Category: General

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks really immersing myself in futurism and people who think about the world on a timeline three decades out. That’s led me to a framework for our areas of inquiry that both holds up for organizing changes of the past — and can stand up to the changing winds of the future: human-centeredness. Each chapter can be organized by a basic human need.

I’m going to start exploring the human body, and what enhancements both biologically and technologically to humans-as-we-know-them will look and feel like by 2050, and the potential consequences and possibilities from that.

From that layer we can build out. From individual human bodies to human-to-human connections, with an exploration on love, sex and connection in 2050. And then further out, to human-to-human-human — communities and cities in 2050, where the urban question and transportation and such can be explored. The questions of economy, and power and governance could then flow from that, into another area of inquiry. But we’ll start with the most basic unit — the human body, and go from there.

So here are few angles I think we could hit for a single “episode” or chapter of this project. Each idea could be its own explainer and then we can piece them together for an episode.

1. 1. Past predictions for the human body, that is, how “futurists” of the 1980s believed humans would operate by our present. Will it need food and water to survive? How long will humans live in 2050? Will genetic disease be eradicated by then? What were PREVIOUS predictions for how humans would be by 2020? (The look back would be a feature of every chapter/episode).
   2. Everyone wants to live longer, but no one wants to grow old: The focus these days is increasing longevity while avoiding or delaying the stigmata of biological aging. Billions are now being spent to prove that advances in medicine will slow the aging process so that the average 90-year-old will feel as good as today’s 70-year-old. Google’s Calico is in the forefront of these efforts. Other companies have focused on specific diseases, but Calico is targeting the cellular degradation involved in aging that plays a role in most deadly diseases.
   3. Cryonic preservation: The Cryonics Institute in Michigan has over 100 people in “cryonic suspension” at its facility. SO MANY QUESTIONS. Alcor in Arizona charges $80,000 for “neurocryopreservation” (the head only) and $200,000 for the whole body but this includes all costs and perpetual maintenance. Cryopreservation can be covered by special insurance policies!
   4. Real time emotional state detection: Facial and tonal recognition analytics will help machine learning systems to detect consumers’ emotional state in real-time. Algorithms will harness your data in order to assess your predicted success at work, how likely you are to bounce around jobs and more. (This would then lead right into the 2050 dating/love chapter, in which future dating is predicated on systems that can read your physiological response to potential partners — you don’t even HAVE to decide!)
   5. Nanobots for targeted therapies: Teeny tiny robots could become mini-surgeons, squished into a pill that you swallow, under work being led by CSAIL at MIT. Because magnetic fields are able to transmit through our bodies without harming us, future surgeons could ask patients to ingest these nanobots and then direct them magnetically in order to deliver targeted therapies.
   6. Communicating with thought alone: At the University of Washington’s Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, researchers built a system allowing one person to transmit his thoughts directly to another person. Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation, one researcher sent a brain signal to another person elsewhere on campus, causing his finger to tap a keyboard. At Duke, researchers at the Center for Neuroengineering  built a real-life Iron Man suit, allowing a young man suffering from complete paralysis of his lower body to walk out onto a soccer field and kick the first ball of the 2014 World Cup.
   7. Computerized Brains, and brain hacking.  Devices implanted in your brain could function in two main ways: “Not only send signals to the brain as a means of treatment, but also gather data about the nature of these maladies.” There are several labs currently looking at ways in which computer interfaces will be operating within our brains, and the social implications of it. There is a cybersecurity angle in which brain hacking could become a thing. The hot brain implantation right now is neural lace: a new kind of flexible circuit implanted via injection, a grid of wires only a few millimeters across can insinuate itself with living neurons and eavesdrop on their chatter, offering a way for electronics to interface with your brain activity, perhaps curing diseases like Parkinson’s. (Engineers at Kernel, Charles Lieber at Harvard).
3. NOTE: The Bergguen Institute here in LA has a dedicated topic area called “Transformation of the Human,” which we can partner with or report on as they explore the same area. I don’t know where it fits in but I am imagining using them as talking heads or as co-travelers/co-hosts in exploration. I have a visit scheduled with the head of the Transformation of the Human project on October 9. More info:

“Humans have historically defined themselves by contrast to machines and animals, by having language and intelligence, and by the idea of a soul. Just as earlier changes such as the evolution of language, literacy, and better nutrition changed what it means to be human, so are new technologies changing our material realities and thus destabilizing old definitions of the human. We are interested, for example, in artificial intelligence and gene editing, as well as developments in neuroscience, bio-engineering, and interventions into the human microbiome. At the same time, we recognize that changing social and cultural norms are part of the process of redefining of the human, not least as different civilizational traditions inform and challenge each other.”