How can we know what the future will look like?
To be able to understand the future, you must know the past. What has taken us to where we are today and what has changed along the way.
The world has changed a lot in the last 150 years, but we humans are driven by the same basic needs as we were 150 years ago, food, sleep, sex, the feeling of being appreciated and loved. Will this change in the next 150 years? No.
No.
But, given what we have and continue doing to our Earth’s insulating atmosphere - seems pretty certain we’ll be poached by the time another century and a half goes by.
Good point, CC. I can imagine humans morphing into some sort of underground moles living in sealed deep caverns with a few windows to let sunlight in for their oxygen producing crops.
Good point, CC. I can imagine humans morphing into some sort of underground moles living in sealed deep caverns with a few windows to let sunlight in for their oxygen producing crops.
In 30 million years, the human gene has split into hairy-tribe people and the Chattering Folk, (hmm, still sounds like Republicans and Democrats) mutually competing against a bizarre new eco-system where elephantine-posthumans are herded by mouse-raptors, and there are blind burrowing mole-people.
Nah, as we increase computer power and speed, we’ll learn how to transfer our entire neural information and ability to a computer. First, this will allow us quasi-immortality. Second, other than power source failure, protection from life’s problems. Then more and more people will transfer at younger and younger ages. Pretty soon the entire human population will cease to exist except as conscious computers.
Dolphins will gradually evolve to have feet again, and they’ll move back onto land. They’ll develop their own civilization and at some point, say, “What the hell are all these computers doing using energy that we could utilize?” Then, they’ll shut us down.
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.’
We will never be genetic identical then we are now. The point’s how many genetics caracthers will survive this entire time and be part of human genetics in a thousand years from today.
We are changing everyday. Focusing in the genetic of how we going to look (what i think will not be our biggest problem), everything depends of what we will use or not during the years. If we hav to take more oxygen, we’ll have a more complex respiratory system.
Is kinda simply: IF we survive all this time, our caractheristics will depend of our ambient, just like natural selection, maybe.
Don’t worry about your English grammar, Nathalia. It’s your ideas that are important.
As N. points out, we change in response to environmental stresses. I don’t think there have been any easily observable environmental stresses in the last 1,000 years so humans don’t seem to have changed much over that period. The problem is that we have a hard time predicting what stresses will occur, so we have a hard time predicting what changes in the human genome that are likely to occur.
Don’t worry about your English grammar, Nathalia. It’s your ideas that are important.
As N. points out, we change in response to environmental stresses. I don’t think there have been any easily observable environmental stresses in the last 1,000 years so humans don’t seem to have changed much over that period. The problem is that we have a hard time predicting what stresses will occur, so we have a hard time predicting what changes in the human genome that are likely to occur.
Actually I’m impressed by your grammar. I know only one word in Portuguese! Not exactly Occam; we do know of two stresses that a going to occur: 1. It’s going to get a hellova lot hotter within the next 25 years and 2. The Ozone layer won’t be much of a protection v. Ultraviolet rays. I predict that we’re going to get a lot darker in skin tone. And wear less clothing. And use soap flakes for snow because there won’t be any.
Nah, as we increase computer power and speed, we’ll learn how to transfer our entire neural information and ability to a computer. First, this will allow us quasi-immortality. Second, other than power source failure, protection from life’s problems. Then more and more people will transfer at younger and younger ages. Pretty soon the entire human population will cease to exist except as conscious computers.
Dolphins will gradually evolve to have feet again, and they’ll move back onto land. They’ll develop their own civilization and at some point, say, “What the hell are all these computers doing using energy that we could utilize?” Then, they’ll shut us down. :lol:
Occam
When all our minds reside inside computers, we can leave planet Earth to the crawling dolphins. All we need is energy and some raw materials to repair faulty computer parts. Computer programs can simulate our environments. We could even ask our computer to board an interstellar starship and let it travel to habitable exoplanets while our uploaded minds enjoy the holodeck.
Nah, as we increase computer power and speed, we’ll learn how to transfer our entire neural information and ability to a computer. First, this will allow us quasi-immortality. Second, other than power source failure, protection from life’s problems. Then more and more people will transfer at younger and younger ages. Pretty soon the entire human population will cease to exist except as conscious computers.
