The humankind evolved. We evolved from the past when we were just a single cell till now, a time when we are a civilized animals with liberty use of reason and consciousness of ourselves acts.
But reduce the time on that way seems that the matter of each step doesn’t necessary count, when in fact, we pass a severy evolution issues and challenges that made us what we are now. If we talk in absolute numbers, the humanity has evolved from approximately six millions years till now, six millions years in which the world and the society itself has been affected either by the planet earth and by the humans acts.
From each challenge we learn something and the nature applies it in our biological configuration, that’s a mega-reduced way to explain the evolution. But, evolution needs a big price to has effect, many humans dies in the process of the improvement, many other animals species disappeared in this process, the natural selection.
Having in consideration all the previous premises. I ask to you, how an animal specie could evolved if they have many tools to prevent the effect of “natural selection”? In the past many members of the humankind dies because of diseases or mental/body impediments and now we have tools and ways to prevent them from dying, this cause directly a effect of natural human evolution because the DNA of that members are preserved and passed to another generation, causing a cascade of preserved human DNA imperfection.
This doesn’t means that we shouldn’t help other members of our specie with all the technology advances that we have now, if that were the case I would accept the fact that I would have died back in the 2017 when I had to have surgery for appendicitis, instead this mean that we have to think another way of how now, a time when we will not pay the price of natural selection, make the next step in the humankind evolution, and the answer, if we stopped to think, is the same cause of why we are asking ourselves this, the answer is the technology advance.
As well as the Homo gautengesis evolved from the fire discoverment, and the Homo neanderthalensis from the complex stone tools technologies. We, the homo sapiens are evolving from the use of technology to improve our natural mental/body skills. I’m sure that when we talked about this many people imagine nano-technology and the cyborization of our body, and in fact this is something that will happen in a range of 30-100 years from now, but those aren’t the only ways of the improve of the technology directly in our life. Let’s stop and think for a moment about food production on a industrial farm, from the genetic modification of the seeds to the plating, maintenance and harvesting of these today, it is done automatically. Let’s think a little bit about mining, each process carried out depends on an electronic machine thoroughly created and digitally connected, monitored and historicized every data of its useful life. Now let’s think about the global health system, every medical examen, every machine used in surgery as well as patients supporting, every new medication, every new research arose and arises from technological advances. And if we look at the individual level and trivial things, the common 2020´s human uses a number of electronic devices for everything, from health matters like monitoring the cardiac rhythm and have a track of calories, passing for social network task like have communication with our friends through apps like instagram or see what is happening in the world with apps like twitter. We use internet to educate ourselves, to watch our favorite shows, to entertain ourselves in video games. In resume, we can add on the judicial system, the political system, all the telecommunications, the stock markets, the medical system, the buildings, the political system and in short, all the foundations of our modern society depends today of the technology.
And I’m just taking into account technology that has been used since early 90’s, because today we have artificial intelligence that help us to understand and face new challenges, opening new fields for research and inviting us to ask ourselves new questions. Mixing technology with philosophy, mathematics whys psychology thus allowing us to better understand ourselves as humans.
So I ask to you: Aren’t we already cyborgs? Aren’t we use the technology as a extension of our body and mind? Aren’t we use the smartphones and the computers as an extensions of ourselves? Let me ask in another form. Can we do our life without any interaction with the technology?
The oldest Homo sapiens fossils that anthropologists have found thus far date to around 315,000 years ago. The first human agriculture records were around the years 9,500 BC, that means that “our” specie exists from the time that not event the agronomy were invented, and now, we have the world almost automatized.
The human intelligence and the human abilities to preservate us and improve our life has pushed us to this point, the heyday of a technological era that has recently started seen from a time scale of our entire existence as a specie. Isn’t it honest to ask ourselves if we are still Homo sapiens? Are we already evolving without necessarily depending on nature? Have we already evolved? Are we already Homo tech?
Nicolás N. Navarrete
