by Talking about the idea of ST and future, how human beings would “improve” ourselves seems to be the eternal topic. Indeed, in the past thousands of years, technology, society, economy and politics were changing vigorously. However, something that never changed is us, human beings, especially the ways we think and feel stays the same (I would like to use a term which is the mixing of “heart”, “spirit” and “intelligence”). I think that’s the reason why we can still find resonance with those epics and classical literary pieces: though setting, clothing has all changed, we may still agree that the story of Hamlet or in Bible are somehow still taking place in our lives.
However, as scientists have already started their investigation on how to improve human body, it won’t be surprised even if some day they decided to alter human spirits. I have once read a sentence by Yuval Noah Harari, and he said that “it’s really possible for living organisms like us to alter our spirits by using biotechnology. While by using our spirits now, we can’t even imagine what will happen next.” Right now, what we are trying to do is to avoid death and pain. But what will we do after reaching that? I believe the answer would be divinity.
Here, the idea of divinity not necessarily mean by something which can make you omniscient and omnipotent, but much more like the gods in Greek myth. Themselves and their descendant will certainly have some weakness, especially in terms of personality. However, their love, hate, creation and destruction will be in a way more larger scale comparing to now. Maybe that’s a little bit hard to understand, but we have already reached some sort of “divinity”. For example, Hermes was depicted as the messenger who is responsible for delivery messages for other gods. But now, we can use our cellphones to send messages to each other. For creatures like Minotaur, scientists now can create genetically modified animals which combine characteristic from different organisms, or even stronger and more powerful weapons. In addition, even in areas as hot as The State of Israel, people don’t need to worry about any gods forbidding raining just because they are angry: they have built a huge desalination plant to make drinking water out from sea water. To these extents, human has already reached the level of god and divinity. And there will be one day we will be get used to divinity, which will possibly be more stronger than now, just like how we get used to internet. Indeed, the internet IS something that unimaginable.
We are very sure that human beings have many reasons to seek for such “evolution”, and there are many ways in which we can reach that goal. Human beings are very good at solving problems: when we realized that genetics is too complicated to be fully understood, we can use other technologies such as brain-computer interface, artificial intelligence, or even cyborgs. In these cases, more problems will emerge. When we substitute our human body parts by using machines, to which extent we will no longer be consider as a human being? Similar to the Ship of Theseus, while we are changing our body, the idea of “human beings” also altered accordingly. It’s common to find someone use artificial limb nowadays. However, how about artificial heart? Artificial brain? Will that still be a human being? Will that still be Homo Sapiens?
Well, we don’t need to worry about it now. The evolution of Homo Sapiens is a gradual process, not the booms day in Hollywood movies. During this long process, Homo Sapiens will “update” themselves step by step, maybe through the way of combining with machines or artificial intelligence. Many after years, when we look back on our history, we will realize that we are no longer the species which wrote the Bible and shoot Hollywood movies. Now, more people start to choose to rely on AI, or intake drugs which can strengthen their bodies. In the process of “upgrading”, we gradually change our traits one by one. Until someday in the future, we are no longer Homo Sapiens. Instead, we are something new.