• Question: How will man-kind evolve, given changes in technology and climate?

    Asked by Supriya to Jackie, Michele, Oliver, Vicky, Yelong on 9 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Oliver Brown

      Oliver Brown answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      No-one knows for sure! Maybe we’ll develop ways of interacting more directly with digital objects, or our vision will alter to see screens better? Or perhaps we’ll stop feeling tired at night, and our typical ‘day’ will shift? Probably nothing quite so drastic, but I definitely wish I could be around to find out. I for one welcome our new robotic overlords!

      Edit: Actually this sort of thing is probably better explored by sci-fi than by actual science — the work of the authors Stephen Baxter, and Iain M Banks springs to mind!

    • Photo: Michele Faucci Giannelli

      Michele Faucci Giannelli answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      It really depends how much we will allow technology dictate our evolution.
      For example in a not far future we could engineer all new children to be born without any gene that may cause illnesses. This is a very moral sensitive thing to do which will definitively affect our evolution one way or the other.
      We could also go the Borg way and fully integrate with technology, in a sense this will be more acceptable as we will accept people with a mechanical art to substitute a missing one. Having nanomachine in our blood stream to keep it clean and help fix problems will be another nice improvement.

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