According to Professor Yuval Noah Harari from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, humans’ desire to evolve more and more and ‘upgrade’ as time passes, will increase their ‘hunger’ to merge with machines and become ‘God-like cyborgs’ within the next 200 years.
“I think it is likely in the next 200 years or so Homo sapiens will upgrade themselves into some idea of a divine being, either through biological manipulation or genetic engineering of by the creation of cyborgs, part organic part non-organic. [...] It will be the greatest evolution in biology since the appearance of life. Nothing really has changed in four billion years biologically speaking. But we will be as different from today's humans as chimps are now from us,” Harari said during his presentation at the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts in Wales, which is one of the top cultural events in the UK.
The cyborg technology, which will enable human kind to replace parts of their body with machines, will make the possibility of living forever a dream come true. Harari added that human species due to their ability to imagine, create and invent fiction will, in a way, bond themselves together and their different beliefs and religions will no longer be an obstacle for them to change themselves and the way they see the world. “God is extremely important because without religious myth you can't create society. Religion is the most important invention of humans. As long as humans believed they relied more and more on these gods they were controllable. […] But what we see in the last few centuries is humans becoming more powerful and they no longer need the crutches of the Gods. Now we are saying we do not need God just technology,” historian and A Brief History of Human Kind author Harari said.
According to him the gap between the rich and the poor will be widening in the next 200 years and that will be the main reason why only rich people will be able to afford the cyborg technology upgrades and become ‘immortal’, while the poor will most likely die out with time.
Various researchers actually believe that we have already started the long way towards the futuristic ‘God-like cyborgs’ since several parts of our bodies have been replaced with artificial body parts such as artificial bones and brains and artificial internal organs like artificial kidneys, bionic eyes, artificial hearts, etc. However, all these artificial organs are currently being used in order to help patients stay alive until they transplant a certain organ but in the future this kind of technology is going to become huge and will be used to help humans live way longer and maybe even become immortal.
(Picture Source: scienceofsingularity.com)