Future Man: Eutopia or Dystopia

There are many who will read the description of man in the future that I present, a best guess at a look at the future a sort of science fiction model and say I don’t like it. I feel that way myself a lot of the time. People in their current form are not likely to have a long future. It won’t be long in fact the day has already come, when a person will be some combination of biological heritage and implanted machinery especially computational devices. Human heads will be crowded inside and out with devices improving sensory functions, sight and hearing especially and memory devices, electrodes to improve and control motor function and bridge various gaps due to biological diseases and deficiencies, in the future using Silicon devices to maximize various mental functions, such as making person with verbal ability, into a talented musician as well. Genius in any certain endeavor may really be a matter of computational power.

And in the future the very biological form that humans take will change by design so that there is little question we are about to enter an age certainly in the next 100 to 200 years, when the form that humans have now, will be virtually unknown. All of us will have passed into a different form blessed not only with long life, but increased capacities and very likely unsurpassed beauty. Humankind as we now know it, will cease to be recognizable entity.

These prospects will be frightening for some who are happy to be as they are or in any event loathe to take chances on an uncertain future, perhaps religious folks who believe we have this certain form and appearance for definite reasons. Or they may find the marriage of biological entities and machine in a cyborg like plastic and partly not living entity particularly loathsome. Some romantics might long for the day when every effort was a biological struggle for survival. Seeking easy perfection and the ready effortless expansion of physical and mental ability, availability is likely to result in extreme boredom or ennui, already an issue in modern society.

Many viewing the future will harken back to former days when standard biology and biologically defined capacity, held sway. They may readily do so by isolating themselves, rejecting technological advancements and living out their lives as their ancestors did. In doing so they would give up any expanded ability that technologies afford them. They would be at some physical and technological disadvantage in societies they would be part of, and would have tendency to isolate themselves in their own communities.

In fact I would predict that the common sight of human-machine hybrids will be loathsome to many. Groups of Luddites will form who will reject the combinations of man and machine and genetic Frankenstein forms and opt for normal standard life expectancies.  of our current animal form. These folks will form groups or clusters. Their numbers may remain small and isolated as others take over with increased longevity,might and intellect. Those who avail themselves of technology will be rich and powerful but may have lost their humanity.

Are societies and humans put together by design necessarily superior than those that occur naturally? This is not a trivial question. For example human history is littered with relics of unsuccessful utopian societies designed and set up sometimes by well meaning usually by coercive or dictatorial humans. Need I mention Stalinism and Maoism but also more benign and unsuccessful experiment such as the kibbutz where someone’s vision of perfection replaced the natural order?

It may be an intelligent response to find a way to get off the grid and drop out of such experimentation, being satisfied how things went down in former days,  and wanting to live your life as things were.