Future Brains: An Exploration of Human Evolution in the 21st Century and beyond

The evolution of Homo sapiens has been one of the most fascinating experiments this planet has ever witnessed. Some 2.5 million years ago our early human ancestor Homo habilis started to use tools, which began a new kind of evolution informed by technology. The escalating use of tools and discovery of fire expanded the social and technological potential of the species Homo. The emergence of agriculture-based societies eventually gave rise to stratified civilizations, fostering further technological advancements. Human evolution is unique in that it has been able to make substantial evolutionary leaps which, in Stephen Jay Gould’s words, correspond with the notion of “punctuated equilibrium” (1972, 1977). Punctuated equilibrium offers a poignant explanatory model for understanding the rapid evolutionary changes of the human species. Such transformation is posited on a ‘conscious design’ which has supplanted natural selection (Stock 1993). As a result, the human species is the first and only species which is now capable of tinkering with its own evolution. The human brain, with its dependency on symbolic thinking,affords an unlimited range of behavioural possibilities, which continue to inform human evolution, and has now placed human beings in a position “to guide the future course of evolution on earth towards greater fulfillment, so as to realize more and higher potentialities” (Huxley 1962). In this paper, I will explore future possibilities in human brain evolution. The first section will discuss new cognitive possibilities,. the second will examine the cyborgisation of the future brain, and the third will explore nanotechnology and virtual realities. My aim is to inform the reader of potentialities which may be available to human beings in the not too distant future. The growth in new biotechnologies will potentially have a transformative effect on the human species. However, where this evolution will take us is still unknown.