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The Evolution of New Man Can Homo Sapiens Survive the New Millennium?
The planet Earth was created about 4,600,000,000 years ago. We, who are modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens), have been around for the last 100,000 or so of these years. If we equate the age of the Earth to the cycle time of a 24-hour clock, then modern man has existed for just less than two seconds. Indeed the first signs of human life occurred only a minute ago, and one of our immediate predecessors, Neanderthal man, arrived on the scene twelve seconds ago and had departed for good a second ago. Remarkably, perhaps, we co-existed with him for a full second, or 50,000 years in real time. What makes us think, therefore, that our species will last any longer than earlier human species and that in a second's time we shall still be around? Or are we already on the way out, with our replacement snapping at our heels? Our conjecture is that the evolution of our successor is well underway and within a fraction of a second we shall either have been replaced or be co-existing as a second class species with our new masters until they feel we have no more purpose. We think this process could have started about 4000 years ago and might well reach a climax within the lifetime of our present young generation. To comprehend the possible speed of the process we go back to our 24 clock, but this time relating it to the 100,000 years since our current species emerged. On this basis we learned to domesticate animals, to farm, to work with metals, to study the sciences of geometry and astronomy, to write and use numbers and to record knowledge, only in the last two hours. We built our first towns an hour ago and introduced the concepts of hierarchical organisation, administration of the many by the few, and the beginnings of a large self-perpetuating privileged class. We are now about to celebrate the new Millennium, looking back 2000 years, or 30 minutes ago. In the last few minutes gigantic advances have been made in science and technology; we learned to fly 90 seconds ago, landed on the moon 60 seconds later, and have been using our home PC and the Internet for the last few seconds. More worryingly we started to systematically denude and poison our own Earth a minute or so ago. Putting this in perspective, a new-born person living until 70 will experience a full minute of the ever-increasing breakneck rate of human development; for us a minute ago there was no public television, no commercial jets, no computers, no space exploration and certainly no mobile phones. Of equal significance to our evolution, there was only rudimentary body part replacement (artificial legs and hands), no organ transplants, no implanted devices such as pacemakers, no knowledge of the structure of DNA and no human genetic engineering. To understand better how the new species is emerging we first look at where it is emerging. We are increasingly familiar, even if we are not prepared to do anything much about it, of the widening gulf between the 'have's' and the 'have not's' in our world. We need to add to these the 'can do's', being those people who really can make the breakthroughs in science, philosophy, business and politics that lead to real changes in direction of world development. We shall henceforth, for want of other words, refer to the latter class as 'genius' and the former as 'enabled' and 'disadvantaged' respectively. Almost all of us likely to be involved or even just interested in this subject will belong to the enabled class, being relatively prosperous, well educated and well cared for within a highly organised hierarchical society. However we are but a small proportion of the world's population, the mass of whom, while being of identical genetic makeup and intrinsic worth, have few of our advantages and opportunities and hence belong to a disadvantaged class. There is a strong but not fundamental correlation between region of origin and the two main classes. In Britain for example, probably 80 - 90% of the population belong to the enabled class, while in Central Africa perhaps 95% are in the disadvantaged class. Overall however the disadvantaged in the world greatly outnumber the enabled. Furthermore, being enabled or disadvantaged is largely and increasingly an inherited characteristic. Healthy, prosperous and well-educated parents bear children, who although not initially any better endowed than their disadvantaged cousins, are reared and developed in environments designed to reproduce and build upon the advantages of their parents and hence of their class of origin. Unfortunately disadvantaged parents, although bestowing equal or greater love and affection, have little or no chance of providing similar advantages for their offspring. While there is some movement between the classes, the division remains fairly static. Genius, defined roughly as the ability to change the direction and/or speed of world development, is a tiny class and is not inherited. The seeds of genius are spread uniformly between the enabled and the disadvantaged, hence there are many more potential genii in the much more numerous latter class. However genius requires to be nurtured and developed, and the facilities for this exist only within the enabled class, leaving many a potential genius from the disadvantaged to wither and die. Let us now look at the inter-related roles of the three classes. Genius provides advancement for the world, but requires the services of the enabled class in the form of support skills, technology and money. Genius is its own reward. The enabled class provides a breeding ground and infrastructure for the development of genius, and the resources to support it. It also provides products, services and technologies for its own consumption, and for transfer to the disadvantaged class in return for raw materials and labour. Its reward is the continuing material advancement and increasingly profligate lifestyles of its members. The disadvantaged class provides basic products and services for its own use, and raw materials and labour for the enabled class in return for more advanced products, services, technologies and in some cases financial subsidies. Its fundamental objective is to survive and hopefully improve its lot, then to provide opportunities for some of its members to migrate to the enabled class. Potential genius will often be unrecognised and hence unrealised. Now we can identify where the new species is evolving. Genius has the means, the enabled have the motive and the opportunity. The disadvantaged have none of these. Thus as Africa was the crucible for homo sapiens, the enabled class is the crucible for the next stage of human evolution which we shall refer to for the time being as homo enabilis. In recent years genius has provided at an ever-increasing rate the components for rapid further human evolution, in particular medical science, genetic engineering, neuroscience, computers and information processing, telecommunications, and micro miniaturisation. Spare part surgery is now commonplace, eradication of human deficiencies through genetic engineering is becoming a reality, as is the alleviation of sensory related deficiencies such as hearing by implanted electronic systems. Alongside these developments we have increasingly sophisticated interfaces between the human body and external devices, including speech recognition, language translation, and eye, face, touch and proximity recognition. Our bodies and minds are increasingly being incorporated into human-machine networks, allowing us to work, play and interact with fellow members of our enabled class, where and when we please. Complex surgical