Sophisticated brain implants are coming. There’s no telling where humans could go from here.
Evolution Isn’t Over
It took billions of years for homo sapiens to emerge, but that’s not the end of our story — humans, scientists agree, continue to evolve. For much of human history, the technology we have created has changed us. Now, as electronics advance at an unprecedented pace, scientists suspect that they might literally affect the trajectory of future generations of humans.
Stanford neuroscientist E.J. Chichilnisky, who is working on an artificial retina to help restore vision to people with medical conditions that have caused them to lose their sight, brought this up in a recent conversation. “In the future, we will be designing how we evolve our brains, rather than just letting it happen by the extremely slow and random process of natural selection,” he told Futurism. “This evolution will happen by developing devices, such as artificial retinas, memory implants, and more, that interface directly to the brain and extend our capabilities. In turn, I expect that this enhancement will allow us to make smarter choices about the next steps in our evolution, so that our species can rise to the challenges that we will inevitably face.”
The idea isn’t as ludicrous as it may appear. “I think what he’s proposing is not crazy. It’s perfectly plausible,” Blake Richards, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Toronto, told Futurism…
Finish up here: Brain Implants Will Drive Our Evolution and “Extend Our Capabilities”
HAPPY WHITE HORSE™ 