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The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human
by Joel Garreau
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2005, 400 pages
Paperback:
May 2006, 400 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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Taking us behind the scenes with today's foremost researchers and pioneers, Garreau reveals that the super powers of our comic-book heroes already exist, or are in development in hospitals, labs, and research facilities around the country -- from the revved up reflexes and speed of Spider-Man and Superman, to the enhanced mental acuity and memory capabilities of an advanced species.
In Radical Evolution, bestselling author Joel Garreau, a reporter and editor for the
Washington Post, shows us that we are at an inflection point in history. As
you read this, we are engineering the next stage of human evolution. Through
advances in genetic, robotic, information and nanotechnologies, we are altering
our minds, our memories, our metabolisms, our personalities, our progeny - and
perhaps our very souls.
Taking us behind the scenes with today's foremost researchers and pioneers,
Garreau reveals that the super powers of our comic-book heroes already exist, or
are in development in hospitals, labs, and research facilities around the
country -- from the revved up reflexes and speed of Spider-Man and Superman, to
the enhanced mental acuity and memory capabilities of an advanced species.
Over the next fifteen years, Garreau makes clear, these enhancements will become
part of our everyday lives. Where will they lead us? To heaven - where
technology's promise to make us smarter, vanquish illness and extend our lives
is the answer to our prayers? Or will they lead us, as some argue, to hell - where unrestrained technology brings about the ultimate destruction of our
entire species? With the help and insights of the gifted thinkers and scientists
who are making what has previously been thought of as science fiction a reality,
Garreau explores how these developments, in our lifetime, will affect everything
from the way we date to the way we work, from how we think and act to how we
fall in love. It is a book about what our world is becoming today, not fifty
years out. As Garreau cautions, it is only by anticipating the future that we
can hope to shape it.
Chapter One
Prologue
The Future of Human Nature
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not
understood.
–Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
This book can't begin with the tale of the telekinetic monkey.
That certainly comes as a surprise. After all, how often does someone
writing nonfiction get to lead with a monkey who can move objects with
her thoughts?
If you lunge at this opportunity, however, the story comes out all
wrong. It sounds like science fiction, for one thing, even though the
monkey–a cute little critter named Belle–is completely real and
scampering at Duke University.
This gulf between what engineers are actually creating today and what
ordinary readers might find believable is significant. It is the first
...
Whatever your views on scientific advancements, there is one factor that is indisputable - they are advancing at an extraordinary rate - Radical Evolution offers four scenarios as to how things could pan out.....continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Bill McKibben, author of Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age and The End of Nature
Joel Garreau lives well ahead of the curve -even the really big Curve he describes in these pages. One of our foremost chroniclers of change and historians of the future, he's done it again. Kevin Kelly, author of Out of Control and Wired editor-at-large
It isn't often an author gets to herald the biggest news in the last 10,000 years. But you'll get the full, uncensored, mind-blowing report here in this entertaining and surprisingly deep book. Stewart Brand, author of The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility and The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T.
How weird, how soon? That's the question that dominates the debates about the coming of 'post-humanity.' With his customary journalistic acumen and wry humor, Garreau has the answer: much weirder than you imagine, much sooner than you expect.Joel Garreau is the author of the bestselling Edge City: Life on the New
Frontier and The Nine Nations of North America, he is a reporter and
editor at The Washington Post, a member of the scenario-planning organization
Global Business Network, and has served as a senior fellow at George Mason
University and the University of California at Berkeley.He lives in Broad Run,
Virginia.
The excerpt at BookBrowse is substantial but if
you want to read even more, you'll find more than enough to hold
your own around in conversation at the
author's website!
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