A spot of genealogy.
We belong to the “Homo Sapien” species. Before we appeared on Earth, there was “Homo Erectus” appearing in Tanzania about two million years ago. “Homo sapiens" appeared on Earth about 300,000 years ago, even though some scientists believe we appeared around a million years ago. Neanderthals inhabited the planet for 350,000 years and disappeared around 40,000 years ago.
We like to sneer and term the Neanderthals as brutish, dumb creatures, but Europeans and Asians share 1% to 2% of their DNA with Neanderthals. Africans refused to share their DNA with the Neanderthals, the selfish creatures!
Are we wise?
The term ‘homo sapiens’ literally means ‘wise man.’ Still, most people today, when examining the behavior of politicians, business leaders, and most humans, ought to find a term that means ‘stupid person.’ I have gone ‘woke’ using the term ‘stupid person’ and not ‘stupid man.’ We share about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, so a miniscule change has taken us from a life in the leafy jungle to one in a concrete jungle!
Conversations with our ancestors & descendants.
We evolved from our humble, precarious origins, surviving a hostile environment and predators and avoiding extinction about 80,000 years ago. Humans continue to evolve, and our ancestors will not recognize us. Imagine a modern human conversing with the Australopithecus, Lucy. Or, visualize a discussion between us and our cave-dwelling ancestors. Why travel so far back? Shall we perform a thought experiment? What kind of conversation will you have between yourself and any person from your past? Don’t travel far back—just five hundred or one thousand years into the past.
What differences do you spot in the music they listen to, their food, the issues that give them joy or create stress, their books, and how they communicate? How does their natural environment differ from ours?
Try to remember that you are both human beings. Some of you wear spectacles, which they don’t, or have metal implants to heal a fractured limb, pacemaker, or something else. Even your diet has changed, with less fiber and more sugar, packaged food, or genetically modified food. You may be unable to digest their food, and they’d turn up their noses at you.
Pause before you move on and go back to the last paragraph. If you, or people you know, survive because of metal or other cardiac implants, does it make you less human, or are we becoming humanoids?
How will future humans look & behave? Predictions.
I read science fiction and enjoy the genre, but my collection has too many unread books. Once I finish my stack, I will buy more. However, we are changing so fast that we will not comprehend the changes until too late. The last two words of the previous sentence, ‘too late,’ may appear grim. However, we cannot comprehend the pace of change or how future leaders will use technology.
Science fiction writers and moviemakers created cyborgs. With our implants and life-supporting devices, have we taken the first steps towards becoming cyborgs? If we turn our thought experiment to the future, what kind of conversation will we have with our descendants?
According to Yuval Noah Harari, godlike creatures will replace humans in the next two centuries. Ray Kurzweil predicts that we will enrich and challenge the nature of humanity as we break our genetic legacy. He states that we will connect our biological neocortex to a cloud-based neocortex and that these changes will happen in the next few decades.
Can we adapt and, if so, how?
Will we adapt? Can we adapt? How many of you have read Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock”? He wrote the book a few decades ago, when society was not changing as fast as it is now. I remember rotary dial telephones and the days when phones did not have rotary dials: we made calls through an operator. Now, we talk of AI without understanding its full impact. Elon Musk says we will not use telephones in the future and that people will have chips (called unreeling) embedded in their brains. In his book "The City and the Stars," Arthur C. Clarke described a world run by a supercomputer. A dome covers the city, and the computer controls humans. Humans, by then, are nothing like humans today, closer to Yuval’s prediction.
What does it mean to be human? I doubt many of us can define the word anymore.
Garry Kasparov predicts authoritarianism is a more significant threat to humanity than AI technology. Of course, an associated threat is nuclear annihilation. Many scoff at his warning and say that we will never go up in a nuclear holocaust. I’d advise the cynics to read ‘Le Morte Arthur’ and go to the section describing the final battle, where he explained how the sun lit the blade of a soldier raising his sword to smite an adder, signaling battle. We must never forget that it takes one error to create the conditions for a nuclear holocaust.
Climate scientists caution us about the risks associated with climate change. If we survive climate change, will our bodies adapt to hotter, drier, and wetter climates and change to deal with smog and mosquitoes?
Will humans survive, and what will our descendants look like? What does it mean to be human? Forget about predictions made centuries in the future; what changes can we expect in the next few years or decades? How will we adapt, and what will society look like?
What does this have to do with photography?
This post is a departure from everything I have been writing on this Substack publication, and some may wonder if I am mad or on the way to insanity. How does this rambling relate to street and travel photography?
The association may appear tenuous, but stay with me for a few paragraphs. Let’s start with the simple practice of wearing jeans. When I was in college, we wore our jeans until they frayed, replacing them only when our underwear showed. Today, people, especially women, pay money for frayed jeans. The fashion industry has changed and will continue to change. The people you photographed look different from what they did a few decades ago.
A few decades ago, no one possessed a mobile phone, so when I photographed people, they looked into space with boredom or engaged in active conversations. Now, many stare into their smartphone screens, eyes glazed, and the body language of zombies. You will encounter friends sitting in a circle, everyone absorbed in their phones, forgetting a real human being is next to them. Sometimes, I wonder if they speak the human language. When people change, photography changes.
Now, travel to the near future with me and visualize a world where everyone has a Neuralink chip in their brain or wears smart glasses designed by companies like Meta. What will I see, and what will I photograph? People tapping their heads, speaking into space as they talk to their friends? Imagine fending off spam calls if you allow someone to embed the chip in your brain. Will I photograph people dancing in anger as spam calls plague us?
Live your life well!
I don’t know if cameras will exist. Maybe someone will implant a chip in my eyes, and rapid eye blinking will replace the camera shutter.
Will any of these grand predictions take place? My advice is simple: read, listen, make informed decisions, and live your life well.
It is time to end this post and revert to my travel blogs, but I hope this diversion from the norm gives you something to ponder.
The links in the book titles are my Amazon affiliate links. Be warned.
The link in ‘Le Morte d’Arthur’ takes you to the Project Gutenberg file.
Some of you may have different perspectives. Shove in a comment, and let me know!
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