The Future of Homo Sapiens

So before we discuss the future of homo sapiens. We have to first understand where does the word “Homo Sapiens” comes from and what is the Genus.

Species that are evolved from a common ancestor are bunched together under the heading ‘genus’ (plural genera). Now what biologists do is, they name an organism by a “two-part Latin name” consisting of Genus followed by Species of the organism.

For example:

Lion is named Panthera Leo where Panthera is the genus and Leo is the species.

Now, Presumably, everyone reading this article is Homo Sapiens, so here Homo is the genus and Sapiens, the Species.

Now that we understood the nomenclature, now we can see what humans are and how will their future be.? Like it or not, the real meaning of human is ‘an animal belonging to the genus Homo. and there used to be many other species of this genus besides Homo sapiens. Yes, we did have siblings.

We are used to thinking that we were the only humans that existed and most people think that we came from some monkey humanoid version, well that's not entirely true. The truth is that from about 2 million years ago until very recently say about 10,000 years ago, the earth was home to several human species at the same time just like today we have different species of bears and cats.

So the logical reason we're here today is that we conquered all of our human contemporaries? Is it??

Just take a moment and give it a thought, you'll realize how unlikely our existence is I mean just consider me on a face-to-face fight for life with a Neanderthal (one of the species that coexisted with us). By the way, average Neanderthals were way bulkier and more muscular than us Sapiens.?Would I even have a chance to win??

Sapiens wasn't the most muscular, they weren't the best adapted to cold, they weren't the best foragers. In fact, they were pretty much faceless creatures in the food chain for a long time until very recently. So the question is?

If we were so weak as an individual what helped us conquer our contemporaries?

The answer is 'we're the only surviving human species today because we have the ability to make up stuff and have everyone believe in it.”

Any large-scale human cooperation – be it a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city all is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. Let me explain this with an example of India. There's no geographical evidence of the actual existence of our homeland, in fact, India is just an imaginary line on the map whose existence has been asserted to us by some authority whom we believe in. So we've accepted it as universal truth.?

I'll refer back to my example, that I would lose to a Neanderthal on one on one fight but what if we united 1,000 sapiens who believe in defending their forests versus a Neanderthal those who can't unite to save their lives, then the Neanderthals don't stand a chance and this is how Homo sapiens conquered the world.?By about 10,000 BC we had transcended the food chain and we had outlived every human species that ever existed on this planet all this sprouted because of one cognitive ability of Homo sapiens that they can unite billions of them and communicate with them in their unique language. And this unique language allowed them to communicate about things we have never seen, touched, or smelled - think about religions, myths, legends, and fantasies

“But is this cognitive revolution enough to take us to the future.”

Before we discuss this, I want to take this moment and be grateful for the fact that how peaceful of the time we live in presently. Earlier, from the stone age to the age of steam and from the Arctic to the Sahara, every person on the earth knew that at any moment the neighbors might invade their territory, defeat their army, slaughter their people, and occupy their land. But now war is at an all-time low because people have realized that the benefits of war have decreased. After all, physical resources drive less of the economy and international trade is more lucrative than war.

?We're changing rapidly, we're changing fast and it's the product of the human mind, not natural law and this is why our future is so difficult to predict.

Two emerging forces of this era are changing our ability to think and work. One such force is Artificial intelligence and the other one is Biotechnology.

AI or artificial intelligence is outsourcing our decision-making, analytical and communicative skills to computers to robots. AI is actually seeping into our lives in all sorts of ways that we just don’t notice. And if AI is properly used it can generate enormous prosperity for people, the opportunity for people and can cure deadly diseases like never before.?

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration?did a survey on Tesla’s Autopilot version 1 and found out that there was a 45% reduction in highway accidents and that’s just with version 1 think about Version 2 or 3 they will be even better.?Recently an AI doctor developed by Babylon Health a digital healthcare startup beat actual human doctors on an exam designed to test diagnostic abilities.?

The terrifying reality is not only the robots are helping humans, but they are also actually exceeding them. I am not saying that robots will take over the future but we are toying with the same capability of unifying an army but this time with immortal machines and who knows what outcomes we will receive from that.??

“Not only are we transforming our mental capability with AI we're also changing the fundamental biology of organisms”.?

Information technology is now swallowing biology. Biology is becoming information technology and we call it “Biotech”.

Healthcare is about to be upended. It means the age of personalized medicines, it means reprograming your genes away from diseases and aging, it means smartphone apps for biology, its means Larry Page creating CALECO (California Life extension company) and scoring a Time magazine cover story called ‘Google and The End of Death. Biotechnology is about to transform everything that it means to be human, it means transcending even aging and death.

We are bending biology to your whim and fancy and transcending natural law.

So will our ability to create myths and stories pushes us to transcend the laws of physics, the design of genetic engineering, and the power of the algorithm. Will we be able to preserve our consciousness electronically, design our DNA digitally or?will the technologically superior species emerge and Homo sapiens fight to the death.??

It's entirely possible!?

But is that it!?

The future of Homo Sapiens is uncertain?

Honestly yes!?

The future is now in our hands the cognitive revolution did its job and got us here.

Our future now is determined by the principles we inculcate and based on them how we use our minds and abilities.