To me, this post suggests we are entering a “post-human” period of human history. Once in our evolution, humans talked with humans. “Food!” one human exclaimed, pointing at valley in the distance. “No, leopard!” exclaimed another human. Soon came conversations about babies, mating, illness, planting seeds, and death. We new we were a new species because we could plot, plan, blither about nonsense like “god,” and so on.

We seem to be on the verge of an astonishing change in our species, with two likely directions. One (compatible with this post) is that we evolve into a new species (often tagged as THE SINGULARITY) and perhaps involving mating with a new species of our own creation known as artificial intelligence. If we go that route, we may communicate with other humans less and less. Instead of conversation we have “conversation space.” Instead of flesh and blood humans with voice, body language, touch, scent, we have AI conversational assistants. This sounds less and less human to me.

The other future imagination is the “6th Extinction.” We kill off our animal competitors, destroy our ecosphere. I point you to the Ray Bradbury story, “There Will Come Soft Rains,” available on line as a PDF at no cost.