**6. Concluding Thoughts**

To summarize, this paper proposes that the next step in human evolution is for humans to merge with the increasingly smart technology that tool-building *Homo sapiens* are in the process of creating. Such technology will enhance our visual and auditory systems, replace biological parts that may fail or become diseased, and dramatically increase our information-processing abilities. A major point is that the merger of humans with technology will allow the process of evolution to proceed under a dramatically faster timescale compared to the process of biological evolution. However, as a consequence of exponentially improving technology that may eventually direct its own evolution, if we do not merge with technology, that is, become the technology, we will be surpassed by a superior intelligence with an almost unlimited capacity to expand its intelligence [5–7]. This prediction is actually a continuation of thinking on the topic by robotics and artificial intelligence pioneer Hans Moravec who, almost 30 years ago, argued that we are approaching a significant event in the history of life in which the boundaries between biological and post-biological intelligence will begin to dissolve [7]. However, rather than warning humanity of dire consequences which could accompany the evolution of entities more intelligent than humans, Moravec postulated that it is relevant to speculate about a plausible post-biological future and the ways in which our minds might participate in its unfolding. Thus, the emergence of the first technology creating species a few hundred thousand years ago is creating a new evolutionary process leading to our eventual merger with technology; this process is a natural outgrowth of—and a continuation of—biological evolution.

As noted by Kurzweil [6] and Moravec [7], the emergence of a technology-creating species has led to the exponential pace of technology on a timescale orders of magnitude faster than the process of evolution through DNA-guided protein synthesis. The accelerating development of technology is a process of creating ever more powerful technology using the tools from the previous round of innovation. While the first technological steps by our early ancestors of a few hundred thousand years ago produced tools with sharp edges, the taming of fire, and the creation of the wheel occurred much faster, taking only tens of thousands of years [6]. However, for people living in this era, there was little noticeable technological change over a period of centuries, such is the experience of exponential growth where noticeable change does not occur until there is a rapid rise in the shape of the exponential function describing growth [6]; this is what we are experiencing now with computing technology and to a lesser extent with enhancement technologies. As Kurzweil noted, in the nineteenth century, more technological change occurred than in the nine centuries preceding it and in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, there was more technological advancement than in all of the nineteenth century combined [6]. In the 21st century, paradigm shifts in technology occur in only a few years and these paradigm shifts directed towards enhancing the body could lead to a future merger between humans and technology.

According to Ray Kurzweil [6], if we apply the concept of exponential growth, which is predicted by the law of accelerating returns, to the highest level of evolution, the first step, the creation of cells, introduced the paradigm of biology. The subsequent emergence of DNA provided a digital method to record the results of evolutionary experiments and to store them within our cells. Then, the evolution of a species who combined rational thought with an opposable appendage occurred, allowing a fundamental paradigm shift from biology to technology [6]. Consistent with the arguments presented in this paper, Kurzweil concludes that this century, the upcoming primary paradigm shift will be from biological thinking to a hybrid being combining biological and nonbiological thinking [6,28]. This hybrid will include "biologically inspired" processes resulting from the reverse engineering of biological brains; one current example is the use of neural nets built based on mimicking the brain's neural circuitry. If we examine the timing and sequence of these steps, we observe that the process has continuously accelerated. The evolution of life forms required billions of years for the first steps, the development of primitive cells; later on, progress accelerated and during the Cambrian explosion, major paradigm shifts took only tens of millions of years. Later on, humanoids eventually developed over a period of millions of years, and *Homo sapiens* over a period of only hundreds of thousands of years. We are now a tool-making species that may merge with and become the technology we are creating. This may happen by the end of this century or the next, such is the power of the law of accelerating returns for technology.

**Funding:** The writing of this paper was not funded through external sources.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
