If, like me, you enjoyed Rapture, A raucous tour of cloning, Transhumanism and the new era of immortality, you will undoubtedly be captivated by Radical Evolution. Whereas Brian Alexander focused mainly on the history of genetics and Transhumanism, Joel Garreau propels us full speed ahead towards the future, not only by discussing some of the various ‘enhancements’ that await human beings in the short to medium term, but also by exploring what the term ‘human nature’ really means through the examination of three possible scenarios for the future of the human race….

The Heaven scenario is exemplified by such illustrious people as Raymond Kurzweil, Eric Drexler, Nick Bostrom, Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec, Vernor Vinge, and Gregory Stock (who actually stands slightly outside of this group based on his stronger beliefs in the benefits and practicality of germline genetic engineering over what he describes as cyber exuberance) and is based on the belief that the Singularity is near, the point at which technological advancement will become so rapid that the possibilities will become endless…

Vinge argued in a paper he delivered to a NASA conference in 1993, when he first proposed his theory of The Singularity, that ‘we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on earth’. This singularity is naturally welcomed by the proponents of the heaven scenario and will lead to transcendence, the moment at which intelligence will surpass anything currently possible, either through the genetic manufacturing of such intelligence in humans or through the intentional or unintentional development of computer intelligences that become so sophisticated and advanced that they are able to evolve on a level that is today unfathomable; or through a combination of the two. When this happens, humanity will transcend into a ‘single, distributed and interconnected ‘brain’’, a global consciousness enabled by technology, ‘the convergence of all human wisdom’ (Kurzweil). For many of the pioneers of the Heaven scenario, the next steps are not a question of choice: either we evolve or we perish of our imperfections and tendencies to self-destruct.

One of the advocate of The Hell scenario is Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who, the closer he got to understanding the possibilities of technology, the more scared he became about its dangers. For him, and many others such as Martin Rees, Susan Greenfield, Leon Kass and Francis Kukuyama, genetic engineering will lead to inequalities and to a rise of a genetic elite that will rule over the rest. Similarly, artificial intelligences, robots, nanotechnologies, all could potentially take over and quickly dispense of their human makers. It would require little effort on the part of these ‘beings’ to wipe out the human race. And if they decide not to kill the humans, it would be as easy to enslave them, to make them dependent. In addition, Joy argues, it would be relatively ‘simple’ for any type of scientific experiment to go wrong, whether it is playing with computer viruses or genetic pathogens…Therefore, Bill Joy argues, not only must we use caution in many of these fields, we must also consciously and deliberately halt our research in some of these disciplines.
Francis Fukuyama and Leon Kass, who both have their own definition of human nature, believe that it is within our nature to be imperfect, to suffer, to face death and to continue living within the present boundaries set on humanity. For them, anything that reaches beyond these boundaries raises too many ethical issues that can only end in disaster for humanity and in the end of what it means to be human.

Finally, the third scenario is called Prevail and is represented by Jaron Lanier, whose ‘invention’ of virtual reality is only one of his myriads of accomplishments and talents. For Lanier, there will be a Transcendence, but it will not be smooth and predictable and it will not be solitary. It will be based on increased connectivity and empathy among the people of the earth, turning us into much better Fyborgs long before Cyborgs roam our cities. The Prevail scenario is neither a mix of Heaven and Hell, nor a negation of the two, and refuses to make solid prognostics but places of lot of faith in human creativity, resilience and in our need for social contact.

Where do you stand? How do you see the future of the human race? Would you prefer that human beings continue to exist as they do today, the subject of minimal natural selection-driven changes over eons? Is the slowing down (even possibly reversal) of technological progress that this would entail realistic? Is it even desirable?
And what is so desirable anyway about the 20 or 21st century human? What makes it so much better than the 24th century ‘human’? Are we so sure that our ethics today are better than that of our successors?

The question that is at the core of all this is: what is human nature?
I am not a philosopher but I do know that human nature, contrary to what some people want to believe, is not a fixed condition. These same people are telling us today that their definition and understanding of human nature is the correct one, the moral one, the one by which all should abide. For example, they will tell us that love can only happen between a man and woman, that this is how nature truly intended us to be. But nature did it differently for many other species. And love between two people of the same sex used to be commonplace in certain ancient cultures. Does this mean that these people, our ancestors, were less human than us? That, with time, our ethics have evolved, allowing us to reach a better understanding of human nature? If this is the case, why then stop here? Why not continue this ascendance towards higher ethics?
Similarly, if the idea of ever-increasing life expectancy sounds unethical to some, and if dying at the age of 200 sounds like straying to far from human nature, does it imply that we today, by dying at the age of 80 or so, are less human than people who, not so long ago, died at the age of 35?
What about beauty? By many standards, we live in an increasingly vain and superficial society where beauty dominates. Plastic surgery, the staple of the rich and famous 20 years ago, is now as common and easy as getting your car washed in cities like Buenos Aires or Tehran. Yet, it remains taboo and synonymous with ethics gone wrong. But what a short-term memory we have. Many past cultures have placed an inordinate amount of importance on beauty, placing it at the centre of their society’s social dynamics. How did the quest for beauty become so ‘outside’ of our human nature? Naturally, the newer generation feels much more at ease with today’s concept of drive-through beauty-for-all ideology than the older generation, which tends to hang on to their ‘traditional’ definition of human nature.
Generation after generation, the process repeats itself, yet change and progress continue to march ahead, and whatever we feared once, we learn to live with, possibly even embrace.

