The Strange Evolution Of The Human Species

By James Donahue

With all of the tinkering going on with the human DNA, the cloning of animals, manufacture of advanced robotic machines and experiments with mind transfer, we have to wonder what humans of the future may become. That is if we don’t blow themselves to bits fighting over what remains of the planet’s natural resources.

The concept of creating duplicates of ourselves is not new. Powerful but controversial figures throughout history; men like Hitler, Saddam Hussein, various kings and possibly some American presidents, have been known to use doppelgangers, or especially prepared “stand-ins” to make public appearances on their behalf. This probably served to give them time to tend to more important business elsewhere, protect them in the event of an assassination threat, or possibly replace them and keep the power structure intact in the event of sickness or an unexpected and secret death.

Knowledge among a few that doppelgangers were being used . . . even by celebrities . . . may have help spark many of the strange myths that figures like Hitler and Elvis Presley were still seen among the living long after they were declared dead.

The remarkable development by the Japanese and Chinese of robots that look, feel and even react somewhat like humans appears to be leading to a whole new industry of future robotoids, or androids. These are manufactured humanoid machines that may someday look and act so much like humans they may blend in with society. Science fiction writers and Hollywood film producers have been dealing with the complexities of something like this happening for years.

Some believe that advanced robotoid technology has already been achieved. One writer who covered public appearances by President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s said the second time he got within a few feet of Carter he realized that this man was not the same Jimmy Carter he saw when Carter was running for office in 1979. He wrote that he believes the President Carter he saw may have been even been a robotoid model of the original.

Neuroscientists from around the world are involved in the Blue Brain Project at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), France. This is a collective effort among many world researchers to reverse engineer the mammalian brain within a computer. The ultimate goal is to develop a replica of the human brain in a machine.

Will it be possible that some day we will mingle with manufactured machines, or androids that not only look human but possess computerized brains that out-think and out-perform us?

Should we exist on this planet long enough to accomplish this remarkable feat . . . which is a direction in which we surely appear to be headed . . . we can perceive a scenario very much like the social problems presented in the science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica. In that story the androids became smarter than the humans, began self-replicating, and eventually went to war against the human race.

There was an interesting twist to the Galactica story. The androids became so much like the humans they began mingling, having love relationships with humans, and eventually discovered that one of the android women successfully gave birth to a child of a human father.

While the Galactica story is a bit far reaching in fictional technology, it is no secret that some humans are already thinking of ways in which to move the human spirit, or soul, with all of our personality and memories of who we are, from these disposable human bodies into superior, self-replicating machines of the future. The thought is that living in android bodies would give humans a chance to continue on and survive on what is obviously a dying planet.

While an android might need a little oil on occasion to keep the joints greased and operating smoothly, it can exist without food, water or oxygen. As to its energy source, that might not be a problem as long as the sun continues to shine.

Another significant development in recent years has been the successful mapping of the human genome and all of the genetic information stored within the bodies of not only humans, but all living creatures on the planet. Researchers have been quickly learning to manipulate “damaged” or missing DNA to find amazing cures for disease, design more healthy humans for the future, and even create specialized humans to perform unique tasks. For example some children might be designed to become fighting soldiers, while others can have the capability of becoming great musicians and engineers. It all lies in the genetic makeup.

The research also is aiming at the greatest and perhaps most sacred goal of them all . . . building the perfect human body that does not suffer from disease, can have damaged or worn parts medically replaced, and live for a very long time, if not forever.

Of course all of this new knowledge is very scary to a society still caught up in its archaic reality of the past, and bound by religious and social moralities carved into the laws of the land. Thus most of the research is obviously going on secretly behind closed doors, and when scientific papers are published, we can be sure that we are only getting a part of the real story.

If that reporter was correct in his observation that a robotoid was advanced enough in the 1980s to successfully pass for President Jimmy Carter in a crowd, and that it was not a doppelganger, imagine what is already existing among us today?

This begs the question . . . did they really kill Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Muammar Gaddafi or has it all been a big show?

It also has become obvious, as the wealth, power and control of the world has fallen into the hands of a special few that even if all of this wonderful technology already exists and is in use, only the very wealthy will ever get a chance to use it.