h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Human beings mess with things. Everything we can lay hands on, we manipulate to some end or another. Now that we have discovered the implications of genetics and microbiology there is really no hope for restraint. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just inevitible. Furthermore this is just a continuation of life's development. Natual selection has forged inteligence. Intelligence is retooling natual selection. We have already reshaped more than a few specise (how long would a cow survive in the wild?) soon we will develop radical ways to reshape ourselves.

I have some rather hazy and uniformed ideas about what direction this might take. For one thing I think we will be integrating tech into our bodies long, long before we replace them. The human brain is far superior to the best computers in many important ways, but if we could integrate silicon chips with an enhanced organic brain... well I don't know but it would be incredible. The rest of the body meanwhile seems destined to become less relevant. I think people will make themselves smaller. Smaller people require fewer resources.

We are becoming ever more clever at reshaping our environment, but this will seem child's play compared to the changes we will auger by reshaping ourselves. If we will soon have the power to make ourselves super-human imagine what super-humans will be able to do. Of course we can certainly wonder if we will still be human at all, but remember that humanity is changing and evolving. Eventually we are bound to outgrow humanity just as we did Homo erectus.

One more word about the Bomb. This is all provided we don't make ourselves extinct. But if we do, take heart; probably somewhere else molocules are are arranging themselves to replicate. These molocules are changing slightly over time. More and more complicated arangements arise. Intelligence takes shape. Eventually one of these permutations won't blow itself to kingdom come. This will be the species that survives to inherit the world. See natural selection is still at work

>>Eventually one of these permutations won't blow itself to kingdom come.
The somewhat-meeker-than-us shall inherit the earth!

>>The somewhat-meeker-than-us shall inherit the earth!
The somewhat less asinine perhaps...



Lizard