What this shows is that we do not have a clear and simple definition of what human nature is. We never did. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people in the world going around preaching that they have the right definition and understanding of what human nature is, a definition that is quite short-sighted in that it is most likely based on 20th century values only, thereby ignoring the thousands of years of human culture before that and assuming, selfishly and narrow-mindedly, that today, this point in time, is the culmination, the ultimate and final achievement of humanity’s values and ethics. And they believe that they can press this definition onto the rest.
But human nature is much more abstract and malleable than they think. It’s the complex interaction of a myriad of genes, enzymes, proteins and who knows what else. Human nature is about freedom of being what one wants to be. It is about curiosity. It is about respecting others and their choices. It is about perseverance, creativity, discovery, reaching higher, but it certainly is not, and should have never been, about telling others how to live their lives. I believe we have more to fear from people telling us what human nature is and how men and women should behave than from technological progress.

I have a health condition which, while not life threatening, is nonetheless quite debilitating as I can no longer engage in many of the activities I used to enjoy. There is not one day that goes by when I don’t think about the time when technology will allow me to regain my health and to resume my activities of old. Based on the current developments, and after having tried many other alternatives, including non-traditional ones, it seems that my best hope for a cure is through gene therapy. The same way that it is probably easier for people like me to appreciate the benefits of genetics or other technological advances, I find that, sadly, it is always easier for people with no problems to tell others what to do, and what not to do, about their problems.
I am willing to listen to people who have serious illnesses and tell me that curing the world of all illnesses is wrong. I will listen to the arguments of a person who has been dealt a tragic hand by her genes and still sees beauty and peace in going through the rest of her life, however short, without technological recourse or without doubting the meaning of life. But i find it very difficult to agree with perfectly healthy people who go around telling the world that genetically engineering this or that with the aim of curing illnesses or of ensuring that our offsprings will be healthy is wrong.

In the end, stopping technological process is not feasible. What the sceptics must do is work with the technology and with future trends to ensure that they are as safe as possible. The solutions to ‘problems’ rarely lie in going back to old habits but rather in finding the best way to work with what lies ahead. Working with it, not against it, is the best contribution that can be made towards a healthy future for all.

Excerpts from Radical Evolution: what to expect in the not too distant future (for all of you readers who are not Sci-Fi fans, this is not Sci-Fi. The majority of the items below are already being worked on today, and not by some obscure Machiavellic inventor in his garage, but by major scientific labs and/or government defence agencies such as DARPA):
- Gene doping (already feared to be ready for the Beijing Olympics)
- Intelligent roads
- The average household has more than a 100 computers
- Computers become invisible – embedded in our daily lives. For example, ‘humans’ will wear their computers wherever they go and will be able to access the desired information unobtrusively at any time they wish
- Communication with computers will be based on speech, gestures, and facial expressions
- More software derived art
- Increase in virtual worlds
- Ability for blind people to see, through implants connected to a computer
- The ability to not sleep for one week with no side effects
- Paralyzed people walking again, and in the short term, being able to control objects and machines with thoughts
- Routine use of digital assistants trained to act and respond (and possibly to look) like ‘normal’ humans
- Life expectancy rises to 100 within the next 15 years and continues to increase steadily after that date
- The processing power of computers continues to increase drastically, becoming thousands of time more powerful than that of the human brain
- ‘Humans’ walk around with eye and ear implants, allowing them to see computer-generated images
- Ability to experience what a robot or machine sees, though connection to these machines. Augmented perception: ability to experience what sensors see, feel, and hear hundreds of miles away, ability to feel beyond our senses
- Connecting with one another and with information/machines through wireless implants in the skull
- Drugs are targeted specifically to one’s DNA
- Nanorobots are used in the bloodstream to fix all kinds of ailments
- ‘Humans’ become stronger, faster, better looking, more intelligent, more creative, and healthier
- ‘Humans’ become split into three categories: the enhanced, the naturals (they chose not to be enhanced), and the rest who does not have access to the same possibilities
- ‘Humans’ are enhanced by machines; they become cyborgs, software on legs, until some choose to abandon their ‘human’ shape
- Many artists are now machines
- Structures are designed and built by new materials that have incredible flexibility, strength, beauty and changing properties
- Self-cleaning windows and non-staining trousers
- Crops will become resistant to weather changes and will be able to provide whatever protein or vitamin or taste that is desired
- New technology raises the possibility of many environmental problems to be fixed, through clean energies or new ways to lock up carbon dioxide or destroy toxic waste…
- ‘Humans’ will be able to read books in minutes
- ‘Humans’ will be able to stop the bleeding and to heal wounds by focusing their mind on it
- Vaccination against pain, working in 10 seconds and lasting for 30 days
- Telekinesis: the ability to move objects with one’s mind
- Exoskeleton connected to your thoughts
- ‘Humans’ slowly start to move to other planets
- Easy and quick replacement of damaged body parts
- Grow an entire human from a few cells, perhaps even from one cell
- Only have half of your brain sleeping while the other half continues to process information
- Eliminate the need for food
- Telepathy: the ability to communicate with others or to read one’s mind without speech
- Increasing memory and brain capacity
- Ability for body to switch off and hibernate in case of danger
- Walk into a doctor’s office, have a computer analyze a tissue sample and prescribe the treatment matching exactly your genetic disposition
- Computers in 3 dimensions