Go to the ToK assignments page and read the article about the future of human evolution. Create your own unique possible future for humanity and post it here.
6 Comments
Gabriella Freeman
6/3/2013 03:03:27 am
There are numerous plausible and implausible ideas and predictions for what humanity will end up like in the future. From turning into cyborgs, to changing life expectancies, to extinction, each prospect has a potential of its own. My own unique possible future for humanity is that we will learn to live off technology. I think technology and its constantly expanding variety will grow so much and take control of so many aspects of the world, that we will end up relying completely on it. I believe everything will change. From the way we speak, to the way we cook things, to the way we drive and do all our daily activities. Technology is an enormous tidal wave that will take over the human population until it is completely dependent upon it to complete even the simplest of tasks. Think about how technology has evolved over the past 50 years. The evolution is so rapid, and is only getting faster with time. Eventually, our lives will depend on technology and we wont know how to function without it in the future.
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Mari Teixeira
6/9/2013 09:22:12 pm
In the future, humans are going to be dependent on the Internet and on smartphones to do anything in life. More than ever, humans are going to be connected 24/7 to the Internet in the future. Humans are going to be dependent on devices to be able to do anything in life. There will be nothing written and notebooks, papers and pencils and pens are going to seize to exist. Even the simplest thing will be done over the Internet and people will have no way to do anything without connection to Internet. On the other hand, there will be Wi-Fi connections in every single place people go to; from their office to restaurants and out doors. People will have no way to function with out Internet and they will be lost where the Internet to drop at anytime. Board games and out doors games are going to be forgotten, books are not going to be printed anymore and they will only be digital. Life will be completely dependent and planned in accordance to the Internet. Physical contact might even be completely avoided since technology will be so advanced to the point that people might be together even if they are kilometers apart. All in all, people wont be able to function without the Internet and most physical things we know today will come to be extinct.
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Mr S
6/12/2013 11:22:58 pm
A famous science fiction author, Isasc Asimov, wrote a book about a world where people live as you describe: in complete physical isolation. Physical proximity to another person, for any reason, was considered vulgar.
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Athavan Balendran
6/17/2013 01:45:52 am
Many of the ideas presented in the top ten of scientist development page are interesting, but truly lack sustenance for the future. I mean think about it, the Earth, at this rate, will probably not be the most wonderful place to live on in a few hundred years. Even if we manage to start using environment friendly renewable resources, with a population that continues to grow exponentially, I see no way for us to be able to sustain a good quality of live for the years to come. Now we have 7 billion people, and it seemed like just the other day that we had 6. My belief is that we will begin preparing outer space for human life. This could be done with the slow process of terraforming planets like Mars or the moon, into suitable habitats for humans. Miniature atmospheres could be created by placing large domes over a small area of the planet, in which plants and trees would be planted, watered, and grown to produce natural oxygen. If this could be done at an early time, then perhaps when the environment of the Earth begins to fail, we could begin to resort to the already terra formed and oxygenated outer space. If done fast enough, then a large population could move out to Earth prime whilst the rest of the population remained. The decrease in population on the original earth would result in reduced environmental destruction. Even though we have slowed our space program for time being, I think this will be the ultimate drive to continue exploring and understanding space while creating an environment suitable for human existence.
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Sarah Godoy
6/17/2013 08:37:40 am
The 10 outlooks of human evolution presented in the article are innovative approaches that take into consideration the current state of human and societal development. The most interesting among all of these approaches, from my perspective, is the 2nd one, which suggests that humans should enter a phase of total extinction given the harm that humanity has caused to Earth’s ecosystems. Human activity and the each time greater demand for resources is leading to the enhanced greenhouse effect, in which atmospheric gases emitted in activities such as burning fossil fuels and the combustion of trees entrap heat into the Earth’s surface, are eventually degrading life on Earth. I do not agree, though, that humans will ever reach a complete state of extinction. Instead, my outlook for the future of humans includes a planet in which humans will have the same bodies, the same size of brains, no technological implants, but who instead, will be devastated by poverty. I envision “humans with no humanity”, with no sense of collectivity or cooperation, which will, indeed, be nothing other than a consequence of the depletion of natural resources. Like Charles Darwin explains in his theory of natural selection, the competition for resources needed for will ultimately result in the survival of the fittest, and thus the world population will eventually reduce. However, in the process of competition of resources, humans will transcend any moral limits in order to guarantee their own survival, thus ignoring any conventions regarding life in a community. Unfortunately, such negative outlook should not be discarded as a possibility for the future of humanity. My only hope is that we never really reach such a deplorable state.
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Anna Pearson
6/18/2013 04:21:12 pm
In each of the 10 ideas for the possible future of human evolution, two things stood out to me. One was the fact that each idea seemed so improbable and other-worldly that I couldn't comprehend the idea. I also started to believe that perhaps the article wasn't being serious at all. Second, I was surprised by the continuous appearance of technology in each proposed idea. More often than not, technology played a major role in the human evolution and these ideas forced me to ponder the role of technology in our modern societies. I have two proposals for the human evolution in the future. I realize that the previous ideas in the article will possibly take thousands of years to become a reality, but that doesn't exclude the possibility of any of them. My first idea is that humans will become the technology. Our brains will evolve to develop the capacity of being human calculators and human computers. We would be able to communicate through space, calculate impossible equations and eliminate the need for technology outside of our brains. However, my other idea is a complete opposite proposal and considers the degeneration of humans. What if, due to the great dependency on technology in our society, that humans evolved to have less and less brain capacity, essential becoming dumber and dumber. Due to technology, we wouldn't need to function at all, and our brains may run out of use due to the excessive amount of work that technology does for us. We may become fat and lazy, but would we be happy? The future is endless, but overall I believe that the future of human evolution is never predictable and ends up becoming something so gradually that we may never notice the big changes in our species until much later.
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