Future Perfect?

Who ordered the ham on rye with a side cesar?

The future; flying cars, space ships, steaks sprouting out of pills when you "just add water". Many fantastical things come to mind when we think of the future that humanity will have, and we tend to see ourselves as a part of it, riding shot gun in this amazing future world. 

You and I will never get to be part of that world though, not just because we'll all likely be dead before any of the really cool stuff is invented, but because in one hundred to two hundred years time (perhaps even sooner) people like us will be considered obsolete. People like us will become a new class of disenfranchised.

Science has already reached a point where it has changed the way we communicate, the way we purchase goods, how we gather information, and how we wage war. Despite all it has changed in our lives however, it still has yet to dramatically change how we define what it is to be human. Whether you measure "being human" through our physical capabilities or limitations, or whether you measure it through how we perceive our world and what is beyond it, science will change what being human means. 

Soon you and I will be able to have subdermal microchips implanted in our bodies to ease the process of purschasing goods in stores, and passing through areas requiring ID. This is not far off, these things could be in major use within our lifetime. If you were to pair seamless integration of hardware and the human body, with the constant progress in miniaturization, you would get thousands of life changing applications. Go a step further and add in advanced robotics, think nanobots, tiny machines capable of working within a human body. With advanced nanobots we could overcome so many human limitations, disease wiped out, growth of muscle tissue without even looking at a weight room, super human ability to heal. Think even of the way electronic devices communicate through blue tooth, what if the nanobots could transmit information to another individuals nanobots in a similar but more efficient fashion? It would eliminate any need for traditional vocal communication, anyone with a nano shot could send information directly to the brain of another nearly instantaneously. This is not just science fiction, it can, and given the nature of scientific progress, will happen. 

Of course nanotechnology capable of making us super human is far off, and sounds a little hokey, but what about gene therapy? A method of treatment where disorders caused by genetic abnormalities can be treated by altering or replacing the defunct gene itself. Think about it by tinkering with our genes you could wipe out a good portion of the disorders on this list. And this by the way is not just science fiction, no it is happening right now.

This is your future boss.

Think about the craziest shit you can and chances are good that at some point in our future we will be able to do it or create it, and anyone who is lucky enough to be apart of these coming technological break through will be better for it. They will be able to become so much more than what we are today, in nearly every way, they will be post-human. But if the world these post-humans live in runs on a scarcity based economy then that means someone will have to go without, someone will go without all the technology that will redefine the human condition. These people will occupy the lowest rungs of society, and they will be people no different than you or me, but they will be treated as second class citizens.

This is what happens in our world, whole countries are exploited because they aren't as industrialized as another nation, or don't have as large an army. Because in some way they don't fit in the top rung of the order of our world. They are considered apart from us because they are poor and backward, and one day in some scarcity based society in the future people will be considered apart from one another because one group will be post-human while the other is merely human.

I haven't studied all the trends, and I'm no futurist, so maybe I'm wrong. Then again perhaps I'm not, and at that point every one of us needs to be an amateur futurist and start asking tough questions about the ethics of all our progress. Maybe we need to ask tough questions about the control corporate entities have over our genome, or the control they have over genetically modified seed. Because such things will affect the course of sceince, and what science needs is a conscience, a guide, not a bottom line.