Another interesting idea I've been playing with is that there's no guarantee that the lifeform that replaces us will be the same level of complexity. What does

Another interesting idea I've been playing with is that there's no guarantee that the lifeform that replaces us will be the same level of complexity. What does it feel like to be a molecule? A mitochondria? A cell? All of these are or were once self-contained "things", but now they exist as part of larger systems. Our image of the beings that replace us tends to look like us and be roughly the same size - robots or little green men. But what if the thing that replaces us encompasses us, so that individual humans become cells in a giant superorganism. There's some evidence that this is already happening - with 6 billion humans on earth, the global economy is already showing specialization (similar to how cells develop into organs in a human) and complex emergent behavior, with parts of it dying off without killing the whole. What if the reason are experience looks like it does, with life a full 1/4 of the age of the universe, because at later points in the universe's evolution, life at this scale becomes meaningless and the primary sentient beings are planetary civilization interacting at the speed of light through the galaxy? Or galactic civilizations interacting throughout the universe?