Saturday, July 30, 2016

We become "Superhumans" without realizing it...

In a recent Q&A session, Ray Kurzweil is discussing the process of humans becoming superhumans (or cyborgs if you want). (Find out more here.)

Most people have a negative view of this process and are afraid of the change. Kurzweil argues that we shouldn't be because this process is already happening now. We just do not realize it!

In fact if you look around, you can notice a lot of examples of us becoming more superhuman.

Let me give you some examples that I notice in my environment.


  1. As I live in Bruges, I see a lot of guided tours with audio devices. This audio devices enhance our hearing capacity and could easily be extended with translation facilities.
  2. Augmented reality apps are merging our virtual world and the physical world. Augmented reality apps? Yes, they are here, look at the Pokemon Go hype!


  3. We are all wearing wearables, so our body is already connected to the cloud: we measure how we sleep, how many steps we make, how many calories we burn, what our heart rate is, we trace our running route, etc. There are even devices that help improve our golf swing.


  4. The selfie sticks let us take pictures of ourselves without the help of anybody else.
  5. Braces help us to become more mobile.



And there are a lot more examples. Do you have some interesting ones? Do you (dis)agree with Ray Kurzweil? As always, I'm looking forward to your comments!


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