homo evolutis

I am a huge fan of Juan Enriquez, who I was fortunate enough to meet him while giving a Second Life talk to AMD a few years ago. His book "Untied States of America" is one of the most thought provoking books I've read and a huge influence on my "Collapsing Geography" article.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that his TED talk is brilliant:


It is really two talks in one. The first is a fairly succinct analysis of the current econopocolypse. The second, a believable, gentle transition from humanity as we see ourselves today to our inevitable bio-engineered, cyborg future.

Inevitable because the techniques and technologies that create therapies to grant the disabled human-normal abilities won't stop at human-normal. Like all other technology processes, the overlapping s-curves of therapeutics are accelerating forward. As they claw forward along the flat, early part of the curve, progress is painfully slow, but wait a while. Like all exponentials, beware of forward predictions.

The long term will be far more transformational than we expect.