[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[Krimel]

[Mark]
Evolution in terms of human brain capacity for man,
is not so much evolution, as it is development.  However,
if the brain does indeed evolve (as I think is happening 
today with autism), the end product will be something
unpredictable and unimaginable to us, as human
consciousness was to the bacteria.  While it may still
continue to contain the biochemistry that we do, the
methods of communication will be much more effective.

[Krimel]
Sounds a bit like Minority Report. You might enjoy Nancy Kress' "Beggars in
Spain" series.
 
[mark]
Imagine a form of telepathy where words are no longer
needed, and the underlying circuitry of the brain is
transferred unambiguously as a computer code.  This would
take such species away from the need for communication
through the simple symbolic.  Such ability to transfer so
called emotional senses (which are a the core of our 
thoughts), will provide for a highly evolved species.
All of this of course assumes communication as the evolving
power.

[Krimel]
Ok, but I prefer this from Douglas Adams:

"The Babel fish," said The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is
small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe.
It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it.
It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to
nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a
telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with
nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has
supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel
fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any
form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave
matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish."
"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so
mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers
have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence
of God."
"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,'
says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'"
"'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not
have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own
arguments, you don't. QED.'"
"'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a
puff of logic."
"'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that
black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing."
"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's
kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he
used it as the central theme of his best-selling book Well That About Wraps
It Up For God."
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to
communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and
bloddier wars than anything else in the history of creation."