Biological evolution takes place over generations. But imagine if it could be expedited beyond the incremental change envisaged by Darwin to a matter of individual experience. Such things are dreamt of by so-called “transhumanists”. Transhumanism has come to connote different things to different people, from a belief system to a cultural movement, a field of study to a technological fantasy. Companies today are strategising about future investments and technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, or growth around new business models.
While many of these trends will make for solid investments for the next 5-10 years, fewer companies are considering the revolutionary convergence of disparate trends pulled from technology, behavioural and societal changes, and medical advances to understand how they will converge to transform society.
This transformation will be messy, complex, and sometimes scary, but signals already point to a future of humanity that will blur our identities into “transhumanism.” The next billion dollar industry will not be a service or product — it will be upgrading humans, experts have revealed.
Transhumanism is an international intellectual movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing and adopting widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology.
The transhuman medical movement has already begun, with many devices in use today, such as pacemakers, stents, joint replacements, prosthetic, and ear implants, but there are future technologies on the horizon such as nanotechnology and enhancement with brain/computer interaction that will usher in the age of super longevity, super strength and super intelligence.
Today a thriving pro-cyborg medical industry is setting the stage for trillion-dollar markets that will remake the human experience. Five million people in America suffer from Alzheimer’s, but a new surgery that involves installing brain implants is showing promise in restoring people’s memory and improving lives.
The use of medical and microchip implants, whether in the brain or not, are expected to surge in the coming years. Some experts surmise as many as half of Americans will have implants by 2020. It’s truly a new age for humans.
An American technology firm began to embed microchip-sized rice grains into its employees. The Three Square Market, a Wisconsin company, said 50 of its employees volunteered to have their chips installed since August after they signed a radio frequency identification technology agreement (RFID).
Chips will be implanted between the thumb and forefinger, and this will allow them, among other things, to pay for food at the company. RFID technology will be used for paying, opening doors, using photocopiers, logging on office computers, unlocking phones, sharing business cards, and keeping information on employee health.
It is a technology that is already being used to pay by scanning the smartphone. The company said that carrying implants would not be mandatory for all employees and that the company would pay microchips, which cost $ 300 a piece.
“The greatest industry of the 21st century will probably be to upgrade human beings,” said historian Yuval Harari, author of the book “Homo Deus”.
British companies are seriously considering chipping their workers. That information leaked after the Swedish technology company Biohax discovered that there was negotiating a deal with a large number of British legal and financial firms.
One of them is allegedly a part of the big four audit firms and has several thousand employees. The reason for the introduction of chipping is not greater control of employees but better control of valuable documents.
“The chips will allow them to determine in advance who can enter the room and who has access to the files,” said Biohax founder Jowan Österlund, Telegraph writes that 4,000 citizens were chipped in Sweden, and, as expected, they were not all enthusiastic. If the initiative came from the government, there is no way that it would be accepted. “We are a private company, we are doing this with citizens, for citizens” emphasised the founder of Biohax.
They are soon planning to open a branch in London, and they are known for their cooperation with Swedish railways, enabling passengers to buy tickets using a chip in the palm. Innovator Steven Northam is the first person in the UK who voluntarily installed the chip so he can open the house door and start the car just by swinging the palm.
“Ten to twenty years from now, the keys will be the past, we will all open with our palm,” Northam said. He also founded BioTeq Company, which has so far chipped around 150 people in the UK and exported its technology to Spain, France, Germany, Japan, and China.
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