of Defense. Dr. Langston previously directed DARPA’s Information Systems Office, the group responsible for creating radical new possibilities to enhance DoD’s performance using superior information technology.
DARPA has famously brought other revolutionary technologies to fruition, including the Internet, artificial intelligence, grid computing, and autonomous vehicles. Our group concluded hyper-beings would produce the next revolution among world powers.
What form will supreme power take, and will the answer differ for military organizations versus commercial ones? Assuming that technology continues advancing rapidly and that competitive pressures drive evolution, can we foresee the shape of dominant beings that will emerge? These questions led us to recognize the emergence of hyper-beings.
Once we grasped the concept and knew what to look for, we found evidence supporting the hypothesis nearly everywhere. Leaders in business, government, technology and the military must learn how to navigate an environment dominated by a new form of supremely capable competitors.