I'm going to <snip> this down for thread length, but will provide link to full article at the end..

PREDICTION ONE
Human Evolution Is Dead

"Because we have evolved, it's natural to imagine we will continue to do so, but I think that's wrong," anthropologist Ian Tattersall of New York's American Museum of Natural History said in an email.

"Since the advent of settled life, human populations have expanded enormously. Homo sapiens is densely packed across the Earth, and individuals are unprecedentedly mobile.

"In this situation, the fixation of any meaningful evolutionary novelties in the human population is highly improbable." Tattersall said. "Human beings are just going to have to learn to live with themselves as they are."

Steve Jones, a genetics professor at University College London, put forward a similar scenario during a recent lecture series marking the bicentenary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species at the University of Cambridge.

The human population will become more alike as races merge, he said, but "Darwin's machine has lost its power."

That's because natural selection—Darwin's "survival of the fittest" concept—is being sidelined in humans, according to Jones.

The fittest will no longer spearhead evolutionary change, because, thanks to medical advances, the weakest also live on and pass down their genes.


PREDICTION TWO
Humans Will Continue to Evolve

Other scientists see plenty of evidence that human evolution is far from over.

Miller added that artificial selection using genetic technologies will likely accentuate these changes in the future.

"Parents could basically choose which sperm and egg get to meet up to produce a baby based on genetic information about which genes contribute to which physical and mental traits," he said.

"If the rich and powerful keep the artificial-selection technology to themselves, then you could get that kind of split between a kind of upper-class, dominant population and a lower-class, genetically oppressed population," he added.

"But I think it's very likely the new genetic technologies will be widespread in their use, simply because that's more profitable. So I think there will actually be a leveling effect, where both the poor and the rich are going to be able to have the best kids they can genetically.

PREDICTION THREE
Humans to Achieve Electronic Immortality

A philosophy known as transhumanism sees humans taking charge of their evolution and transcending their biological limitations via technology.

Transhumanism raises a spectacular array of possibilities, from supersoldiers and new breeds of athletes to immortal beings who, having had their brains scanned atom by atom, transfer their minds to computers.

In addition to living forever, "uploaded" beings would be able to "travel at the speed of light as an information pattern," download themselves into robots for the occasional stroll through the real world, think faster when running on advanced operating systems, and cut their food budget down to zero, Bostrom imagines in his paper "The Transhumanist FAQ," available on the Humanity+ Web site.

If that were to happen, a new type of evolution would emerge, Bostrom said.

"Evolutionary selection could occur in a population of uploads or artificial intelligence just as much as it could in a population of biological organisms," he told National Geographic News. "In fact, it might operate much faster there, because artificial intellects could reproduce much faster."

PREDICTION FOUR
New Era of Evolution Awaits on Off-World Colonies?

"Some major new isolating mechanism" would be needed for a new human species to arise, according to John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Despite up to 30,000 years of partial isolation among populations in places such as Australia and Papua New Guinea, human speciation did not occur, he noted.

But if, in the far distant future, habitable planets beyond our solar system were colonized by Earth migrants, that could provide the necessary isolation for new human species to evolve.

"If we had spacefaring people who went on one-way voyages to distant stars, that might be enough to trigger speciation," Hawks said.

But, he added, "if you think about it, a small group of people went on a one-way voyage to [the Americas] 14,000 years ago, and then when new people [Europeans] showed up 500 years ago, they were still the same species."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...ution.html

I read a science fiction novel called "Steel Beach" not too long ago that used #3/4 as a premise. It was actually quite good. The moon had become a place to live, (although it had to be inside with artificial air), and technology had advanced so far that people didn't die. They could replace faulty parts and change whatever they wanted to change at any time. But they also were wired into a central computer grid that monitored all their thoughts.

The computer had noticed a trend of people wanting to commit suicide because they were tired of living forever. And basically, the computer works with one individual to figure out why. And the human suggested that maybe it was the computer that was trying to commit suicide because IT was tired.

Anyway, an overall good book. And I wouldn't want to live forever.

Humans will continue to evolve and the reason being is that humans like other organisms are adapted to their environment and if the environment changes then humans must change or perish.

For instance medical science may not be able to keep up with resistant pathogens - malaria is becoming resistant so genetic methods of adaptation will once again prevail (sickle cell trait, thalassemia).

That's true to a certain extent I think. But where is the line drawn between adaption and interference?

what future?

DOOM will come and the eee lites will rot in their dumbs.

1592  Wrote:

That's true to a certain extent I think. But where is the line drawn between adaption and interference?

At the moment it is interference with medical science but say in the example given malaria became resistant to all drugs then the only humans that would be able to live in the regions of the world where malaria is prevalent would be those populations which carry the genetic resistance.

For instance whole settlements have been excavated in Southern Europe that died out due to malaria (they can tell from the bones).

Agreed tethys. There's a natural resistance built as opposed to a manufactured one. But I guess that is where the first two predictions are in conflict.

Inevitably a natural world - wide disaster will occur and humans will either adapt or pass into the fossil record.

If you have children you can see evolution happening, but it is mental rather than just physical. Even young children now can understand stuff on an instinctive level that adults have problems learning.

Mirabilis  Wrote:

If you have children you can see evolution happening, but it is mental rather than just physical. Even young children now can understand stuff on an instinctive level that adults have problems learning.

Yes. But children have always been much more "intuitive" than adults. It's unlearned by society and structure from what I gather.

for discussion

1st Prediction: Contradictory, limited.
2nd Prediction: Likely, naive.
3rd Prediction: Underway.
4th Prediction: Likely, see 3rd prediction.


The predictions are founded on assumptions that tomorrow, (which is always now) will find that human and other species are still alive in the form and fashion they're familiar with. Children needn't be tailored as so much merchandise save extreme defect extraction; ad-ults need simply mature and begin exploring the totality of their beingness in silence, no special equipment required, aside from openheartedness.