Book World Live; "Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human"

Far-fetched as it may sound, the first person who will live to be 1,000 may already walk among us. The first computer that will think like a person may be built before today's kindergarteners graduate from college. By the middle of this century, we may be as blase about genetically engineered humans as we are today about pierced ears. These sorts of predictions have a habit of sounding silly by the time they're supposed to come true, but there's a certain logic to them." -- Intelligent Design? (Book World, June 12)

Joel Garreau , a reporter and editor at The Washington Post, has sought out the scientists who are driving that logic and the thinkers who are contemplating its implications in his book, "Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human." He was online Tuesday, June 14, at 3 p.m. ET to discuss the above predictions and his book.

Join Book World Live each Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET for a discussion based on a story or review in each Sunday's Book World section.Radical Evolution" is about the biggest change in 10,000 years in what it means to be human. We are at a turning point in history. For the first time in millennia, our technologies are not so much aimed outward, in the fashion of fire, clothes, agriculture, cities, and space travel. Instead, they are increasingly aimed inward at modifying our minds, memories, metabolisms, personalities, progeny, and possibly our souls.

This is happening not in some distant future, but on our watch. We can already see the outlines of this change today in the memory drugs that will be on the market in the next three to five years, as well as the drugs like modafinil that shut off the human trigger to sleep. In the next five to 15 years it will become increasingly unavoidable because of the exponentially increasing change in what I call the GRIN technologies -- the genetics, robotics, information and nano processes.

I actually don't care that much about the gear, however. What I'm interested in is where this takes the future of human nature.

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Springfield, Va.: Your article literally stopped me in my tracks, because it summarized so much of what I personally believe about the future of humanity -- that we have the potential to be masters of our own destiny and creators of our own immortality.

Did any of the thinkers and scientists you interviewed have opinions about the role of ethics and religion in the years to come? Given the current debates raging over such comparatively clear-cut scientific issues such as evolution, I worry about what other progress might be checked by extremists acting on behalf of "God".

Remember the "Plan B" article the Post ran on May 12th, in which new information suggested that the FDA may have yielded to conservative pressure in overruling an advisory board's application to make an emergency contraception more easily accessible? W. David Hager, an evangelical doctor serving on the panel, wrote a memo to the FDA commissioner asking them to overturn their 23-to-4 (in favor) decision. Here's the quote the same article from Hager's subsequent video-taped "sermon":

" 'I argued from a scientific perspective, and God took that information, and he used it through this minority report to influence the decision,' Hager said. 'Once again, what Satan meant for evil, God turned into good.' "

Did anyone from your book express any concerns about such medieval views being alive and well in the upper echelons of the American government in the 21st century?

Joel Garreau: great question.

the conversation that exists today about how we are about to take charge of our own human evolution through engineered means is occurring largely among the techies.

that's why i've been typing as fast as i can. i think our first task is to understand what these technologies amount to, in terms of changing what it means to be human. this conversation has got to move out to the liberal arts majors, the religious, whomever.

i offer three scenarios for where these changes will take us as humans -- "heaven," "hell," and "prevail."

in "heaven," the curve of change goes straight up, and history is locked into it. in this scenario we fix pain, suffering, stupidity, ignorance, ugliness and even death, and it's all good. in fact, the people who project this scenario paint a picture that looks a lot like the christian version of heaven, and it begins to occur on our watch -- in the next five to 25 years. serious people are taking this scenario seriously, including people at the national science foundation.