My ebook: Journeys with the caterpillar

My ebook
"
Journeys with the caterpillar: Travelling through the islands of Flores
and Sumba, Indonesia
" is available at
this link


Thursday, September 01, 2005

Will Fish become Fish again?


How will man evolve going forward? I am talking of say 5 million years from now. Will our index finger evolve into mobile phones? Will hips get mutated into i-pods? Will legs become shorter to allow more comfortable economy-class flights? Will the male organ become dotted or crocodile-ribbed?

Now evolution and selection of features through survival of the fittest is limited to biological organs and processes; and increasingly many of our functions are being carried out by machines. So I am pretty sure that hands won't become mobile phones.

But now, it's not the physically strong who are the fittest: largely it's the economically strong ones. And I don't know how evolution can work on economic parameters - because economic well being can't be coded in the genes. So is it the end of evolution for human species? Will other related species catch-up with us?

And finally, will fish become fish again as shown in the cartoon by John Stegmann above?

2 comments:

Shivaji said...

@fnr
I have avoided Gould's book so far...I have basically read reviews that his theories are not well validated...

Nice to know about the dolphin story

Ashu M said...

Well, we already know (thanks to Douglas Adams) that Dolphins are the superior, more evolved residents of our planet. So who knows - perhaps we can evolve into fish again! Although the current biking stage is rather cool, at least as far as I'm concerned ;)

And dotted? I can understand ribbed ... but dotted? Ick!