Recently Forbes published an article, in which Nickolay Lamm, an artist and researcher, in consultation with a computational geneticist researched into how humans may look in 20 000 years, 60 000 years and 100 000 years into the future. The link to the article is below. http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/06/07/how-the-human-face-might-look-in-100000-years/
This rebuttal makes a lot more sense. 100,000 years is pretty much nothing on the evolutionary scale, and even with genetic engineering, I don't see parents running out to buy giant-eyed babies. More likely, we'll all be pale, obese, suffering from muscular atrophy, and hooked into virtual reality most of the day.
I think that humans might need some interstellar challenges in the future to avoid the muscular atrophy and obesity.
Aren't humans a few hundred thousand years from now supposed to look like this dude? Sorry, but I can't give much credence to an article that has two errors in its first sentence.
Besides, evolution could find less sophisticated brains a better choice for survival in the long run.
If you look at the work of Zager and Evans, they argue that by the year 4545, Humans will not have any use for their eyes or teeth. They discuss their findings here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQB2-Kmiic
Natural evolution is pretty much done for Humanity, unless civilization collapses, especially in terms of natural selection. Technology pretty much negates that already. Sexual selection has been far more important in the biologically recent past. Currently, medical selection is the most important factor, but that will be reversed by genetic medicine in the next century or two. What Humanity looks like in 100,000 years will be determined more by how we consciously decide to integrate biotech with ourselves than by any natural forces.
I’m not sure evolution has gone as far as it can. On this planet maybe but once (if) human colonies are established on other worlds then the humans who are born on those worlds will, over time, change from our current notion of humans.
Actually, the consensus view is that humans are still evolving. For awhile there was a popular theory that we'd sort of technologized our way out of evolution, but that's been thoroughly debunked with a more modern understanding of how evolution works, and with more complete research into genetics.
How so? Even in what the first world would call the most primitive cultures, what can natural selection select? These days, what does faster/smarter/stronger offer in the way of survival? Even if the elite, athletic, beautiful types have a procreational advantage, our sedentary lifestyle has ensured fat, ugly, lazy people will find fat, ugly, lazy mates. Though they may be less ambitious, they will still have the reproductive drive and they will pair off with the best they can muster. If anything, as the "beautiful people" become more selective and refined, and as the indolent become more numerous and willing to take the best that is available, humanity could actually veer off into two different species.
^I think you're looking at evolution through the sort of old fashioned lens I mentioned: evolution isn't a line (the way we are often taught to perceive it), it's a branching bush. There is no goal...we're not evolving into anything specific or in any specific direction of advancement, it's not driven solely by natural and sexual selection, and the results aren't purely morphological or even necessarily on a physically large enough scale for us to recognize. Research in genetics have proved that humans are still evolving, and in some ways rapidly.