It is history’s best-known heroes that wrote passages for land explorers. Pretty much that age of terrestrial discovery is over. We have scaled the highest peaks and explored the deepest trenches. The “frontier” has shifted today from the physical world around us to the digital and biological worlds within ourselves. This is timely, and already alive in changing our lives.
Here are nine arguments for why the next human frontier has already started:
The minds merge into the machines
Demography; not another tool along with humans, but with them, as one. Meanwhile, there’s already experiments to test the brain-computer connection, that is, the head interfaces with thought control through the software or prosthetic limbs. This frontier is not about better computers; in fact, this frontier is the space that has to be opened up between human intent and digital action.
Offshoot to Low Earth Orbit
Space now is not only spent by government cosmonauts. Private spaceflight is taking the “neighbourhood” just above the atmosphere for all-new industry, research, and, in the end, tourism uses. We already have frames started for a permanent human footprint in orbit, which has grown much greater than a single space station.
Reprogramming Life’s Genetic Code
This is the first moment in mankind’s history that it has this type of hardware to be able to edit what such ‘software’ is composed of life. Such CRISPR technology probably allows deleting pre-birth genetic diseases from a person’s life for future generations. In a way, we have turned from products of evolution themselves into being architects of our biological future.
The Rise of Synthetic Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is significantly more than just the next application; rather, it is what’s called “digital labour,” that has been changing our conception and even the dynamics of how we think and create. This frontier is all about learning how humans deserve to coexist with non-biological intelligences possessing the capacity of speed within which information is processed, art is created, and problems solved at levels beyond humans.
The Digital Twin and the Metaverse
We’ve become increasingly leading “duplicate lives.” For many of us, the digital identity is at least equal to the physical identity. The next thing is to create truly immersive digital worlds-the full virtual metaverse-where people work, socialize, and own property in a space without physical borders.
The Very Radical Quest for Longevity
Science ceases to look at old age as a fate, but rather sees it now as a biological “problem” that can be modified. From cellular rejuvenation all the way to very advanced regenerative medicine, the frontiers of human life expectancy have shifted toward a future in which “old age” will take on a meaning vastly different from the present-day understanding of that term.
Society Plummeting into Global Slumber
The internet has already opened borders. The new type of technology-including the blockchain-redefining the very foundation of trust and trade within future digital nations, is where communities of like-minded people sharing values and economies come together without regard to physical location.
Deep Consciousness Exploration
Having conquered the outer world, we turn toward the inner one. By opening this new frontier of human consciousness-especially through advanced neuroscience, as well as experimenting under controlled conditions with psychedelics-we would want to get an insight into the construction of reality, and into how mental health is evolving at its deepest source.
Sustainable Planetary Management
The future frontier-the 21st-century frontier-teaches us how to survive on this planet, without destroying, using it. This would mean, for example, “terraforming” our own planet back to health through carbon capture, lab-grown meat, or circular economies. That is the ultimate challenge of maturity for the human species.
