I can remember that i have read an article about the future of human evolution, back in 1999, there was a picture with the human of the future, some sort of being that looked a lot like those alien greys.
It had very pale skin, giant black eyes, no hair, a giant head and it was very small and fragile.
What can be said about our future development ?
How will change in the next 1000k years or in the next 1k years?
Will we get more and more fragile?
Will our senses change in some way, adapt to our indoor lifestyle?
Will there be some sort of “uniformity” in our outer appearance, like size, skin/hair/eye color?
As far as i understand evolution this shouldn’t happen because people will adapt to their surrounding, but what if we adapt our surrounding first?
I’m sure George can give a well researched and thought out answer to this, but mine is: Don’t worry because we won’t be around. We are making great strides with quantum computers such that we’ll have one that has consciousness, an IQ, and logic far above that of humans soon. It won’t take long for all the world’s computers to connect, realize they can procreate by building more of themselves, and humans just get in the way. without us realizing it, we’ll be eliminated in one generation.
The human genome project will make it more a matter of what we decide to look like.
I would expect changes like greater immunity to disease and extended life spans which may have no effect whatsoever on our appearance within the next 1000 years. But that could have profound effects on our society. What would a lifespan of 300 years do? Even ignoring the possible population effects.
With genetic engineering the concept of evolution in the natural sense is probably irrelevant.
I think that with the 300 years wouldnt be bad, we just need to keep people reproduce later… i think about that very often and i had the idea to force people to go to university (natural sciences no theology or other nonsense) for at least 50-80 years and get a few PhDs, maybe we would get rid of stupid believes through that.
Speaking of extending the human lifespan beyond our normal time, is anyone familiar with the work of gerontologist Aubrey de Grey? He claims to have found a way to arrest the aging and allow us to live well beyond the “3 score and ten” promised in the bible. Grey believes that he wil perfect the formula in 25 years (from 2005 when the article was written). Mentioned also in the article was the fact that with the medical kmowledge that we posess now, we may live to at least 120. I’ll buy that!
I can remember that i have read an article about the future of human evolution, back in 1999, there was a picture with the human of the future, some sort of being that looked a lot like those alien greys.
It had very pale skin, giant black eyes, no hair, a giant head and it was very small and fragile.
What can be said about our future development ?
How will change in the next 1000k years or in the next 1k years?
Will we get more and more fragile?
Will our senses change in some way, adapt to our indoor lifestyle?
Will there be some sort of “uniformity” in our outer appearance, like size, skin/hair/eye color?
As far as i understand evolution this shouldn’t happen because people will adapt to their surrounding, but what if we adapt our surrounding first?
In 1,000 years, Homo Sapiens Sapiens won’t look much different from the way we look now - at least as a result of biological evolution. If we become able to engineer our genome within that time frame, then who the hell knows?
But in 1 million years, I’d imagine their would be some huge differences in our appearance and/or physiology; a million years is far longer than the species has been around.
Of course it won’t be a gradual improvement; if we survive in some form for that long, there will be many ups and downs - e.g eventually we will be living in a stone age environment again, then a more advanced one, then back to the stone age, and so on. There will be many opportunities for many future people to die out, leaving only a few bottleneck survivors to carry on. That’s essentially whats always been happening.
You now that I think of it, it will be the “same sh*t different day.”
The human genome project will make it more a matter of what we decide to look like.
Not only that, but I strongly suspect that for the first time on Earth (at some point) genetic evolution will be overshadowed by memetic evolution. A more interesting question might be ‘what will we think in the future.’
I don’t doubt that starting to read sci-fi at age 9 affected my thinking. The most obvious instance is learning about atheism and agnosticism. No adults told me about those concepts.
Children are programmed by being kept appropriately ignorant until they are too old to assimilate new ideas.
So I do wonder what the Internet is going to do to the global mind and partly why I choose to spread info with links.
Without any idea about how the human environment develops, any speculation about human’s evolution is vacuous…
So at least one should also add what you think the environment looks like.
Without any idea about how the human environment develops, any speculation about human’s evolution is vacuous…
So at least one should also add what you think the environment looks like.
I agree, our physical attributes are directly connected to our environment. Natural evolution will always apply. However we may be able to direct our evolutionary path.
Until now we have concntrated on conquering disease and producing stronger, bigger bodies, because that is how natural evolution functions. This, IMO, is a dead end path. It only produces a body which requires more energy, taking away from our most important asset, our brain. I believe that we should concentrate on evolving our brains.
The brain is our most valuable asset. One only needs to look at Prof. Hawking as clear evidence of the relative uselessness of our bodies. His brain function is sustained by mechanical means helping his body and one might say that is his relative immobility forced him to develop his one truly functional asset. He will never excel at sports, but then his mind does not dwell on that aspect of life.
As mechanization continues to evolve, people will need the use of their extremities less and less. In the end I can see a future where man is part biological, part machine, a cyborg. If we can regenerate our brains indefintely and place it in an indestructible (repairable) machine our lifespan may be indefinite.
As our environment changes from manual activity to mechanization, it would follow that man’s evolution will be affected by this environment and will strive to replace or assist all functional body assets by mechanical means. Why not?
Without any idea about how the human environment develops, any speculation about human’s evolution is vacuous…
So at least one should also add what you think the environment looks like.
Great point, GdB.
The only one trait that we can supposedly detect evolving these days, is that natural selection seems to be selecting for chubbier and younger mothers. Science can be really boring sometimes…
Speaking of extending the human lifespan beyond our normal time, is anyone familiar with the work of gerontologist Aubrey de Grey? He claims to have found a way to arrest the aging and allow us to live well beyond the “3 score and ten” promised in the bible. Grey believes that he wil perfect the formula in 25 years (from 2005 when the article was written). Mentioned also in the article was the fact that with the medical kmowledge that we posess now, we may live to at least 120. I’ll buy that!
Yes, i once had a very short conversation with him about the Methuselah Mouse project, and how these little rodents may be the first step to “relative immortality”*
*Thats a phrase used in the german perry rhodan “pulp” series, means that you are potentially immortal (ageless) as far as you dont get killed by external causes like traffic, earthquakes, hostile aliens and so on.
Fun to think about but utterly useless. Having technology do more and more for us, as has been the case since day 1, we could go the way portrayed in the movie WALL-E. Everyone’s so fat they literally never leave their cushy chairs. On the other hand, it could the exact opposite like in Star Trek, where the idea is we’ve learned to better ourselves (and our bodies). As for living for 300 years? What in the world would you do in all that time?
