Since the dawn of mankind, human beings have always been master manipulators, namely, of the environment around us. However, a more subtle change had been occurring as well; the augmentation, and enhancement of human traits we take for granted. Transhumanism: a term thought of as science fiction by the common person today, is occurring at an accelerated pace. Here's the kicker though: its been happening since the ice-age.
10,000 B.C... the ice age. For the first time in known history, on a grand scale, mankind had developed the first body augmentation: clothing. Yes, clothing. Humans did something unheard of in the animal kingdom; we took the skins of another animal and wore it to keep warm. As you may already know, the human body is not suited to handle extreme cold. The body as it were, was insufficient. In order for man to adapt, he had to enhance his ability to survive extreme cold. Clothing is an augmentation. You see, this would be the beginning of man starting to change not only the external, but the internal as well.
Fast forward to the beginning of civilization. Small settlements are beginning to form and humanity as a species is beginning to prosper. As they prosper, they also fight over resources. The concept of war is starting to loom on the horizon. Man must change his natural characteristics yet again. Humans are... frail. By natural standards, anyway. We have our skeletons on the inside, so we're not exactly well-suited for the rough and tumble situations that war presents. So we augmented ourselves yet again. With the advent of armor, we changed ourselves to better withstand these conditions.
As the future progresses on, and mankind is at the cusp of a new and glorious age for all humans, you can't help but wonder: will we change to adapt to this new environment? With rapidly advancing research in the field of computers, medicine, prosthesis, and genetics, for the first time in the history of the world, mankind is now able to change his own body. You already see small instances of it occurring with prosthesis that replace the functions of lost limbs. completely artificial organs and hearing aids that augment for those who are hard of hearing.
Jumping Jesus Phenomenon is a rather interesting theory. In it, Robert Anton describes a unit called a "jesus" to describe the doubling of knowledge. Starting at 1 C.E. with one jesus (to get to that one jesus took basically from the birth of homosapiens until then.) Here's an excerpt describing the doubling of knowledge as is stated in that theory(the article can be found
here):
"Each doubling of accumulated information appears to take a shorter period of time to occur. According to Wilson, to reach 2j required 1500 years (1500 C.E.); we subsequently reached 4j in 250 years in 1750, 8j in 150 years in 1900, 16j in 50 years in 1950, 32j in 10 years in 1960, 64j in 7 years in 1967, and 128j in 6 years in 1973. Wilson believed there was no reason to imagine that the acceleration would stop, and further postulated that we reached 256j around 1978-79 and 512j in 1982."
Think about it in terms of your cellphone. The phones of now are orders of magnitude more advanced than cellphones of 10 years ago. The capabilities and speeds of cellphones today rival computers of even a few years ago. The amount of information processed and passed from person to person is one hundred times that of an average person 50 years ago. This rapid increase in information and technology can best be noted by the whimsical joke that the elderly often complain about their confusion at modern technology. According to Moore's Law, it might be necessitous in the VERY near future to augment ourselves yet again to adapt to this new age. A more likely scenario might occur, however: we may do away with the human body all together...
There is already technology that scans brainwaves. It might be possible one day to emulate those brain functions with a computer program. Even further than that, we might be able to copy ones brain functions at atomic fidelity, effectively transferring every single aspect of that person over. the issue isn't the software, but rather the simply stupendous amount of calculations required to emulate a human brain's functions. That, however will be solved an a few 10s of years if you believe the trend of technology today.
Imagine a future where you can change your body like you change your clothes? Or where you can have neural enhancements where your able to have intelligence rivaling that of Albert Einstein, or perhaps prosthetic limbs that enable you to perform orders of magnitude greater than our best athletes of today. A suitably upgraded person of the 2040's integrated into today's society would almost seem like a magician. With a brain that can pluck ungodly amounts of information from a server on a computer more powerful than a million human brains, skin that can constantly change shape and composition on a molecular level due to nanobots, and speed and strength like something out of a comic book. There'd be no jail that could hold him, because he could simply use nanobots to change the composition of the bars, and bullets would just bounce off of him because of his skin which can be instantly converted on a molecular level to material harder than diamonds.
It may sound odd to hear of such things being within the near future, but its a more than likely scenario. Mankind is becoming something new, something greater. Like our neanderthal cousins before us, mankind's time as we know it, may soon be coming to a close.