operations are undertaken by robots, directed by specialists in far away locations. The potential for continuous health monitoring through embedded body sensors and local body computers, linked by wireless to central computer networks and ultimately to human doctors, has been demonstrated and will surely become a reality. As well as having these enhanced facilities, tomorrow's enabled class will be increasingly incorporated into an educational, knowledge management, work and life style network peculiar to its own kind. Members will be taught to communicate with all senses in ways that computers can readily understand, to be able to access and comprehend computerised information relevant to all aspects of their wellbeing, and to interact with each other in a virtual reality environment. Few of these skills will be in any way relevant to the disadvantaged, as they will lack the necessary technological infrastructure to avail themselves of the benefits. So the enabled will get to be super-enabled relative to the disadvantaged. Does this represent the emergence of a new species? A fundamental feature of a new species is that it must differ from its predecessors. If the super-enabled person is nothing more than the present human body with some electronic add-ons, then we cannot reasonably call it new. However if the body has, say different or modified organs than its predecessors and could not survive without these, then it could be said to be different. A further feature is that a species must be able to reproduce in its same form. Homo sapiens clearly do this. If our super-enabled pair produces a child in their own form that has characteristics significantly different from the present child, then we have one of the key conditions for a new species. Much depends on our definition of reproduction. At one extreme it can mean the state of affairs at the time of conception, otherwise it could mean the state at some later stage of development, within the womb, at birth, at one month, at one year or even at ten years. Our super-enabled person will have been nurtured and developed from conception, or even earlier, through to, say ten years. Early on in the process faulty parts will have been identified, rectified or replaced, intrinsically unreliable human organs will have been replaced by human-made equivalents, various electronic components will have been implanted, some of which may be upgraded at later stages. In parallel the education process will have facilitated the use of all the features of our enhanced homo sapiens. Is this a new species? One test is whether a person born of the existing species but without the enhancement process, can be converted by medication, surgery, non-human add-ons and education, to have the full functionality of a person born within the new process. If so, there is no new species. However, if for example some of the modifications or additions within the new reproduction process were time dependent then the conversion would not be possible, and arguably we have a new species. Finally, if symbiosis takes place between the homo sapiens-based components and the homo sapiens-designed components and reproduction processes, then we almost certainly have a new species. However this is likely to be hours or even days away on our 24-hour clock, rather than the minute or so that we are presently considering. Whether or not we are evolving into a new species, it is our contention that we are definitely developing an enhanced homo sapiens within a super-enabled class of people. In the words of the engineer, these will be more robust and maintainable than the previous model, and embrace extended functionality, integrated design and full network compatibility. What are the implications for humankind? The development process has been initiated by existing homo sapiens and for the time being is under our control. At some point however, its further development will be based on the genius and support skills of the early versions of the enhanced model, within the environment of the super-enabled class. Old homo sapiens will have lost control. Some would argue that this is already happening. What, then will be the impact of the emergence of the super-enabled class on the non-enhanced disadvantaged class? Let us look at a number of scenarios. Firstly, it is in the power of the present genius class to abort the entire process. To deny the advancement of a species would be counter to the principal of the survival of the fittest and would be unprecedented in the history of evolution. Furthermore it would be throwing out the baby with the bath water, as much tangible good can come from the continuation of development in the areas concerned. Alternatively the process could be carefully planned and controlled so as to make the benefits universally available. This would be the fair and moral course, and as such would run counter to the history of the enabled classes over the last 4000 years or so. We now have to start to think the unthinkable. Should and could the super-enabled (or new species) co-exist with the unenhanced disadvantaged? After all, modern man managed this for 50,000 years with Neanderthal man; but in the end the stronger survived and the weaker perished. Also, given that the fair and moral case would have been rejected in this scenario what would be the case for co-existence? We have in the past required the disadvantaged for the provision of raw materials and labour, and as markets for our surplus mass-produced, and often obsolescent goods and services; however this is becoming less and less the case. Indeed the rapidly increasing population and relative poverty of the disadvantaged is already becoming a political and moral embarrassment and an increasing threat to the wellbeing of the enabled class. Granted they will still a large breeding ground for genius, if the potential can be identified and harnessed by the super-enabled. However it is difficult to see how anything short of total subservience could ensure the long-term co-existence of the classes. The final scenario is total annihilation of one, or conceivably both. Superficially it may appear that this is a natural extension of the co-existence/subservience case, and that only the super-enabled will remain. But this presupposes that the super-enabled are fitter in evolutionary terms than the disadvantaged. This may well not be the case. The disadvantaged will be much more numerous, may well be prepared to fight much harder for survival and will have far less to lose. Also in a showdown there could be a fragmentation of the super-enabled, with only a small minority needed to support the moral case (or alternatively, some selfish motive of their own), in order to sufficiently enable the disadvantaged and release their potential genius to be harnessed in counter-evolutionary attack. With this last scenario, stalemate would prevail, with the super-enabled having to rein back their progress and the disadvantaged progressively catching up. There is an excellent precedent for this in recent history. The development of the nuclear bomb by the enabled class effectively self-neutralised its advantages, because a small number of so-called traitors enabled the endangered class to develop counter threats, leading to a long and still continuing stalemate. So even with a new species under development, in the short term we are likely to remain where we are, with a privileged few existing in a deteriorating world and in secret fear of an increasingly disenchanted majority. Until some genius comes along and changes our thinking and saves our world. The next minute should be very interesting.
© 1999 Vic Forrington. All rights reserved
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