What will humans look like in 100 years?

We can agree that science is a long way from solving the question of exactly how genes and the environment guide the development of humans.

But there's little question in my mind that humans can  change, and change rapidly in response to their environment. Look no further than human heights, which respond dramatically to nutrition. Consider the North Koreans, who not long ago were about the same height as their South Korean counterparts. After decades of famine and deprivation in the North, South Koreans are about 3 inches taller, on average.

How will human biology, therefore, react to being continually "plugged into" computers?

Here's what I mean. Clearly a significant portion of the public desires near-constant connectivity to the Web -- how else to explain the proliferation of cell phones and Blackerries? Even if you think Ray Kurzweil is a little batty, I think his vision of future human/machine interfaces is fairly close to the truth, even if it's not going to arrive by 2010. Kurzweil believes computers as we know them today will vanish by 2010 as retinal displays, connected wirelessly to the Internet, take over.

You can say "I won't do that." But in an increasingly connected world such displays -- probably beginning with Web-enabled sunglasses or some such -- will become common-place, and anyone without one will probably feel increasingly out-of-touch. You would use the technology to do everything from call a friend, watch 15 minutes of TV to kill some time, answer a trivia question to ordering take-out. Your employer will probably eventually come to require such connectivity.

Still doubt it? Take a look at how much your children like text-messaging and Internet-messaging. Now imagine such connectivity with videos, sound and much more. Think kids won't want it?

So how will that change what it means to be human? The BBC reports on interesting speculation about the creation of two sub-species of humans. Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

In other words, there would be the technological haves and have-nots. My response to the question of what we will become: Who knows?

But anyone who thinks "being human" won't change as a result of combining man and machine hasn't been paying attention to soaring human heights over the last century.

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