Tomorrow's People

by Susan Greenfield

  Although this now well-established phenomenon has only ever been shown formally in experiments with rodents, anecdotal evidence had for some time suggested that the same process occurred in humans. The first such evidence was the Japanese island of Okinawa, where there had been significantly more 100-year-olds than elsewhere in Japan, whilst deaths from heart disease and cancer had been two-thirds that of the Japanese mainland. Interestingly enough, average food intake was 20 per cent less than the national average. The diet had always been the same, just less of it. So why does eating less prolong lifespan?

  For several decades now, since the start of the 21st century, scientists have suggested that the cause of this remarkable finding may be that, when the body takes in less food, key enzymes (catalase and superoxide dismutase) increase by some three to four times normal levels; these enzymes neutralize those damaging molecular anarchists, the free radicals that can otherwise attack DNA. But whilst the good news is that reduced food intake means that there are fewer free radicals to do damage, the bad news is that this reduction in deterioration and ageing seems to be accompanied by a loss of interest, in rats at least, in mating. You ponder for a moment whether celibacy is a price worth paying to live longer. You convince yourself that, after all, lifespans can now be prolonged as much as possible by other strategies, such as the use of genetic encyclopaedias coupled with new early-warning diagnostic tests and optimized lifestyle; accordingly, you spoon out more food and eat as many calories as you can…

  Once the meal is over, the smart garbage system will sort the waste into organic, non-organic, recyclable and so on. It will compact the bulk and eliminate odour. A similar level of hygiene, and a similar level of the individual personal monitoring that occurs in the bedroom, operates in the bathroom. Your scales give a read-out of fat content and weight, as they have been doing for decades; but now you can also check your heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and immune system status. As you look in the mirror and yawn smart sensors there detect any problems with pupil dilation, tongue surface, teeth and so on. Michael Dertouzoa, Head of MIT Lab for Computer Science, predicted way back, with great prescience, that sensors in the wash basin would be able to detect minor traces of blood from your gums, activating the voice system: ‘At the rate you are going, there is a 50–50 chance that you will have a periodontal incident in 12 to 15 months and a loss of half of your teeth by the time you are 55.’

  As you evacuate your bladder and bowels your identity is confirmed by buttock prints. Sensors in the lavatory bowl then proceed to monitor your early-morning urine for any signs of diabetes. Your faeces are also screened as they are flushed away, for any indication of bowel or colon cancer, or other defecatory problems. Meanwhile the smart system within the lavatory will in any case issue, by voice, advice on how to modify your diet if your excrement is showing an inappropriate biochemical profile.

  These days everyone expects their daily urine test to be sensitive enough to detect tiny colonies of cancer cells; if it does, such early diagnosis, combined with the advantages of genetic profiling, ensures that treatments are as powerful and effective as possible. The process of pharmacogenomics is familiar to everyone; your personal biochip, with a read-out of your individual genetic profile, enables the tailor-made prescription of a drug. Side effects are minimized as the appropriate treatment for you personally is calculated by powerful software that takes into account your history and other medication, as well as genetic risk.

  Of course, unlike the unenlightened public of the early 21st century you are familiar with the notion of risk, and indeed of living in a society where everyone is at risk from something. But, by the same token, you do not take risk so personally, since you do not see yourself as an isolated entity facing up to a highly precarious future. Instead you are so plugged in to the collective knowledge base, and so alert to the variety of contingencies that will click into place as soon as there are any early warning signs of potential disease, that you do not see disease itself as a looming threat, nor as a milestone in the course of your life that you, as an isolated individual, will have to deal with proactively. Everything will be looked after automatically by the systems: you do not have to worry.

  Given the massive improvements this century that have come with transplant surgery, the growing of organs, genetic engineering, stress reduction, preventative medicine, better diagnostic devices and pharmacogenomics, it is perhaps unsurprising that drugs are no longer primarily used to cure disease, but rather to fine-tune lifestyle. There are now impressive sounding products available that claim to improve sex and IQ, others that can cause weight loss whilst eating to excess, and still more that claim to combat shyness or moodiness or offer ‘cures’ for baldness, alcoholism, obsessive compulsive disorder…

  Enthusiasm for these drugs, however, is not as great as when they first appeared. One reason is that they do not seem after all to target the specific problem, and inevitably cause side effects of one sort or another. Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, such ‘cures’ are no longer needed so desperately. After all, many of your features were determined prior to your birth, when you were genetically screened for ‘defects’ such as baldness; indeed, all males now have a full head of hair, just as most people in the developed world at the turn of the century had an expectation, unlike those in the early 20th century, of a full set of teeth for life. Bald heads, like the once-prized prospect of false teeth as a coming-of-age present, are curios of past eras. Meanwhile, more elusive mental traits, which do not have a one-to-one relation with a single gene, can nonetheless be effectively manipulated by subtle organization of your immediate environment.

