Posted by
Dougus Magnus on Friday, October 23, 2009 5:06:17 PM
The last century was one of dramatic change. We entered the century with a roof over our heads, a open hearth for warmth, an outhouse, a well and lit by candle light. We exited with devices as everyday life that would be considered wondrous to Americans that lived just a few generations ago. A man from 1900 would have a hard time believing that a hundred people could travel across the country in just a few hours in an airplane in the year 2000.
The last century was dominated by breakthroughs in physics and engineering. Yes, there were great breakthroughs in the medical field too but the things that changed our lives the most were due to industrialization and technology. Plumbing and sanitation made us much healthier than previously. Electricity piped into our homes allowed the creation of numerous devices that we use daily such as air conditioners, heaters, dish washers, washers, driers, refrigerators, stoves, etc. Then came the information age and information access became the next utility piped into our homes.
This brings me to what is to expect from this century. What will the world look like in the year 2100?
In the last century, humanity remade our environment. In this century, we will remake ourselves.
Biotech will be the field that will have the biggest effect on our lives. In just a few years we will be able to restructure our bodies through plastic surgery in any way that we can imagine including functional new appendages such as wings or a tail. We will be able to also determine many traits that our children will and will not inherit. Many diseases will be eradicated including most forms of cancer and heart disease. New replacement body parts will be growable for transplant. We will be able to hit the pause button on the entire aging process and live well into the 150-200 year mark with the body of a forty or even thirty year old.
Brain research will reveal many answers to the mysteries of the mind. We will be able to understand ourselves in a whole new way. Already a new chemical has been created that can erase memories. With further research, that chemical or some future drugs may be able to target specific memories and erase them. I expect brain to machine interfaces to be made. Such devices will initially be made available to the disabled to restore lost limbs or senses. Eventually we will all have a Matrix style plug somewhere on our bodies that will allow direct interaction between brain and machine.
All of these advances do not come without great pitfalls. We will be fighting for the soul of our race. There will be bioethical questions that will define who we are as a species. Do we treat the seeds of human life as just tissue to be experimented on, harvested, bought, sold and discarded? Do we allow the genetic manipulation of our children? Do we allow cloning?
Biotech is still in a relatively primitive state. Just like the first computers. By the end of this century, we will see just as drastic a change in our ability to manipulate our bodies as we saw in computers.
We will be the first species on the planet that will remake itself in its own image with all of the awesome and frightening implications that entails.