Vancouver-based futurist Dr. Tomorrow envisions brave new worlds
where bioengineering may turn our children into mermaids or birdmen. If
the sexes even continue to exist.
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
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The Future, like any other destination, is just
the goal. The real experience is in the journey. Never mind the next 500
years, the next century, next decade, next year. Even next week is going
to be, as the Chinese say, an interesting time. Still, it's hard not to
speculate...
What the future holds depends on trillions
of yet unknown developments that may surge, Shrink
or vanish much like various species of living organisms have over past
millennia. Whatever happens to every one of such potential developments
changes history. Look at the past of any continent, country - or even cottage.
However, with all the information we have the ability
to collect today, we can identify tendencies or directions that appear
plausible (or at least feasible), judging by developments that bear a similarity
to those that have been successful in the past and are desired - at least
by the human species. But surprises are part of life and can upset any
delicate calculation. And as we all know from experience, in times of chaos,
panic or rapid change, the bizarre can rapidly become acceptable. |
From our knowledge of the past, the overall view is that, in general,
life for humans has been constantly one of definite overall improvement.
There is little indication that will not continue. We are living today
almost twice as long as humans did at the turn of this century. Now eighty
is commonplace. It was forty-two around 1890. Most
of us, comparatively, are fed, clothed and housed in superior fashion.
Even the poorest person on the planet is healthier and better off than
his counterpart 100, 1,000 or 10,000 years ago. I am optimistic about the
future.
What is different today and what will continue to be dominant for centuries
to come is the changes that will be wrought by our increasing knowledge
about knowledge. We know more and more each day. How we use that knowledge
is the unknown variable. It will also vary from culture to culture, from
time to time, from trauma to triumph. And, from individual to individual.
Charles Darwin's observation will remain valid: that "It is not the strongest
of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it is the one that
is most adaptable to change."
In that respect at least, we are no different than the birds and the
bees - or the cockroach.
Genetic frontiers
What was once vilified when done in Germany in the 20th century will
become acceptable in many countries during the first half of the 21st Century.
Cloning of humans could be the reproductive mode of choice. The considerable
risks of continuing human reproduction through the public gene pool, now
believed by some as generally degrading, especially in the United States,
can be totally avoided via cloning. This will not be without
controversy. Biotechnology will be the most controversial subject in the
first quarter of the new millennium.
Instead of the wars of this and past centuries for natural
resources, a new kind of competition will evolve in attempts to acquire,
enhance and patent human genes. In the Age of Knowledge, the ultimate brain
will become the Holy Grail.
This year, for example, the US Patent Office received over 13,000 biotechnology
patent applications, 30 percent more than in 1997. Two thousand applications
have been granted and 7,000 are in the processing pipeline. They cover
human, animal and plant families.
Some cover patents for the genetic blueprints for mice, rabbits, sheep,
guinea pigs, fish and cows as well as tobacco plants that glow before they
are lit thanks to the gene that causes the glow in a firefly. A patented
process by Genome of California allows the production of true vanilla via
vats, not plants. The same company is hard at work finding ways to produce
cherries and oranges.
The blonde hair and blue eye genes so common among Iceland's relatively
"unpolluted" gene pool could become production line products along with
perfect living breasts now growing in Cambridge, Mass. They "grow" on a
mold of polymer plastic which dissolves much like stitches in any normal
operation.
Genes have now been patented or pending to c6ver baldness, brain cancer,
Aizheimer's, epilepsy, obesity, arthritis, melanoma, breast and ovarian
cancer, cardiovascular disease, colon cancer, Glaucoma and blindness -
to name but a very few. The international Human Genome Project, a collaborative
effort by roughly 50 countries to map the building blocks of humans, anticipates
they will complete the decoding of three billion DNA fragments by the year
2005. Some commercial operations are claiming it will be done
even earlier.
'Hermaphroditic humans, animals and plants, some believe, offer
a superior gene mixture that because (at least in humans) of the convergence
of male/female reproductive organs, right brain/left neural brain activity
along with a more sensitive galvanic skin response, could become the human
of choice.'
Life, Inc.
The U.S. Patent Office seems to indicate that life itself is a patentable
commodity. That's certainly a stretch from the days of Martin Luther.
