What is the next step for the human race ?

Image credit: CC 2.0 possan

Will evolution take its course or are we destined to become a product of our own ambitions ? Given enough time it seems inevitable that we, the human race, will eventually stop being humans at all and will instead evolve one step further up the evolutionary ladder to something that today we can only guess at. Science fiction has long portrayed highly advanced humans of the future as alien-like entities or as energy beings that have transcended the need for physical bodies, but in reality what is out future likely to hold ?
One possible outcome is that technology will soon out-pace evolution, that instead of progressive, natural changes to our bodies we will become a race of augmented creatures with enhancements born from genetics, robotics and other sciences instead of from natural selection. If that happens will our evolution continue at all or is our future form to be determined purely by what we ourselves can make it ? Inevitably the forces of natural selection will require us to branch out into differentiated versions of our current selves, like so many Galápagos finches. . . assuming, that is, that we have enough time to leave our evolution to our genes.

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