Will Human Evolution Pay Toll for Gadget Reliance?
Dr Oliver Curry is an evolutionary theorist at London School of Economics. For a broadcast on Bravo! Network, he gave a report on the future of human evolution - and it doesn't look good for the long term.
According to him, In the next 1000 years people's height will swell to as high as seven feet, and they'll live for some 120 years. But there will be a split within the next 3000 years between two genetic classes (probably also driven by socio-economic classes). A taller, handsome upper class will evolve as healthy, creative, attractive and smart. But another sub-species of human will evolve into what Dr. Curry describes as a dim-witted, short, squat, and ugly goblin-like version of the human race.
This class distinction will be made by our choices of sexual partners today, and can already be witnessed. Have you ever seen the Super K-Mart in Melvindale MI? If you need evidence for Dr. Curry's version of H.G. Wells "Time Machine" prophecy, observe the Wonder Bread and Hostess Twinkie aisle at the local discount grocery store. I could see a child keeping Hostess in business with allowance money, but an adult buying a box of plastic cakes to go home and sit down in front of some reality TV, is just asking to begat future "goblins".
According to Dr Curry it doesn't get much better for the rest of us. We're all destined to resemble domestic animals, as our reliance on technology will become our long term genetic downfall in around 10,000 years. He feels we'll be so spoiled by gadgetry that we'll have lost all social skills, we'll appear more juvenile and we'll start to have severe health and genetic problems.
It's an interesting study, Dr Curry. But I put it up there with contemplating the chances of an Ontario hockey team one day winning a Stanley Cup. Dr. Curry is simply a Technophobe, albeit a well-educated one. Physical evolution says nothing of the human spirit or the evolution of our consciousness. Technology doesn't exist to simply serve our creature comforts; the most fantastic advances in the most recent decades exist to serve our sense of soul and connectedness to things that matter in a deeply personal matter. Robert Whithead postulated that evolution existed to serve perception (or sensation) rather than survival. It's a more nuanced view of evolution that essentially says we like experiences more than life. The point of the last decade of high tech gadgetry has been to experience, not to simply survive.
Curry's pedestrian views are already explicitly outlined by anyone who's read H.G. Wells. If you've read any modern science fiction, you've seen far more enlightened speculations on the direction of human evolution.
As for the dual human sub-species, what Wells called Eloi (the taller handsome race) and Morlocks (Dr Curry's short, dim witted goblins) are going to be interdependent economically and socially. It's ironic that Dr. Curry says the Eloi will be the creative ones, since creativity and struggle are often intertwined. Future 'Morlocks' will likely be the true artists and the teenage Eloi will imitate famous Morlock artists much to the chagrin of Eloi parents. Of course, when the Eloi teenagers grow older those Morlock artists will be forever enshrined.
