Glancing across the last few million years, one sees a particular trend in evolutionary sophistication and adaptation - most animals become less sophisticated in the process of adaptation, not more.
There is not just the lessening of toes on the horse or the loss of teeth for the birds or limbs for the larger aquatic mammals, but even our own direct descendants are showing a gradual loss of some capacities and abilities. Can we extrapolate this trend to see what the human of a thousand years time may look like?
Back in our cave days, we imagine the robust hunter heading out to tackle a dinosaur. We missed the dinosaur party by around 65 million years but there were still mastodons and other big animals around, though the bones found in caves are predominantly of rabbit sized animals. So the big hairy cave man goes out to hunt......rabbit.
The imagery is not quite so exciting, but we note that by cave man times we had already mastered the flint thus making large canine teeth and claws redundant. We were wearing - rabbit - skins and so we didn’t need anything like fur.
But the redundancy didn’t stop there. Machines, transportation, processed food, police and armies have taken over the roles for which we would have required a robust frame and an ability to protect property, family and life itself.
If we look to the last few years we find that functions as simple as memory are now taken over by computers and personal organisers, the ability to do arithmetic is now redundant, and one can socialise without coming into contact with other humans (yes, even reproduction can be done without physical contact).
So what are we heading toward? The stereotypical computer nerd has minimised all non-essential physical components to become better adapted to a new environment. We don’t even have to walk any longer. The Segway Human Transporter will replace the need for legs [1].
Clearly the leftover bit is the highest form of information processing. Humans are becoming "consciousness servers" for non-conscious living composites such as human communities, animal communities, general flora and the entire biosphere. It seems to me that the most prized attribute (prized by a planet, if that is possible) that humans have is higher consciousness, and so any unnecessary peripherals and the distraction they pose will gradually fall away.
But this won’t happen tomorrow. None of my bits are about to fall off, but if I had children without sexual organs they would not, in say fifty years time, be at any breeding disadvantage. Makes you think...
[1] the "Segway Human Transporter" available for around $5,000 in March next year.
© Robert Karl Stonjek 2002