If you thought that our evolution process was complete and this is how we are going to be and look like, think again. We are still very much in our evolutionary process, one which we can’t observe, owing to the smaller time frames involved, but whose signs are very clear.

Along with nature, we are gradually developing technology ourselves that will grant us the ability to influence our own evolution, which would be like playing god but it is where we are headed regardless.

In fact, much of what the modern world is today, is the result of technological progress that has happened in the last 3 centuries. Evolution turned us into humans over a period of hundreds of thousands of years and we turned ourselves into the modern human in only a tiny fraction of that time.

So, it is interesting to think what we might be like or look like in the next 500 years. How might our appearance and abilities change in the not so distant future and what would that mean for the society we live in?

What Natural Evolution Would Do

Let’s focus on how nature would further evolve us based on the world we live we live in. As you know, those evolutionary traits survive and are transferred to the next generation, which help a species survive.

Today, global warming and climate change are rampant on our planet and they are sure to affect our evolution process as our bodies would need to adapt in order to survive.

Experts say that as a result, we will have darker skin and an increased height to deal with these changes. In fact, in the last 150 years, the average human height has already increased by 10 cm, though other factors might have been responsible for this.

Also, we could have larger lungs, owing to the fact that there is less availability of oxygen rich air and the air that we breath would be needed to be highly filtered.

As always, nature likes to take time with what she does and our evolution, if completely depended on nature, would take hundreds of thousands of years more, for us to look and be significantly different than what we are today. That’s where artificial evolution comes into play.

What Artificial Evolution Will Do

As you all must be aware already, our genetic modification abilities are reaching ever new heights and although they are not mass market ready, they will soon be in the not so distant future.

I have talked about designer babies before where parents would be able to decide what their babies would look like and could change several traits like colour of skin, eyes, hair, height, intelligence, resistance to almost all disease and a host of other things.

This will create an entirely new generation of humans on the planet, one that is super strong, super smart and lives longer. Any unwanted trait could just be snipped off from our genome. We would literally be the masters of our own destiny.

Add to the mix the wonders of nanotechnology and bio-enhancements and you get humans that are simply invincible. It doesn’t surprise me to think that just in a few centuries, humans would have different super abilities. In fact, they could be so common that they could be downloadable on the internet and self administered. What a world that would be.

Also, we could probably go into a direction, where death loses all meaning. Sooner or later we will have the capability to transfer our consciousness from one body to another. Whether or not that body is made of living tissue or a mechanical one (robot) wouldn’t matter.

The science fiction of today very well may be the reality of tomorrow and all of this could indeed be possible in only 500 years. The world would be a very different place, WE would be different.