  Living in an interactive world, where much of reality is virtual, every sensation you experience every waking moment can be controlled with a precision far more sophisticated and sensitive than potentially hazardous substances indiscriminately marinating the complex biochemical mechanisms of brain and body. The mind can be more powerfully bent with clever software than by the sledgehammer of a substance that changes wholesale the delicate and balanced chemical cascades within the brain. Precision IT has overtaken pharmacology for creating altered states, and indeed determining what altered states we wish to experience.

  In fact, IT has not only ousted drugs as a remedy but has also rendered most doctors obsolete. Although the medical profession as such still exists, many feel it is a dying art, akin to blacksmithing at the dawn of the 20th century. It all began with the information overload for doctors that ensued directly from the new technologies, treatments and diseases and burgeoned over the next few decades. By the early 2000s the medical information needed by a doctor in day-to-day practice was turning over every five years, and as this turnover became faster and faster an increasingly common sight in surgeries was a patient clutching sheaves of downloaded information on their particular illness – the cyber-world was already offering a more accurate and faster alternative for both diagnosis and therapy. Nowadays, you need only to access the home medical box software on your bathroom wall for officially regulated in-depth explanations of any disease or symptom that concerns you. Then there are the electronic discussion groups and self-help groups for rare diseases and, finally, hospitals as networked environments. Often even emergencies are treated at home, or in smaller satellite hospitals, since a network line directly links paramedics to experts.

  But by this time, any thoughts of illness have dissipated; you have a clean bill of health from the monitoring systems and you are already thinking of what to wear. One company, I-Wear, set the trend long ago by endeavouring to plan clothes for the future. Traditionally, they reasoned, garments had served three functions. First that of barrier – keeping warm, decent and protected. Their second function was communication – even in medieval times the colour of clothes, not to mention their condition and fabric, denoted the wearer's position within the feudal hierarchy (peasants were actually not allowed to wear bright colours). A few centuries later the old school tie and the very weari
ng of a tie itself were obvious examples of messages sent via our clothes. As society became more tolerant, clothes in the 20th century came to express attitude, moods and affiliations in a myriad of ways. Meanwhile, the third function that had always been important was the organizational aspect of clothes – be it a belt for a dagger or zipper pockets and money belts.

  But, more recently, you are finding that you need only a few clothes since they are all made of smart polymers and are therefore alterable. The all-important purchase is the latest software, or ‘softwear’, to transform the material you have into the desired style, texture and colour. Now you can transform any item of clothing to accommodate your mood, weight, fashion and the occasion. In fact, you can feed in all these requirements and a recommended garment will flash up on the screen, to be downloaded in three dimensions as soon as you voice-activate, ‘OK’.

  Nowadays, underneath your clothing, body sensors continuously gauge your mood according to your pulse rate and degree of sweat. Such information is important as it will then determine how you receive information at any particular moment from your personalized IT systems. We know, for example, that if people are stressed, information received quickly helps them relax; on the other hand, if they are already relaxed, information transmitted quickly can be highly stressful. All this ongoing feedback about the state of your mind and body is still accomplished by successive generations of e-broidery, initially developed way back in 2002 as conducting threads in fabric; the traces, then as now, carry data and power.

  Much of what your predecessors used to carry around, such as mobile phones and reference material, is now incorporated into clothes. You merely interrogate your watch, say, about your location or best route to follow, and receive an oral response. Keys, similarly, are obsolete since iris scanners and voice-recognition systems open the relevant doors. With a spoken word, a thumbprint or a glance you can make transactions that no forger or thief could ever emulate. And all the while your health continues to be monitored throughout the day. The heart monitor in your T-shirt gives a constant read-out. The fabric also inhibits odour and releases perfumes appropriate for different contexts, such as seduction, playing with children, being with friends or working. Moreover, the fabric of all your clothes interacts to counteract hormone or blood-sugar imbalances with impregnated drugs, released as soon as the sensors pick up a deficiency.

  As your body temperature and moisture fluctuate so will the feedback from your clothes. This feedback influences anything you choose, from the temperature of the room to the colour of the clothes themselves, which can change in an instant. Your shoes, in particular, are no longer mere protection for the feet but a source of energy; the human body generates, from one moment to the next, some 80 watts of useable energy, of which 1 watt comes from the feet alone. Transducers in the soles of the shoes convert the energy generated on impact with each step, to be recycled when needed to aid tired muscles. If you prefer, the energy can be used to power the ‘invisible’ computers embedded in your clothes and jewellery. Neil Gershenfeld at the MIT Media Lab long ago envisaged that it would be possible to send an electrically coded CV, stored in the shoes, up into the hands during a greeting, a prediction that turned out to be correct. Because the sweaty palms conduct electricity the electronic CV can be exchanged with a handshake, the modern equivalent of the tradition of exchanging business cards.

