Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
As any fan of the long-running British sci-fi TV show Doctor Who will tell you, bad things happen when people decide that people should no longer be people and instead should become arse-kicking cyborgs that have moved past all of that emotion and humanity business.
In one episode of the series, the villainous Cybermen are created by an inventor who wants to “upgrade” the human race so that emotional, psychological, spiritual, and physical weaknesses can be eliminated while information and logic can be preserved eternally. But such things are merely the realm of science fiction and could never happen in real life… right?
According to a recent CNET article, not only does Yuval Noah Harari, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, think that humans will eventually decide to “upgrade” themselves into cyborgs, he expects it to happen relatively soon – as in, sometime during the next 200 years or so.
Humans will soon be upgraded – well, the rich ones, anyway
“I think it is likely in the next 200 years or so homo sapiens will upgrade themselves into some idea of a divine being, either through biological manipulation or genetic engineering by the creation of cyborgs, part organic part non-organic,” he told The Telegraph on Monday, adding that doing so would be “the greatest evolution in biology since the appearance of life.”
He also stated that little has changed “biologically speaking” over the past four billion years, but that once the human race decides to take that next step, we will we be “as different from today’s humans as chimps are now from us.” What will drive this change? The tendency for humans to be dissatisfied with the status quo and their seemingly insatiable need for more.
“We are programmed to be dissatisfied. Even when humans gain pleasure and achievements it is not enough. They want more and more,” the professor told the UK newspaper. However, he also warned that only the wealthiest people would be able to afford this cyborg technology, leading to a future in which the rich thrive while the poor struggle and potentially die out.
Harari also said that he sees concepts like religion, money, and human rights – things that he calls “functions” created to keep society from unraveling – becoming relics of the past, tossed aside in favor of technology. In light of recent trends regarding smartphone use, as well as the recent poll in which 66 percent of millennials said they had no religion, it’s hard to argue otherwise.
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