Future of Disparity – On the face of Exponential Growth in Science and Technology

The world has been witnessing a rising trend in economic disparity between very rich and the rest. However, as of now, money is only a small factor in improving health and ageing – see Parity in the midst of rising disparity – but for how long! . However, this is likely to change in future though.In Future, Money could buy lot more – even healthConsider the following scenario where progress in science and technology allows the following –

– Life almost guaranteed to be long, healthy and disease free.

– One is born with ‘success’ traits like smartness, intelligence, leadership skills, people skills, sharper memory, enhanced reasoning skills and more – basically with any combination that your parents chose before they decided to give you birth.

– One requires significantly less sleep and it is totally refreshing – giving both benefits of deep sleep and deep meditation.

– One doesn’t need to exercise or focus on healthy diet. Using a combination of technologies, all your body parts, muscles, bones and tissues always get optimum nutrition and are kept healthy.

– One maintains youth till very late in life.

– The bio and nano technology based implants further aid in improved health and capabilities.

The above list is far from being comprehensive and some items may look far fetched or fictitious. But that does not change the main theme of this blog. As long as one believes in the power of exponential growth in science and technology, it is quite conceivable that some changes, that will have significant effect on our health, ageing and cognitive capabilities will eventually emerge.

Now the caveat is that at least initially, all the treatments and procedures required to get the above results will be extremely expensive and rare so only a few privileged (very rich) will be able to afford.

This will lead to the emergence of two main categories of people in this world –

a. The normal humans, kind of the way we are today with some improvements that come with time.

b. The small percentage of ‘super humans’ who are very rich and hence are able to acquire traits and capabilities described above.

(There will probably also be couple of sub categories somewhere in between.)

Today we have examples where with hard work and right skills some people rise to the top (rags to riches). There are ample examples of young entrepreneurs and CEOs around us who are multimillionaires and billionaires and would fall in this category. This will no longer be possible in future. With the vast disparity in cognitive power, health, energy and available time that I described above, only super humans will be capable of these roles. Without the ‘enhancements’ available only to very rich, even the brightest and best of bread normal humans will fall far short of skills required to rise to the top.

Further, with exponential growth continuing, the power available to super humans and hence the disparity in capabilities will only increase with time.

At the minimum, the parity between humans, that I talked of in my last blog – Parity in the midst of rising disparity – but for how long!, will be ruptured for good. But where will be the end! 

Humans came to be called humans over couple of billion years through a series of evolution. Would disparity of this level be sign of next evolution. Will try to address such issues in up coming blogs.