Tom Jackson - Future Humans

History is always in the past, and we understand it from the records made back then. The Dark Ages 1,500 years ago are so-called because relatively few historical records survive from then. History has been speeding up since people have developed ways to make more records. The worlds computers will record more facts about today than all the facts known about the whole of human history up to the day you were born.

There is often a long wait between having the idea for a new technology and the technology itself. For example, people have been talking about driverless cars for so long that it seems surprising we dont see them on the roads yet. However, one day automated vehicles will appear, and then well be surprised at how quickly they become normal. This pattern is nothing new; we humans just have difficulty imagining how change happensbut are good at adapting once it does.

BODY AND MACHINE?

Technology has advanced significantly in the last 50 years. Revolutionary changes have been made in both computing and medical sciences. How might these merge in the future so that we can revolutionize our bodies? Should they merge? Before we explore that, lets learn more about the body itself.

E veryone has one, they all work the same way, but each one is unique. If were going to think about how we might change the human body in the future, wed better know how the natural body works and what it can do. No other living thing has been studied as closely as the human body. Our bodies are the most complex systems in the universeand so far we cant find anything smarter.

LIFE AND DEATH

On average, male humans are born more often than females. For every 100 girls born, 108 boys arrive. However, the average male is slightly more susceptible to fatal health problems and he has a riskier lifestyle, which means that he is more likely to die than the average woman. By the age of 65, for every 100 women there are just 75 men. Globally, the average woman has a life expectancy of 73.5 years, while the average man lives to 68.5.

THE AVERAGE WOMAN

The average human female is about 15 percent smaller than the average man, but there is a wide range in height and weight. The tallest women live in Latvia, where the average height is 5 ft 7 in (170 cm), while the shortest women are Guatemalans, who average 4 ft 10/ in (149 cm). Women in Kuwait have an average BMI (body mass index) of 31.4, while in Bangladesh the average is 19.8. The average woman globally has 2.5 children in her lifetime. Just 50 years ago, the global average was 5 children.

THE AVERAGE MAN

The tallest men live in the Netherlands, where the average height is 6 ft (183 cm). The shortest men come from East Timor where they grow on average to 5 ft 3 in (160 cm). The fattest men come from Argentina, where the average BMI is 28.7, while in Eritrea, the BMI is 20.1 on average.

All living bodiesand ours are nothing special in this regardmust be able to do eight things to be characterized as alive:

Move

Grow

Remove waste

Reproduce

Have an energy source

Sense the surroundings

Have a source of raw materials to build the body