We’re all getting an upgrade, whether we like it or not.
In a few years, every moment of our lives will be recorded, analyzed, and shared. We’ll take the sum of human knowledge for granted. We’ll wear tiny computers masquerading as fashion accessories. The merging of humans and technology is unavoidable, and the end result will be a new species able to hack its own cognition and edit its own biology.
This new species—call it Human 2.0—is the most important subject of the century. But it’s still hiding in academia and science fiction. We hope to change that.
Human 2.0 is a person, imbued with superpowers that let him learn, play, and love in new ways. It’s also a society, rethinking how to vote, govern, prosecute, cure, and comfort. It’s as much about upgrades to our bodies—seeing around corners, navigating flawlessly, hearing things miles away—as it is about adding our thoughts to the hive mind of human consensus.
We don’t recognize our smartphones as ancestors of thejack on the back of Neo’s head. Yet they connect us to a world of layers, both real and virtual, that we share with those around us. With every click we’ve gained another ability, added another layer, or shared with another network. Each time we do so, we incur new social obligations, battery requirements, and physical dependencies. Every tap lets another genie out of the digital bottle, never to return.
Unlike biological evolution, which is regulated by the rate of mutation, reproduction, and the pressures of natural selection, Human 2.0 can happen as fast as we can invent it. Kevin Kelly points out that the Internet is only five thousand days old. Imagine the next five thousand.
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