Man has lived on earth for approximately 800 generations. And now, we have come to an important turning point. In fact, one of the most momentous junctures in the history of our planet.... You and I are the last generation of human beings who are ever going to die. Starting with our children, human beings will probably live forever. This is the belief of Ian Pearson, a man who surely has one of the best jobs in the world: he is a professional futurologist, which means that he is paid to constantly scan the horizon, to predict what is likely to happen in terms of technology, lifestyles and societal trends in the next 15, 20 or 50 years... and to tip off his company (British Telecom) accordingly, so that it can develop the right products at the right time. Living forever does not, in Pearson's view, have to do with genetic tinkering of any kind. Instead, it has to do with a convergence of Man and Machine. Explaining this, Pearson points out that, for centuries, man had imagined that, in order to fly, he would have to develop wings of some sort, which he'd have to flap in order to get himself airborne. Instead, of course, the solution ultimately turned out to be a mechanical adjunct to himself: the aeroplane. This is analogous to the issue of living forever. The interim step might perhaps be to extend life for a few decades through genetic manipulation... but the ultimate solution is a cybernetic one. When a person's body grows old, and time comes for him to die, all that he will do is get a back-up of his mind onto a network and then download it onto an android. And then, through the android, he will live forever. All this, according to Pearson, will become a reality within the coming century. What we are looking at is the evolution of man from homo erectus to homo cyberneticus. Pearson also talks of other exciting possibilities triggered off by this Man-Machine convergence. One of them, for instance, is giving the human IQ a quantum leap -- not by the use of drugs, but by injecting tiny nano-technology robots into your bloodstream. These "nanobots" would then plug themselves into your brain and connect it with your computer network... thus boosting your IQ from, say, 150 points to 50,000 or even 100,000! This Man-Machine convergence also has implications about the possibility of inter-stellar travel. Since such journeys would involve hundreds of light-years, it would obviously be impossible for a biological man... but very possible for his brain, downloaded onto an android, which would then head out to colonise other planets, other stars. What is so damn frustrating is that you and I will be dead just before all these dazzling possibilities become a reality (So near and yet so far!). But our children will probably be the first generation of Mankind to live forever; to enjoy IQs a thousand times more powerful than our own; and to dance on other planets. The running child, Father to Man, And, in ways as yet unknown, Brother to the cyborg... Anvar Alikhan's secret hope is to see the Man-Machine convergence happen in his lifetime. Do tell us what you think of this diary
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