Hi,
Few days ago while talking to a friend of mine, Tammy, I remembered a discussion we had when we were in high school. It was an essay we had to write about human biological evolution, what Human would be in 100,000 years. My friend took a Super Tech approach and I took a Limit Tech approach.
Here it follows:
Tammy: – Well, we can say for sure that humans will be taller. Because each generation children are taller than the parents.
I: – I don’t agree with you, because you know, there will be a strong food shortage and this lack of nutrition will lead to smaller humans.
Tammy: – No way, my brother is taller than my father… I am taller than my mother. We’ll be very very tall.
I: – Gosh, I envy you. I am smaller than my father, my mother and my sister…
Tammy: – And you eat a lot, so the food has nothing to do with height.
I: – Hold you horses, Tammy. I eat a lot indeed, but your theory is not working as well. I am not taller than anyone of my family. It seems we have a point here, wouldn’t you say?
Actually we were both right and wrong. Indeed genetics and nutrition are responsible for proper human growth. Countries with ethnicities of tall people, such Scandinavians, are taller than others, such Brazilians – that is the genetic part of the argument. But also proper nutrition, people starving in Africa are usually shorter than other Africans better fed.
The whole point of our discussion is: the next 100,000 years will be of superabundance, on which people would get taller each generation; or scarcity, on which people would shorten each generation?
I strongly believe that none shall completely fulfil. Humans will not have a superabundance available for everyone nor there will be a complete lack of resources. By the year of 2007 we see each country, depending upon the size and its own vision of future, choosing one line of development over another. I see European and Chinese people shorten, because they’ll have problem with fields to raise crops, and Brazilians and Canadians getting taller due to their relatively small population and huge room for dwelling and sowing.
I think the greatest challenge about future, resources and technologies is create a coherent and unique way of developing things. Super Tech behaviour has already shown to us that it is able to provide cohesion to the world: be bigger, stronger and better. It is proselytist.
On the other hand, Limit Tech and Local Tech are not able to produce such results – not because they have weak theoretical base, but by definition they are not expansion-driven behaviours.
Human Tech, also fails on this point, because each Human Being is different and this will make the whole idea of cohesion dreadful. “I do not want to lose my individuality”.
Nature Tech produces cohesion, but it is not proselytist – mainly because humans nowadays are dissidents of Mother Nature protection. Man decided to take its own future by hand, and yet it is learning how to deal with it.
I ask myself: Is Super Tech the only conceivable future? Will not the others fade away because they cannot spread their importance to others? Will man-kind be able to choose Limit Tech or Local Tech rather than Super Tech?
This cohesion is very important, not only to understand what shall happen in 5 ou 50 years, but also of how Homo Sapiens Sapiens will develop along the ages: like a short parasite or a medium-size nature-balanced creature.
