By Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board member José Luis Cordeiro ¹

OVERVIEW

In 2020, world population has grown to 7.5 billion people, the global economy is approaching $80 trillion, and the wireless Internet 4.0 is now connecting almost half of humanity. Synergies among nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science (commonly known as NBIC technologies) have dramatically improved the human condition by increasing the availability of energy, food, and water and by connecting people and information anywhere, anytime. The positive effects are to increase collective intelligence and to create value and efficiency while lowering costs.

The acceleration of technological development has opened the door to continuous and rapid worldwide economic growth and has in fact allowed the world to achieve energy sustainability using many different energy sources. The NBIC technologies are proving to be the key to a very bright future, in which machines work increasingly efficiently so that the cost of goods continues to plummet and tremendous wealth is created faster and faster for everybody. All basic necessities, as well as intellectual and physical luxuries, can be accessible to even the poorest societies, thanks to a political system that has managed to keep world peace. Space exploration, artificial intelligence, and robotics are close to a takeoff point that some experts refer to as a "technological singularity".

In fact, already some cyborgs and clones are becoming accepted and normal in some societies, and their numbers are increasing faster than those of the so-called naturals. Biological evolution, which is slow and erratic, will be overtaken by technological evolution, which is faster and directed. Humans will never be the same, and all thanks to the great new energy mix.