We will become cyborgs in 200 years, says Yuval Noah Harari

Within the next 200 years, humans will become so merged with technology that we would evolve into “God-like cyborgs”, according to Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and author from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Harari researches the history of the human species, and after writing a new book on our past, he now believes that we’re just a few centuries away from being able to use technology to avoid death altogether — if we can afford it, that is.

“I think it is likely in the next 200 years or so Homo sapiens will upgrade themselves into some idea of a divine being, either through biological manipulation or genetic engineering by the creation of cyborgs: part organic, part non-organic,” Harari said during his presentation at the Hay Festival in the UK, as Sarah Knapton reports for The Telegraph. “It will be the greatest evolution in biology since the appearance of life…we will be as different from today’s humans as chimps are now from us.”

Obviously, we should take Harari's predictions with a pinch of salt. But many researchers believe that we are already going towards a cyborg future; after all, many of us already rely on bionic ears and eyes, insulin pump technology and prosthetics to help us survive.

And with researchers recently learning how to send people’s thoughts across the web, subconsciously control bionic limbs and use liquid metal to heal severed nerves, it’s not hard to imagine how we could continue to use technology to supplement our vulnerable human bodies further.

Interestingly, Harare's comments came just a few days after UK-based neuroscientist, Hannah Critchlow, from Cambridge University, said that it could be possible to upload our brains into computers, if we could build computers with 100 trillion circuit connections. “People could probably live inside a machine. Potentially, I think it is definitely a possibility,” Critchlow said during her presentation at the festival.

But Harari warned that these upgrades may only be available to the wealthiest members of society, and that could cause a biological divide between the rich and the poor — especially if some of us can afford to pay for the privilege of living forever while the rest  die out.