Dolphins will gradually evolve to have feet again, and they’ll move back onto land. They’ll develop their own civilization and at some point, say, “What the hell are all these computers doing using energy that we could utilize?” Then, they’ll shut us down.
Occam
When all our minds reside inside computers, we can leave planet Earth to the crawling dolphins. All we need is energy and some raw materials to repair faulty computer parts. Computer programs can simulate our environments. We could even ask our computer to board an interstellar starship and let it travel to habitable exoplanets while our uploaded minds enjoy the holodeck.
We can say “So Long and Thanks for All The Dolphin-Free Tuna”.
Don’t worry about your English grammar, Nathalia. It’s your ideas that are important.
As N. points out, we change in response to environmental stresses. I don’t think there have been any easily observable environmental stresses in the last 1,000 years so humans don’t seem to have changed much over that period. The problem is that we have a hard time predicting what stresses will occur, so we have a hard time predicting what changes in the human genome that are likely to occur.
Actually I’m impressed by your grammar. I know only one word in Portuguese! Not exactly Occam; we do know of two stresses that a going to occur: 1. It’s going to get a hellova lot hotter within the next 25 years and 2. The Ozone layer won’t be much of a protection v. Ultraviolet rays. I predict that we’re going to get a lot darker in skin tone. And wear less clothing. And use soap flakes for snow because there won’t be any.
Cap’t Jack
Thank ya, guys. Well, i think the author of the topics was talking ‘bout a picutre i saw some months ago. Although i’m biology student and i hav a subject on my college that we call “human evolution” and we had to research ‘bout this things and we got some conclusions that i don’t really believe are the best ones, but we’ve tried. They are:
1. smaller eyes, to survive to the atmosphere’s polution contact, with a bigger white membrane just like “pigs”.
2.bigger nose, compartimented to filter the air better, cuz of polution too.
3. bigger lungs, with a more complex circulation inside, what will give us the possibility to take more oxygen than we can take now for a percentage of air.
4. bigger liver, better filtration.
5. thick skin to avoid the sun burns.
6. a functional appendix.
7. kidneys will have a new function: take the water from urine and keep it into the body.
I don’t know exactly, it was a discussion in class, but apparently it matched with the description of the author of the topic. I just think it’s cool to think about it but it really didn’t convinced me yet.
[ Edited: 27 November 2012 06:02 PM by Nathalia.br ]
... we had to research ‘bout this things and we got some conclusions that i don’t really believe are the best ones, but we’ve tried. They are:
1. smaller eyes, to survive to the atmosphere’s polution contact, with a bigger white membrane just like “pigs”.
2.bigger nose, compartimented to filter the air better, cuz of polution too.
3. bigger lungs, with a more complex circulation inside, what will give us the possibility to take more oxygen than we can take now for a percentage of air.
4. bigger liver, better filtration.
5. thick skin to avoid the sun burns.
6. a functional appendix.
7. kidneys will have a new function: take the water from urine and keep it into the body.
I don’t know exactly, it was a discussion in class, but apparently it matched with the description of the author of the topic. I just think it’s cool to think about it but it really didn’t convinced me yet.
I think that is a pretty reasonable list. It seems to me that some of those genetic changes could conceivably happen, if there is a breakdown in our abilities to develop and maintain adaptive technologies that compensate for the suggested possible changes in our environment.
... we had to research ‘bout this things and we got some conclusions that i don’t really believe are the best ones, but we’ve tried. They are:
1. smaller eyes, to survive to the atmosphere’s polution contact, with a bigger white membrane just like “pigs”.
2.bigger nose, compartimented to filter the air better, cuz of polution too.
3. bigger lungs, with a more complex circulation inside, what will give us the possibility to take more oxygen than we can take now for a percentage of air.
4. bigger liver, better filtration.
5. thick skin to avoid the sun burns.
6. a functional appendix.
7. kidneys will have a new function: take the water from urine and keep it into the body.
I don’t know exactly, it was a discussion in class, but apparently it matched with the description of the author of the topic. I just think it’s cool to think about it but it really didn’t convinced me yet.
I think that is a pretty reasonable list. It seems to me that some of those genetic changes could conceivably happen, if there is a breakdown in our abilities to develop and maintain adaptive technologies that compensate for the suggested possible changes in our environment.
Yeah, but these will be vegetarians because there won’t be any meat left to eat on the surface. 
