When we look at the future we can see there will not only be advanced devices in the future, but the human body will also be improved. Our senses are limited and maybe this is for a good reason. They may have developed the way they did to spare us from sensory overload. We seem to have just the right amount of awareness of the conditions around us to function. Some animals have far more acute senses than we have. Hunting birds of different kinds put our vision to shame. Dogs and other animals can smell things we are totally unaware of. Even some insects are far better equipped sense-wise in certain areas. Take the Wax Moth. It can hear 150 times better than humans. It is said this ability developed to protect them from echo locating bats. We certainly cannot compete with these creatures and the question is would we really want to. Imagine a world where we hear every sound, see far more than we do now and smell everything. Now imagine more, imagine when you are touched you no longer feel that touch the same way and it feels painful, because you are a lot more sensitive to touch. This wouldn’t be a very good life for us.

There is room for improvement however and science realizes this and is starting to develop things to improve our senses and to help those whose senses are not up to par. An example would be what we commonly call color blindness. There are several types of this and new contact lenses are being developed which will help eliminate this problem and allow the wearer to see colors the same way as those without color blindness do. It doesn’t stop there. Contact lens are also being developed to give the wearer the ability to see in the dark. In the future contact lenses may be able to give us an ability to see even more colors and provide some of the supervision that I said some of the hunting birds have. There might even be different types of contact lenses which could be worn for certain situations. Science is talking about permanent implantable contact lenses. It is not too farfetched to assume a certain type of contact lens may be developed to allow the blind to see.

Human ability doesn’t seem to be very special. I am not talking about our ability to use our brains, but rather our senses and athletic ability. I can’t think of one of the abilities we have where we are better than some animal. Aquatic animals and fish swim better and faster than we do. Many different animals can outrun us and many animals are certainly stronger than the strongest of us, yet we have made it to the top of the food chain, because we seem to be smarter than the rest of the bunch. The question is do we have to remain limited in our senses? We have proved we are more than capable of conquering nature in different areas. We have changed the flow of rivers, built farms to produce food and discovered how to fly through the air and even land on the moon. We routinely send out probes into space and explore the other planets. It seems to me we are on the verge of improving ourselves.

Our efforts to improve our bodies may seem very crude in the future, but the tech is there. An example of this is the exoskeleton suit. An exoskeleton suit is a sort of robot which a human wears. It allows humans to do several things. A human wearing one can lift far more weight than any human without one of these suits. A suit like this will allow the wearer to do things like repetitive lifting without the wearer getting tired and to carry heavy packs. These suits are primarily designed for soldiers to use, but they can also be of great use to those who may be paralyzed as the suit could give them mobility. I have read about one company developing an exoskeleton suit which if taken off by a soldier in combat will act as a robot and even fight with him against an enemy. I presume he will be in control of it. Not all improvements will need mechanical or electronic devices. It has been shown scientists have been able to increase the strength of a muscle by double using gene techniques. In the future people may have many of their senses and capabilities improved by gene therapy. New types of drugs might be found which will also be able to enhance our capabilities, either temporarily or permanently. Think of it, solders being sent out on a night mission are given a drug which gives them night vision, but it will only last for 8 to 12 hours. This will be long enough for them to complete their mission and then allow their eyes to return to normal so they are not sensitive to light.

There is something else which might be tried in the future and knowing what a secretive society we are could have already been tried and it is improving us by giving us extra organs. If our circulatory system could be strengthened and we were given a second heart what result would that produce? Could it make us into super athletes, because of all that extra blood flow and oxygen? Would we be able to do things we couldn’t do now? What would three kidneys or four lungs do for us? These are just examples, I realize we only need one kidney, but I am trying to illustrate a point. Since we have learned how to tap into someone’s brain and control it, what if we had two brains, would we be twice as smart, increase our smartness by its square root, or just get confused? If we could control the second brain it would be like carrying a super computer around with us.

The human body is ripe for improvement from enhancements to lengthening our lifespan and these things are coming. Will they be available to everyone or just the select few, that is an important question? About the only thing which will prevent this from happening is if the earth is wiped out or a nuclear war bombs us back to the Stone Age. We are about to embark on a journey of improvement and I hope we don’t only improve our bodies, but we also improve our souls.