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The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human
by Joel Garreau
Book Reviewed by: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.
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).
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!
If you liked Radical Evolution, try these:
by Elan Mastai
Published 2018
Filled with humor and heart, and saturated with insight and intelligence and a mind-bending talent for invention, this novel signals the arrival of a major talent.
by Hillary Jordan
Published 2012
When She Woke is a fable about a stigmatized woman struggling to navigate an America of a not-too-distant future, who embarks on a path of self-discovery that forces her to question the values she once held true and the righteousness of a country that politicizes faith.
The moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
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.
