Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be HumanIn Radical Evolution, bestselling author Joel Garreau, a reporter and editor for the Washington Post, shows us that we are at an inflection point in history. As you read this, we are engineering the next stage of human evolution. Through advances in genetic, robotic, information and nanotechnologies, we are altering our minds, our memories, our metabolisms, our personalities, our progeny–and perhaps our very souls. Taking us behind the scenes with today's foremost researchers and pioneers, Garreau reveals that the super powers of our comic-book heroes already exist, or are in development in hospitals, labs, and research facilities around the country -- from the revved up reflexes and speed of Spider-Man and Superman, to the enhanced mental acuity and memory capabilities of an advanced species. Over the next fifteen years, Garreau makes clear, these enhancements will become part of our everyday lives. Where will they lead us? To heaven–where technology’s promise to make us smarter, vanquish illness and extend our lives is the answer to our prayers? Or will they lead us, as some argue, to hell — where unrestrained technology brings about the ultimate destruction of our entire species? With the help and insights of the gifted thinkers and scientists who are making what has previously been thought of as science fiction a reality, Garreau explores how these developments, in our lifetime, will affect everything from the way we date to the way we work, from how we think and act to how we fall in love. It is a book about what our world is becoming today, not fifty years out. As Garreau cautions, it is only by anticipating the future that we can hope to shape it. |
From inside the book
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Page 3
... problem you encounter when asking people what they'd do if offered the chance to live for a very long time - 150 years or more . Nine out of 10 boggle at this thought . Many actually re- coil . You press on . Engineers are working on ...
... problem you encounter when asking people what they'd do if offered the chance to live for a very long time - 150 years or more . Nine out of 10 boggle at this thought . Many actually re- coil . You press on . Engineers are working on ...
Page 4
... problem , and your taxpayer dollars unquestionably are being spent trying to remedy this oversight on the part of evolution . Nonetheless , it takes effort to hold some readers with this report . It just sounds too weird . One fine ...
... problem , and your taxpayer dollars unquestionably are being spent trying to remedy this oversight on the part of evolution . Nonetheless , it takes effort to hold some readers with this report . It just sounds too weird . One fine ...
Page 9
... problem was that the world was going through astounding change . First came the Internet , and then the World Wide Web . Cell phones the size of candy bars , palm computers the size of a deck of cards , and music players not much bigger ...
... problem was that the world was going through astounding change . First came the Internet , and then the World Wide Web . Cell phones the size of candy bars , palm computers the size of a deck of cards , and music players not much bigger ...
Page 23
... problems they call " DARPA - esque " or " DARPA - hard . " These are challenges verging on the impossible . " We try not to violate any of the laws of physics , " says DSO's deputy director , Steve Wax . " Or at least not knowingly ...
... problems they call " DARPA - esque " or " DARPA - hard . " These are challenges verging on the impossible . " We try not to violate any of the laws of physics , " says DSO's deputy director , Steve Wax . " Or at least not knowingly ...
Page 29
... problem of how not to sleep ; they actually don't care about sleep , " he notes . Yet what happens in humans is that " after 24 hours you start getting a little bit irri- table , by 48 hours you're frankly irritable and not fun to be ...
... problem of how not to sleep ; they actually don't care about sleep , " he notes . Yet what happens in humans is that " after 24 hours you start getting a little bit irri- table , by 48 hours you're frankly irritable and not fun to be ...
Contents
15 | |
CHAPTER THREE | 45 |
CHAPTER FOUR | 85 |
CHAPTER FIVE | 133 |
CHAPTER | 187 |
CHAPTER SEVEN | 227 |
CHAPTER EIGHT | 267 |
Suggested Readings | 283 |
Notes | 316 |
Index | 351 |
Other editions - View all
Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies ... Joel Garreau No preview available - 2006 |
Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies ... Joel Garreau No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
accelerating American become believe Bielitzki Bill Joy biological Bostrom brain called cell phone create culture Curves of exponential DARPA early 21st century Enhanced Eric Drexler evolution example exponential change Fukuyama future of human gene genetic engineering gift economy global Global Business Network going Goldblatt GRIN technologies happen Heaven Scenario Hell Scenario human enhancement human nature Ibid idea imagine Internet ISBN Jaron Lanier Joel Garreau Kash kids kind lives look McKibben means Mesilla million mind monkey Moore's Law nanotech nanotechnology National Network Nick Bostrom Nonetheless organization Oxford University Press person Posthuman predictions Prevail Scenario ramp Ray Kurzweil robots says scientists Silicon Singularity Smart Mobs social society species Spiritual Machines talking There's things tion transcendence transformation Transhumanism Transhumanist trying ture turn Vernor Vinge Vinge Washington Post writes York
Popular passages
Page 181 - Lords and Commons of England, consider what nation it is whereof ye are and whereof ye are the governors : a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.
Page 151 - His limbs were in proportion and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!— Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.
Page 151 - I saw - with shut eyes, but acute mental vision - I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, halfvital motion.
Page 148 - The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines — hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.
Page 107 - We may, perhaps, learn to deprive large masses of their gravity, and give them absolute levity, for the sake of easy transport. Agriculture may diminish its...
Page 339 - It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure ; that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.
Page 331 - Non ha l'ottimo artista * alcun concetto, Ch'un marmo solo in sé non circoscriva Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva La man che ubbidisce all'intelletto.
Page 180 - Suppose we could expel sin by this means ; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue ; for the matter of them both is the same : remove that, and ye remove them both alike.