Get Ready for a New Human Species

Juan Enriquez, who spoke at Technology Review’s EmTech conference on Tuesday, says our newfound ability to write the code of life will profoundly change the world as we know it. Because we can engineer our environment and ourselves, humanity is moving beyond the constraints of Darwinian evolution. The result, he says, may be an entirely new species.

via MIT’s { Technology Review }

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That’s the general idea behind transhumanism. Enriquez’s assertiveness in the interview is great to see, despite how much disbelief and negativity this topic faces. However, many answers seem unfinished, and this first seems to lack a broader understanding:

The new human species is one that begins to engineer the evolution of viruses, plants, animals, and itself. As we do that, Darwin’s rules get significantly bent, and sometimes even broken. By taking direct and deliberate control over our evolution, we are living in a world where we are modifying stuff according to our desires.

Are they? This response takes the “man vs nature” stance as it implies that the ways in which we evolve are “unnatural.” { That isn’t true. } Whether Darwin’s idea of “natural selection” implies something specific that excludes controlled evolution is a different question, but what’s being discussed here doesn’t seem to be a challenge to that theory.

{ Artificial Selection } seems to be a better term for this:

As opposed to artificial selection, in which humans favor specific traits, in natural selection the environment acts as a sieve through which only certain variations can pass.

In taking a new perspective on the terms “nature” and “artifice”, all that means is that nature, at a certain degree of complexity, has become able to choose the paths of its own evolution and expedite it, instead of relying on environmental nudges over many generations. We (the complex-enough life form) might not necessarily choose the “best” traits for survival in our environment, since we can be short-sighted, but neither does natural evolution.

Also, as evolution is { partially non-random }, it seems that what we have now is just a greater degree of control over the direction of adaptations.

But, as I don’t have a solid understanding of evolution, please respond if I’m wrong.

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