DISCLAIMER: The future I describe in the following essay I feel is
            possible but I do not like to think it is probable.


     In the beginning man was a hunter. His senses were tuned to the
world around him in ways we, today,  cannot even imagine. In his world
everything was alive, the rivers, the forests, the earth itself. There
was a spirit that moved through all things. The animals were brothers
whose lives were taken with respect so that man could survive.  Man
learned that he could hunt and survive best with others of his kind.
The clan and the tribe gave way to villages, towns and later cities.
Then states and nations were formed down through history. It is
instinctive for humans  to be connected to other humans. Early man had
no prisons or executions. Those who broke the understood rules of the
tribe were banished, exiled, disconnected from the group.
     Perhaps the one most irresistible feature of the internet is that
it satisfies our primal need of being connected to others or better
yet networked. Man is essentially a herd animal and the internet is
the biggest herd on the planet.  Here we can blend in with the rest
of humanity. We can be any color, sex or creed. We can be anonymous
using handles for names, our fingertips touching a keyboard touching
other fingertips on keyboards. There is a certain kind of freedom
that can only be experienced within the perimeters of a herd.

                        Stephen Hawking
     On March 3, 1998 Stephen Hawking, considered by many the smartest
man alive, gave a speech at the White House on the next millennium.
Below is an excerpt from his speech.

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          "But now we are at the beginning of a new era in
          which we will be able to increase the complexity of our
          DNA without having to wait for the slow process of
          biological evolution. There has been no significant
          change in human DNA in the last ten thousand years. But
          it is likely that we will be able to completely
          redesign it in the next thousand. Of course many people
          will say that genetic engineering on humans should be
          banned. But I rather doubt if they will be able to
          prevent it. Genetic engineering on plants and animals
          will be allowed for economic reasons and someone is
          bound to try it on humans. Unless we have a
          totalitarian world order, someone will design improved
          humans somewhere.

          Clearly developing improved humans will create great
          social and political problems with respect to
          unimproved humans. I'm not advocating human genetic
          engineering as a good thing, I'm just saying that it is
          likely to happen in the next millennium, whether we
          want it or not. This is why I don't believe science
          fiction like Star Trek where people are essentially the
          same four hundred years in the future. I think the
          human race, and its DNA, will increase its complexity
          quite rapidly.

          In a way the human race needs to improve its mental and
          physical qualities if it is to deal with the
          increasingly complex world around it and meet new
          challenges like space travel. And it also needs to
          increase its complexity if biological systems are to
          keep ahead of electronic ones. At the moment computers
          have an advantage of speed, but they show no sign of
          intelligence. This is not surprising because our
          present computers are less complex than the brain of an
          earthworm, a species not noted for their intellectual
          powers. But computers obey Moore's Law put forward by
          Gordon Moore of Intel. This says that their speed and
          complexity double every 18 months. It is one of these
          exponential growths which clearly can not continue
          indefinitely. However it will probably continue until
          computers have a similar complexity to the human brain.
          Some people say that computers can never show true
          intelligence whatever that may be. But it seems to me
          that if very complicated chemical molecules can operate
          in humans to make them intelligent then equally
          complicated electronic circuits can also make computers
          act in an intelligent way. And if they are intelligent
          they can presumably design computers that have even
          greater complexity and intelligence.

          This is why I don't believe the science fiction picture
          of an advanced but constant future. Instead, I expect
          complexity to increase at a rapid rate, both in the
          biological and electronic spheres. Not much of this
          will happen in the next hundred years, which is all we
          can reliably predict. But by the end of the next
          millennium, if we get there, the change will be
          fundamental."

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    Professor Hawking's words provided me with much food for thought.
Barring some unforeseen setback such as plague or nuclear war humans
will not be able to resist the opportunity to try genetic engineering.
The temptation to play God and speed up thousands of years of evolution
into a period of just a few years will happen somewhere and then
everywhere.
     With computers doubling their speed every 18 months the possibility
of an intelligent machine may be less than a hundred
years away. A machine intelligent enough to design machines even
smarter than itself. Perhaps smart enough to design "improved
humans".
     As a man stricken with Lou Gehrig's Disease Prof. Hawking must use
a computer to communicate to the world. As a result I'm sure he has
thought of the following but did not dare say it. That maybe in the
distant future the competition between engineered humans and intelligent
computers would be resolved by combining the two. What I mean is what we
commonly refer to in science fiction as cyborgs, a human with
hardware attached. The concept is horrific to say the least,
inhuman and monstrous.  Would a genetically engineered human
feel in the way that we feel today? Would he believe in a God?
Would he have morale values the same as we do? Perhaps he may think
that physically merging himself with computer technology may not
only be logical but even fashionable. As computers today are most
effective in a network then so too would be a race of cyborgs.
A race of modem heads all connected and online. The ultimate electronic herd.
     Here is where I have to stop, take a deep breath and do what comedian
George Carlin says he's doing. Sitting back and waiting for the comet
to hit and make things right.
     You know it's been a while since I last went hunting.