Welcome to 2025

Welcome to 2025: "Many of the broad, down-the-road predictions made in Global Trends 2025 have, in fact, already come to pass. Brazil, Russia, India, and China -- collectively known as the BRIC countries -- are already playing far more assertive roles in global economic affairs, as the report predicted would happen in perhaps a decade or so. At the same time, the dominant global role once monopolized by the United States with a helping hand from the major Western industrial powers -- collectively known as the Group of 7 (G-7) -- has already faded away at a remarkable pace. Countries that once looked to the United States for guidance on major international issues are ignoring Washington's counsel and instead creating their own autonomous policy networks. The United States is becoming less inclined to deploy its military forces abroad as rival powers increase their own capabilities and non-state actors rely on 'asymmetrical' means of attack to overcome the U.S. advantage in conventional firepower."

Welcome to 2025

Welcome to 2025: "In November 2008, the National Intelligence Council published a report predicting that the US would no longer be the world's sole superpower by 2025. But recent events and the global recession suggest that US global preeminence may end earlier than forecast. The dollar's role in the global economy seems to be in danger, and the G7 has relinquished responsibility of the world economy to the larger G20.� The US will remain a strong economic and military power for some time to come, but the single player mode is already a fading reality."

Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution": "Meanwhile, Hawking observes, our human brains 'with which we process this information have evolved only on the Darwinian time scale, of hundreds of thousands of years. This is beginning to cause problems. In the 18th century, there was said to be a man who had read every book written. But nowadays, if you read one book a day, it would take you about 15,000 years to read through the books in a national Library. By which time, many more books would have been written.'
But we are now entering a new phase, of what Hawking calls 'self designed evolution,' in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA. 'At first,' he continues 'these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled by single genes, and so are fairly easy to identify, and correct. Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression.'
If the human race manages to redesign itself, to reduce or eliminate the risk of self-destruction, we will probably reach out to the stars and colonize other planets. But this will be done, Hawking believes, with intelligent machines based on mechanical and electronic components, rather than macromolecules, which could eventually replace DNA based life, just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life."

Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution": "This means Hawking says that we have entered a new phase of evolution. 'At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information.'
But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred.
'I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race,' Hawking said."

Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution": "Although It has taken homo sapiens several million years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points out in his Life in the Universe lecture, is about a bit a year.
'By contrast,' Hawking says, 'there are about 50,000 new books published in the English language each year, containing of the order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great majority of this information is garbage, and no use to any form of life. But, even so, the rate at which useful information can be added is millions, if not billions, higher than with DNA.'"