RE: My Phone Died. It Felt Like Part of Me Did Also.
It should be a surprise to no one that the mind evolves with new technologies. After all, whenever we wrap our head around new concepts, our brain is constantly rewired by the effort itself that is put into learning a new technology.
Now, the tools in general that humans growing up today needs to learn are very different indeed to those that their ancestor's minds were exposed to. So thus, the rewiring will not be the same, which again will result in slightly different minds with sightly different capabilities and perceptions.
So it will not be humans, as we know them today, who will explore the stars. It will probably be someone quite like us, but still significantly different from us, simply because of the different technologies that will have "made them" as you say.
It's a fascinating subject, and one that is increasingly relevant in an age dominated by exponential technologies. WIll our minds grow at the same pace? I wonder.
Upvoted and Followed! Happy that there are others who share an interest in the topic :)
Thank you and great comment.
I think the future (especially when it comes to traveling the stars) will be synthetic... or, more accurately, the line between synthetic and biological will be so blurred we won't know the difference. Data stored in DNA, cyber brain implants... it's going to get interesting.
And thank you for writing and sharing the article!
I absolutely agree with you. I once had the pleasure of asking Pete Worden, then Director of NASA Ames Research Center, what he thought would happen first: That we would have the technologies required to take humanity in its current state to settle space, or that we would have the biotech-knowledge necessary to alter our bodies as to allow for settlements and long term space travel without the need for such technologies. (Mostly a question of altering DNA to prohibit bone-loss and lessen the vulnerability to radiation). His reply at the time was: "Answering questions like those tend to get me into trouble". (Practically confirming that he believed the latter).
Luckily though, I got to meet him again at the Spaceport Norway conference I helped build this year. As he is now the chairman of Breakthrough Starshot an initiative funded by Yuri Milner, with the support of Stephen Hawking and Mike Zuckerberg, to pursue innovation-projects that are simply too futuristic to make sense as a short-term investment, but with the aim of advancing the technologies and sciences necessary to answer "the big questions".
It is cool to see that NASA Ames, the NASA centre he used to run, now do look seriously at the potential of working with the DNA of future settlers on other planets and sending instructions of changes to the DNA-code necessary for astronauts to adapt to unexpected hazards via radio-communication.
Anyways, I hope to write a longer piece on this at one point for my steemit blog which does focus on sharing both the excitement I have for these developments and what I get to work with in the space sector myself. Still quite new to the platform, so great to come across others who find this stuff fascinating.
Very cool! Followed.