Transport and Transhumans
By Julio Arbesú
In 2100, fast traffic will not circulate at ground level in the cities or the fields. This will be prohibited. There will be less air traffic than nowadays. On land, there will be fast (300-500 km/h) and ultra-fast (more than 1,000 km/h) lines, all of them light and continuously elevated on columns. They will often span great distances by means of hanging bridges in order to avoid rivers and accidents on the ground. Abundant lines, hanging between floating platforms, will cross the oceans.
There will be no large land vehicles for human use or for transporting merchandise. Cargo will travel in narrow underground conducts, including very narrow home-delivery conducts. Indivisible, large objects will have special transportation, often by air.
All journeys made by people or goods transport will be managed by a network with automatic driving systems on various types of line and with diverse electrical propulsion systems. The door-to-door principle will rule, and also that of combining cabins (for people) and containers (for goods) with the aim of obtaining maximum energy efficiency.
Traffic as a whole will have followed the accelerative trend seen throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Motorized movement on the planet will have reached its peak in 2100, but it is possible that, by this date, a new, opposing trend will have started to dampen the compulsive human need for speed and environmental change.
Also in 2100, a good part of the world’s population will be transhuman. This means that they will have built-in microelectronic devices working closely with the biology of their body.
Humanity will be divided into groups and sub-groups: Trans Bs, whose brain will be in direct contact with computer files and communications, will abound. At the top of the pyramid will be the Trans As, who will be genetically modified Trans Bs. Most abundant will be the Trans Cs, whose bodies are equipped with micro-appliances without direct contact with their brains.
The basic characteristics of trans nature will be immediate, long-distance access to communication with other people and to public files. They will have nano-technological control of bodily functions, some hormonal processes, and other kinds of activity related to mental processes.
Along with the trans population, there will be a human population. As happens with different races, the boundaries between one category and the other will be rather blurred. The difference between a Trans C and a technologically equipped human will be insignificant. The human condition will be decided by, in a large number of cases, the lack of access to transhuman technologies, and in many others, a widespread, anti-evolutionary rebelliousness: a phenomenon comparable nowadays to that of the Amish, although it will be more common.
Like transhumans, humans will have grades—from those who accept the implantation of all types of artificial organs, remote health check-ups, and a communications chip at the base of the ear, to those who accept human nature in the same way as they faced illness, old age, and death at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Complex conflicts between the various types of humans and transhumans will exist. Many of the transhumans will consider that the greatest global problem is the excessive reproduction and irrational behavior of humans. There will also be neo-religious conflicts related to the meaning of life.
Living, working to live, struggling, having fun, and believing will acquire new dimensions and combinations. The most-significant mortality factor among the Trans Bs will be suicide, but this problem will gradually be corrected in the new generations of Trans As.
About the author:Julio Arbesú is a writer, musician, and ecologist militant, born in Asturias, Spain. Among his books are La Informatizacion del Transporte (The Computerization of Transport, available in English from his Web site, www.futurtrans.info, and El Destín Transhumanu, in Asturian (no English translation), about the transhuman future. Email jiarbesu@yahoo.es.
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