It is said the next big wave in technology will be the augmentation of humans. In case you haven’t heard, we are making incredible leaps in technology. Today there are at least two ways humans can be augmented. The first way is to place devices inside their bodies. The second way is to place these devices inside their clothes. One way is more or less permanent and the other way only works when a person wears the clothes that have the devices in them. I remember someone years ago actually having a small motherboard, which is the basis for computer, surgically implanted under his skin. At the time he wasn’t doing much with his computer device, but I do remember him using it to open doors, and unlock locks. At the time I also remember a doctor saying how dangerous this was, because the computer board and its accessories could have acted like a carcinogen.

Today things are a lot different. We are not that far away from developing a portable device which will allow us to communicate without speech. Reading people’s brains has become possible and scientists have done this quite a few times already. You have to wonder how a device like this, or any other futuristic device will affect the human race. Will we lose our powers of speech eventually? Is there really an advantage to speaking through our thoughts rather than our words? If we could aim our thoughts at a particular person we might be a way to have a private conversation without others hearing. The human brain is said to display five different types of brain frequencies and these are Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta. The dominant brainwave any given time depends on many different conditions of the human body.

Many scientists believe we are at the beginning of an enhancement revolution. It is believed people will be able to change, improve and advance many things about themselves. There are those who are claiming we will achieve immortality somewhere around the year 2045. It isn’t only electronics I am talking about, we are also advancing in other fields which would also lend themselves to improving human bodies such as biology and nanotechnology. There are those who believe nanotechnology may be the most important aspect of human improvement. They think nanotechnology will be partly responsible for immortality. So how would this work exactly? The idea here is to insert tiny robots into human bodies which will monitor us and take care of any problems before they get out of hand, such as destroying cancer cells and keeping our veins and arteries clear. Along with this it is assumed we will have solved the problem of aging.

Many of us love to watch superhero movies. We like this because many of these superheroes have powers we might love to have. Could it be in the future we will all be like superheroes? What powers might we all have? Super strength could be one of them. We know there are performance-enhancing drugs on the market and many an athlete has gotten in trouble for using them. As time goes by will these drugs get even better until they reach the point where humans might be able to at least double his or her strength? It certainly is not outside the realm of possibility. There may be certain drugs which are developed which will be useful in space travel and protect humans from deadly radiation. There are already drugs on the market which claim to give you a full workout without lifting a finger. Not only are electronics advancing exponentially, so are drugs.

One of the things the medical profession has been working on for years is trying to find a way to stop the human body from rejecting what it perceives to be a foreign element. This is one of the reasons why it is so hard to transplant organs from one person to another person. That person receiving the organ has to be injected with anti-rejection drugs. What scientists want to do is trick the body into thinking the object they are placing in it is not a foreign object, but part of the same body. Once this is accomplished all sorts of computer components will be able to be placed in human bodies without fear of rejection. It goes without saying this will also be a huge advantage to those who need organ transplants and other human parts. There are always those who fear some computer placed in our body will take us over. Bodies being taken over have been shown many times in science fiction movies, but there is probably not much chance of this ever happening.

When we talk about improving the human body we are also talking about improving our brains. There has been a lot of talk about inserting computer chips in our brains which would give us all the knowledge we ever need for a particular position without ever going to school. Some fear this will cause problems for the human race and they go on to say the first problem could be caused by the lack of sociability, because when we go to school we learn how to get along with other people. The second thing they worry about is the powerful and the rich will be able to get their children prestigious positions, because they will be given the knowledge of engineers, surgeons and other people who are high ranking in the social order, while the rest of us will be given chips that contain knowledge for low ranking jobs. This is certainly a possibility knowing how the world works.

Most of the stuff may not have to go into our bodies and just be put into our clothing. If we can figure out how to create signals which our brains can receive then the technology doesn’t have to be under our skin. There is a revolution coming and it is a revolution of technology and it is going to affect every facet of our lives and as a matter of fact it has already. It is almost impossible to get our children off of their cell phones. Unfortunately when good things come along they usually also have a dark side and I guess we will just have to wait and see how things turn out.