Another aspect of creating a "superior" being could herald new types of
living organisms. Hermaphroditic humans, animals and plants,
some believe, offer a superior gene mixture that because (at least in humans)
of the convergence of male/female reproductive organs, right brain/left
neural brain activity along with a more sensitive galvanic skin response,
could become the human of choice. If superior intellectual ability can
be proven in such "advanced" humans, the implications would almost force
countries to make "decisions of destiny," a monumental choice never faced
in human history.
When times and conditions are optimal for any type of development there
is always a much greater chance of success than for things that evolve
under difficult circumstances. However, Nature is oft inclined to allow
things constructed under difficult conditions to acquire abilities not
normally found through growing in more pleasant conditions. This often
leads to more rapid change further down the road where mutation takes off
on a radical tangent, Such will be the case in much of the years to come.
We are the "Borg"
Not only will the cloning of humans occur but the vast economic implications
of refusing to exploit any technology that expands the human physical and
cognitive range will be unthinkable. Of such things are cyborgs made.
(I am a living example. Going blind in 1990, I quickly found
an ophthalmologist, Dr. Bill Couldwell in nearby New Westminster,
B.C. who was one of the early developers in the field of intra-ocular (bionic)
eye lens transplants. The short story is my eyesight very rapidly
reached 20/20 from its previous 20/300 white cane country condition.
And further improved over the next 15 months, to the point that I
regained my airplane, helicopter, baloon and glider licenses.
That's incentive.)
In North America today there are between seven and 15 million "cyborgs"
roaming our streets - although they may not think of themselves as such.
Yet anyone whose heart is assisted by a computer or whose disease-controlled
tremors are dampened or eliminated by one, is in effect a cyborg. Tomorrow,
some people will demand implants to get better jobs or for other personal
reasons. Such
developments can only spread.
Cyborg, n. A human being with certain phsiological
processes added or controlled by mechanical or electronic devices.
What initially may appear to be a mild modification of the human anatomy
will widen as new possibilities open up. Why are we not populating the
70 percent of the planet that is water? One day the installation of gills
might change that. And laugh at man as an angel, but man's energy peddling
the Gossamer Albatross allowed man to fly without external power. Using
a wing modification, especially along with "ground effect" aerodynamics,
could give man a exciting new dimension. Remember how everyone laughed
at going to the moon?
Longevity and higher quality of life have always been
desirable. Humankind certainly will live longer after the solution is found
to the major diseases and ailments that are restricting most of us to living
this side of a century. Such challenges will continually stretch our mental
facilities and at some point in the future, may allow us to jump to higher
levels of consciousness. It has happened before. It will again. In some
ways I see it happening already. An eight-year-old today is absorbing more
data than their parents ever faced at such an age. I call them "screenagers."
With a computer, modem and phone line they have access to more data than
all their forebears throughout history. You can't go through that without
changing, I believe, for the better. Kids today are socializing on a global
basis not just through the restricted physical community in which they
were born. They already know more at their age than you did.
As we move further into tomorrow more radical suggestions will appear.
Even now anything humankind thinks of can pretty well be accomplished with
enough time and money available for the project Brawn is out and knowledge
is in. The "haves" and the "have-nots" of the Industrial Age are already
being replaced by the "knows" and the "know-nots" of the Communication
Age.
Economics have always been a vital factor in human existence. First
for survival; enough food and you were "rich." Not all made it. Then as
we entered the Agricultural Age it required holdings of land that grew
wealth to be wealthy. But not -all had land. In the Industrial Age control
of machinery that produced salable goods created new classes of "haves"
and "have-nots." Most, of course, did not have machines. Today, though,
knowledge is available to almost all; even poverty is not an insurmountable
barrier. And previous restrictions based on race, color, religion or sex
no longer apply. This has already triggered another phenomenon: the rise
of the female sex. No longer restricted by the lack of a past male-owned
asset, brawn, women are not only gaining equal status in many professions,
they are actually dominating. Why, women now outnumber men on university
campuses by a comfortable margin. Will the male of our species become nothing
but a sex object?
The future promises more excitement than anything experienced to date.
We may even one day communicate with other intelligences from elsewhere
in the universe. Humankind, with modifications to handle the initially
harsher environments of other lands, then other worlds, will continue to
expand throughout the universe. Why? For the same reason people climb Mt.
Everest: because it's there.
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