Evolution in action: The next step?

Humankind is still evolving. but, being clever little monkeys, we've managed to screw the basic process up a bit. The glasses I'm wearing as I type this are evidence of that - my eyesight's appalling, yet because I have access to glasses that won't get me Darwined out of the gene pool.

So what's the next step for humanity?
There are some damn weird ideas out there......

1: Enhanced Lamarkian evolution.

Lamarkian evolution is based on the idea that living things can pass on things they've learned, or acquired, in their lifetimes. Recently the growing field of 'epigenetics' (no, you don't need to know what that is but here's the link anyway) have suggested that some animals can do this....



We know for sure that human beings do do this in a sense: Through language, and through using language it to pass on what we've learned during our lives.

But our growing grasp of genetic engineering may allow us to take this to an entirely new level.....

2: Intelligence explosion.

Never mind the silly name - the basic idea is that we (by design or accident) create an artificial intelligence a lot smarter than we are. This AI can upgrade itself further, or build even smarter AI's. Some smart people have thought hard about this:



Possibly we end up end up with Skynet, Cylons, Cybermen etc etc running the planet. If we start introducing computers into our own brains we... well I'm not quite sure.

Maybe we become the super smart AI's?

Maybe the computers in us take over - are you familiar with these guys?

 

 

No?

 

Probably for the best.

 

Ok, I'm being a bit melodramatic. We don't know how it would play out - which brings me onto a third idea...... 

3: Technological singularity.

This idea - which the video above touched on - combines a spectrum of ideas like intelligence explosion and genetic engineering, and just says: Beyond a certain point, the rules as we understand them will break down.

And that means it will be impossible to know what will happen....