"Humans 2.0" Topic

A friend of mine recently had both knees replaced. As a result, we are all calling him "Dennis 2.0". This got me thinking, what other upgrades would be useful for the next release of humans?

A few ideas:

Reduce recharge time from 8+ hours to a more reasonable hour or less.

Searchable memory. Useful for when someone asks "What was the name of that guy… you know, he played the Russian in that movie?"

How about some sort of internal caloric regulator.
That way when I over-eat I do not get fat.

The question of the point at which the replacement and enhancement percentage renders someone no longer "human" has been a theme in SF writing for most of its history.

As to your other two points, the military has been testing things like Modafinil and Provigil for more than 10 years.

They're freely available in Europe, I believe.

what other upgrades would be useful

thicker skin?

TNE2300 for the win.

Pachydermis Homo?

We are not at an end state of human evolution. Humans will continue to evolve; it's just that no one will notice the changes because evolutionary changes are on such a large time scale (millions of years).

I would like skin which does'nt get sun burnt!

I think our lack of shin protection is a major flaw. I can't tell you how often I keep banging things into mine, and man does it make me acutely aware of my corporeal form.

Space Marine upgrades.

I do notice changes I'll tell you. Maybe it's just a function of age….for example, I now know that the first sense to go as you get older is your sense of decency…..

Enhanced senses, searchable memory, replaceable limbs

evolutionary changes are on such a large time scale

Yeah! What's the deal with hundreds of thousands of years between new releases?

No more brain freeze.

I need an app to improve my dice luck. Even up to statistical norm would be OK.

"We" will start noticing evolutionary changes when genetic manipulation becomes widespread.

How about a patch for that annoying bite your own lip while eating problem.

Robert

I was thinking of an improved arm which would let me scratch between my own shoulder blades. But if we could do that for ourselves, there's a fair chance the human race would die out for lack of interaction.

The caloric regulator and improved memory are worthwhile ideas, but as I understand it, the studies of sexual attractiveness suggest what we'll actually do is evolve to look more like anime characters.

It will be Choose Your Own Adventure.

Brains free from mental illness

New head?

link

Toggle switch for fingernail/toenail growth.

Toggle switch for hair growth. Why not lock in that perfect haircut until styles change?

Self cleaning teeth.

If humans 2.0 is an upgrade, I would like to see our species force the Ultramodern board to go away by making war a thing of history greater than ten years ago and counting.

Also, I want a squeedlyspooch.
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Evolution isn't a slow as we seem to often say. There are big, ~1M year blocks for homo habilis and homo erectus because we don't have enough data to fill in the tons of variations and back and forth in those blocks. All the "jumps" and "steps" in the evolutionary chains are just the indicators of where we have the resolution in our data to acknowledge the teeny-weeny (a technical term) frequent changes.

The interesting thing is that for the last 100K years or so, homo sapiens have been altering the environment in significant ways rather than the other way around. But then again, that, too is part of the process. You don't evolve into the apex lifeform (we are hardly a predator species anymore) by going with the flow.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light!

Brains free from mental illness

If that were made retroactive half the people I know (myself included) would have no personality at all.

I'd love to see direct mind to mind communication so I wouldn't have to listen to people yakking on their phones in restaurants or the grocery line. By this I mean voluntary directed communication, not telepathy; the ability to read each others' minds would destroy humanity as surely as weaponized bird flu and much quicker.

LT

Gosh cell regeneration. No neural degeneration or bone brittleness because of age for example would be great boons to daily life. Only problems could come from issues about retiring, as minimum age to do so would undoubtedly be much higher as a result of the longer lifespan. But such an inconvenience would cancel itself because of higher income/savings (just because more years working to earn a retirement pay) accumulated. Also R&D could be enhanced if scientists weren't limited by normal lifespan.

Humans don't work on releases, but continuous delivery.

Think Microsoft vs Google.

Anyway, in the feature pipeline, it would be really great if things didn't wear out unevenly, like eyes or knee joints or backs.

OTOH,would you want people just disintegrating into a pile of dust while driving,for instance?

Of course,we could replace nature's warning signs with tech: "ATTENTION: 1 Hour Remaining. Please report to the nearest Disposal Receptacle."