  Unlike the inevitably shabby and baggy clothes that sooner or later resulted from a normal turn-of-the-century working day, your clothes always look pristine. They are all now made from wrinkle-free fabric, and self-clean as you wear them. The reason that the kitchen is exclusively for the preparation of food is that laundry is truly a relic of the past; bacteria impregnated into every single fibre of fabric flourish and breed by feeding on the dirt, thereby creating self-cleaning clothes. And unlike the clothes of the past, yours now fit you perfectly; when you cyber-shop from your home you are able to indulge in virtual fittings, having fed in your precise body measurements.

  The communication function of clothes is now automatic and leaves nothing to chance. Much of your time is spent in virtual interaction from your home. When you have a business encounter it is therefore so much more practical to turn to a virtual clothing package, and transmit your image in virtual clothes added as part of the software. In this way you know that you are wearing the most culturally acceptable attire for the occasion. In turn, the cultural requirements and expectations of any encounter are contained within an appropriate program, developed by anthropologists and psychologists, so that the age, gender and nationality of those you are meeting, together with the location, time of day and season, as well as the desired outcome and the message that you wish to convey, could all be factors in determining your virtual outfit. Some recent, highly sophisticated software now offers the opportunity for you to change your gender, age or nationality so that the virtual you would fit into the meeting perfectly, and stand the best chance of the perfect outcome.

  Of course, there is now a dreary predictability to how the participants of such meetings are actually going to look. After all, everyone has access to similar software, so that a meeting norm has evolved where everyone is a middle-aged Caucasian male in a grey suit with an educated accent and vocabulary. Hence you are having to come to terms with the ultimate annihilation of the individual, at least for business purposes. As you see the situation at the moment, this latest system is simply a way of masking any individual factors that would detract from the business itself. The advantage is, obviously, the ultimate in political correctness, paradoxically achieved by exploiting rather than denying human bigotry.

  But increasingly you find yourself musing over what ‘you’ actually are, or indeed what the concept actually encompasses. All achievements, feedback and interaction are increasingly accomplished via a virtual version of the self, sanitized in terms of race, age, gender and background, so what is really left of the real you? Yet no one seems to be raising an alarm, nor even posing the question of what constitutes individuality. Moreover, such standardizing scenarios are now seeping beyond business meetings to social encounters too, virtual dinner parties with virtual guests, for example. Soon your children or grandchildren could be living an entirely virtual life with a plethora of multiple cyber-personalities.

  No one sees themselves as constrained anymore, either by space or indeed by time. Science is shrivelling global space to a screen in front of you so that there are no boundaries to going where you wish, at least in cyberspace, nor indeed preventing you from going back to any particular moment in time. Since everything has been recorded in real time as you live your life, a flashback complete with all sights, sounds and colours, downloaded to PVR or absolute VR, enables you to relive any time you choose, with the same degree of realism – cyber-realism – with which you live most of your everyday life in any case. The past and present are therefore now impossible to distinguish; the passage of time seems a meaningless notion.

  In this way, you no longer have such a clear storyline to your life, compared to previous generations who had to tax their highly revisionist and imperfect, fleeting and fragile memories, feebly aided by photo albums and home videos. But it need not be your own life that you revisit: just as people in the past would watch old movies to escape nostalgically into earlier eras, so now you access individualized software that immerses you completely in another time instantaneously.

  If you desire a particularly strong link with the past, as though it were the present, you can even continue an email exchange with someone who has died, because ingenious software is able to extrapolate previous behaviours to mimic the type of reactions and areas of interest the deceased would have had. But things do not even stop there. Once it was accepted that software would be good enough to simulate the reactions of a deceased relation, it was only a small step to make them fictional from the outset. Even your family members can be virtual: they can be of whatever age, gender, sexual orientation, and in whatever number you choose. Th
ey ask you if you have had a hard day at work, join you for dinner and even, by means of haptic sensor technology, give you a hug or a kiss.

  Even by the turn of the century the internet had reinvented flirting. Email flirting is still growing in popularity because it emphasizes fun rather than a serious relationship – and fun is now the order of the day. After all, there is nothing else to do really except feel the thrill of your pulse changing or your heart rate increasing. One primitive prototype for virtual flirting was a text-messaging service, Mamjam, that could send messages from bars and clubs between individuals who had never met each other, but whom the service connected according to their proximity. And now cyber-courtship continues to flourish. Using your embedded and invisible mobile, you fill out your profile and post it on a virtual bulletin board. This profile is designed to fit the tiny screens of mobiles and has spawned a new virtual society with its own words, rules and risks. When this virtual lifestyle first started, 10,000 matchmaking sites sprang up immediately in Japan alone; one site boasted 600,000 members with 3,000 hits every five minutes. Now, of course, numbers have escalated everywhere.