Dogs as deep tech

Agreement on the definition of deep-tech may not yet be consensus, but a useful definition nevertheless exists — technology that enables radically new capabilities for humanity and a step-change in the possibility-space for our species.

One such step-change - the co-domestication of another species leading to a wholly unique melding of minds, where cognitive abilities of differentially embodied intelligent agents begin to act in unison, where each species evolves to possess new capacities for action in physical and social worlds.

The proto-typical example of which definitively changed the arc of two species that came to dominate Earth in the Second Millennium.

A technological process whose precise origin is still hotly contested but is generally understood to have been underway more than 11,000 years ago, well before the end of the Holocene and the dawn of the Neolithic, when sapiens sprung forward past the glacier melt into history as we know it.

Domestication pre-dated agriculture, which preceded – and indeed, was the necessary precursor to – the industrial, informational, and intelligence ages. Arguably, domestication was itself a necessary step before agriculture, the crucial domino that needed to fall before humanity would be able to raise sentience from sand a few thousand years later.

“Remove domestication from the human species, and there’s probably a couple of million of us on the planet, max. Instead, what do we have? Seven billion people, climate change, travel, >innovation and everything. Domestication has influenced the entire earth. And dogs were the first.” Greger Larson, archaeologist and geneticist The Atlantic

And dogs were the first.

Or at least, the wolf-like ancestor that would become the dog. A fellow apex predator, living in highly social and complex packs that were capable of impressive feats of collective intelligence, that betted on being better off with four legs on the ground, a tail, and befriending the fearsome monkeys with the fire-summoning powers.

The canids gained a powerful ally — an advanced simian possessing state-of-the-art weaponry, significant physical endurance, and sophisticated tribal intelligence.

The sapiens, on the other hand, would have been equally pleased with their side of the bargain. The proto-dog was a hunting partner with a fierce set of fangs in a 40 kilo muscle-suit, yes, but they were also much more: the two most consequential aspects being - a nocturnal sentinel network that allowed for deeper REM cycles and an olfactory sense-making system granting access to a far richer Umwelt. Both carried weight of immediate practical import.

And so, a partnership was natural, a symbiosis if you will, an inter-mammalian entanglement of monumental consequence.

Walking beside us, canis familiaris was close witness to the major eras of human history - agriculture, the domestication >of livestock, the wheel, writing, paper, and the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, and the internet, and of >course, artificial intelligence. Uncannis Familiaris, A Dognosis Manifesto

The proto-dog is one of humanity’s most primal technologies, arguably fourth behind only fire, shelter, and clothing. Just as the former three have undergone technological evolution – with current frontier forms taking the shape of nuclear fusion, skyscrapers, and space-suits – the proto-dog too has morphed too, the apex of which could be said to be the para-trooping Belgian Malinois.

Or have they? Such is only really true for a pawful of cases. The vast majority of canines today live with their humans in much the same way that they did hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. The leash may be nylon rather than hide-skin and we may have tastier treats, but nothing fundamental has changed. Indeed, most of the dogs and humans of past eras arguably accomplished more impressive feats together more often than they do today. We have arguably regressed, rather than progressed. Witness the pitiful pug gasping for air from a nose engineered to be cute rather than functional.

But the few exceptions are nevertheless illuminating. A special ops Belgian Malinois can indeed paratroop out of a moving helicopter, and hit the ground running (relatively), triangulating traces of explosive and weapons by his nose that are invisible to the best radar. A mixed-breed dog riding in a speedboat can sniff out the smell of killer whale scat floating in the vast Pacific. A biomedical detection Labrador is capable of sniffing from a few milliliters of urine the difference between a low and a high Gleeson score of prostate cancer, a stupendous feat that cannot be replicated by any machine today.

All three dogs above display an olfactory wizardry that continues to grant us unmatched access to the world of scent. Remarkably, what was true of the proto-dog, remains true all these many technology branches later. We have not cracked the olfactory code but we can sniff it, through an uncanny yet familiar interspecies alliance. And while the periodic breathless article reports on the e-nose being close to taking the sniffing crown, the canine nose remains the top dog, on the battlefield, at the airport, and in the lab.

In many ways, dogs are one of humanity’s oldest R&D project. They are also our deepest - a technological step-change that provided humanity a multi-use platform with olfactory capabiltiies that we still cannot best today. For 11,000 years and counting we’ve had access to superhuman capabilities, but we’ve been restricted by a primitive interface - food and a handful of monosyllables. It’s time to take the synaesthetic symbiosis that we’ve been honing for millennia and unleash the superpowers hiding in furry sight.